For Parents

The role of the public school

Most parents send their children to a public school. Not all public schools are the same because neighborhoods are not all alike.

Ideally, the public school should provide all the children with a mastery of basic skills and a supply of general knowledge necessary to success in adult pursuits.

However, some schools are better equipped and staffed than others.

Some schools are more crowded than others.

Some schools attach more importance to athletics than to academics.

Some may neglect language skills in favor of math or computer skills.

Some are cursed with weak adminisrators who permit constant disruption in the classroom.

Parents cannot afford to send their children to school and hope they’ll be educated.

Public schools serve children from a variety of home conditions.
Although politicians and special interest groups pretend otherwise, the public schools cannot cater to the individual wants and needs of every child who comes to them.

The role of the parent

It’s the responsibility of the parents to know what they mean by “education.”

It’s the parents’ responsibility to recognize the abilities of their children and to monitor their work as they move through the grades.

A child’s education begins at birth. Some parents are better educated than others; some are wealthier than others, but all parents have one thing in common: they are their child’s first teachers.  Whatever their social or economic status, parents have the power to prepare
their children for academic success by interacting with them from birth.

A child’s formal education begins with learning to read.

Children who fail to learn to read in the early grades never catch up academically. Poor readers often develop personality and behavioral problems.

The importance of early reading success cannot be overstated.

The best way to protect your child from reading failure is to begin the process of reading instruction at home.

Reading instruction begins at birth: talk
to your baby.

Spoken words are made up of speech sounds.
Written words are made up of symbols that represent speech sounds: teach your pre-schooler the letters and the sounds they represent.

The meaning of school grades

A child’s academic progress is usually reported in terms
of letter grades or percentile rankings on standardized tests.

The problem is that no two teachers mean the same thing by letter grades, and standardized tests are geared to a very low standard.

If parents want to be certain that their children are acquiring the skills and information they want them to learn, they must do three things:

decide for themselves what skills and information they expect their children to acquire

have their children demonstrate the desired skills and knowledge at home

provide supplemental help to the child who is not acquiring the desired skills and information at school