Food for thought...

My across the hall neighbor returned from a trip to visit her daughter this week, absolutely astounded by a conversation she had with a fifth grader from Texas during her plane ride. The child had asked whether or not the students in our school took state tests and they got to talking about when they were taken. The child was amused that our students take them in the fall as opposed to his school district where they are administered in the spring.

My friend asked him if he got nervous about taking the exams and he said that indeed he did because he didn't want to stay back. Now my colleague had to pause for a moment to process what this 11 year old had just said. After recovering from the shock of what this implied she went on to ask him if many children actually were held back and he responded with an explanation that no, not many children did stay back.

Their conversation involved insight into parents having a vested interest in their children's education. This young man let her know that many parents secured tutors and participated in other preparatory opportunities to ensure that their student passed these tests. If a child did not pass, they were given the opportunity to participate in a remedial summer school program and retested in August over the areas they had not passed. If the student passed, they were promoted to the next grade and if they did not they were in fact kept back.

I am not ready to agree with retaining children based solely on testing results. After all, there is a great amount of research providing an argument of the effectiveness of retention at all. To me this conversation shed a light on parental involvement when the stakes were high enough. Again, I am not arguing for or against retention at this point, I am just wondering about the implications this idea has. I know that even at the grade level I teach, second, retention is hardly even heard of. There has to be strong data backing your decision based not just on academics as a stand alone but evidence showing that the lack of achievement is due to absenteeism, disability, etc.... and students know it!

I don't think it should be a dangling carrot day in and day out, but, and this goes along with thoughts from my last post, how do you "jump start" parents into being active participants in their children's education; from the consistency in eating and sleep schedules, to the support in learning the curriculum and achieving that standards set for them? My thoughts are forming for another blog post: Ideas on how to get parents involved.