Deep Thought For The First Day of School
There is no point in making teachers, adminstrators, and school boards more “accountable” for student success or failure if parents are not accountable for getting those students to bed befor 10:00 pm.
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My son just started 5th grade and he’s in bed by 8, lights out by 8:30. 10PM is way too late for all kids, especially with the recent studies that show high school kids need more sleep.
That’s been my cry for several years. Not only get them in bed on time, but make them do their homework, make them attend school and make them at least TRY to succeed. Too many of today’s parents think they are here to be a best friend and everyone else is here to teach and discipline. Not true. And when Obama and Cosby tell it like it is, they are criticized and called names. What’s wrong with this pic?
My son just started 4th grade, and often stays up until 10. Between 8 and 10 he is reading, or watching documentaries – PBS programs like Nova or Nature, or the History Channel (if his homework is done). He watches CNN and knows what is happening in the world.
We don’t watch reality TV and we don’t own video games. He’s doing great in school, reading above grade level and testing in the 98th-99th percentile for math and reading.
I would never take away his hours between 8 and 10.
My son is a freshman in High School and class begins at 7:30 a.m.. My 6th grade daughter begins at 9:00 a.m.. Bedtime is 9:00 p.m.. And yes, they can read in bed. Not only is this good for them, but it’s good for me and Mr. Pandora.
Maybe they should divide the classes up between those kids who get a good night sleep and those that don’t.
I’m glad anon stepped in and said he/she wouldn’t take a 10PM away from his /her 9-year-old.
What teacher even has a chance to teach with a parent like that?
Also, we have a rule in our house: No matter how late, if any kid says they can’t sleep and wants to watch TV, they can – but they have to watch C-SPAN.
I am with Anon. The first day of school is impossible to get them to bed by then. They are way too excited.
I went to bed at 11 and got the most 100% on tests ever in my school. I often had 4.0 on core subjects most every year and was my Valedictorian. Let’s not broad brush. It is silly. Each person is different. Some people will just lie awake like my son or myself. I could put him to bed at 8 and it would be pointless. 9:30 works for him and he lies awake until 10:30.
After 12, I let children set their own bedtime. If they have a problem functioning or getting up, then they lose that freedom for a month. It trains them to be responsible and eliminates bed time conflicts. It worked well for my step children when they got up to that age, and our foster child.
10:00 seems late to me but it works for anon – so be it.
The point is that parents are the missing link in the “accountability” chain.
For my 6th and 8th graders, bedtime is usually between 9:30-10. My high school freshman daughter went to bed around 10 last year, and I imagine it will be the same this year. She’ll be worn out by the time she’s done with school, homework and extracurriculars. Whatever she’s done has worked so far, so I see no need to change her routine.
And when she does watch TV, it’s usually Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs or something like that.
It will be nice coming home from work at night and not having three kids up on the computer, playing the DS or watching TV.
Yes, let’s paint with a broadbrush. From what I have seen as a parent and my wife as a teacher, most children are not getting enough sleep.
Yes, different children need different amounts of sleep, however there are guidelines.
http://www.sleepforkids.org/html/uskids.html
Infants get 12.7 hours, when experts recommend that from 3-11 months they should get 14-15 hours.
Toddlers get 11.7 hours, when 12-14 hours are recommended for children aged 1-3 years.
Preschoolers get 10.4 hours, while it’s recommended that children 3-5 years of age should average 11-13 hours.
School-aged children (1st through 5th grades) get 9.5 hours, but experts recommend 10-11 hours.
(Note: All sleep times are averages.)
If school doesnt start till 9am, then they can go to bed at 10 and still get 10 hours of sleep.
Not when both parents have to get to work thanks to this George Bush economy.
If school doesnt start till 9am, then they can go to bed at 10 and still get 10 hours of sleep.
Yeah, that’s why morning care for kids is so pouplar today. They don’t have to be there until 9. 🙂
Oh C’mon Jason. You can’t seriously blame THAT on Bush. Both of my parents have been working for the past 30 years or so, as have both parents of pretty much everyone I know.
You are never going to be able to effectively hold parents accountable for the hours of sleep that their kids get, or to help with homework, or restrict TV time. While it would be nice to have all of these things, and kids would certainly have a better chance to succeed in school if they got this at home, the reality is that our schools have to take the kids as they are, and do wonders with them. Some schools do, some don’t.
I would rather spend my time holding teachers and administrators accountable, at least we have the power of the purse over them…
Speaking of the first day of school… When the hell did they begin starting school before Labor Day? What for?
Our traditional end of summer vacation is all shot to hell now.
To rub salt into the wound, this Friday is an “in-service day” and then there is another one in September.
Mike R,
I read comment to mean that you want to make hold teachers and administrators accountable for getting hamburger and turning it into filet mignon.
Thank You Jason!
The greatest teacher in the world can’t help the kid who doesn’t give two shits about school and is only there to sell drugs and so his parents don’t get arrested for truancy.
Isn’t that their job? Why shouldn’t we expect that from them? There are lots of schools around this country that get this done so it isn’t like its not possible. They need the right supports to make it happen, but that doesn’t have to include engaged parents, more funding, smaller classes or any other union talking points.
It means high expectations, strong curriculum, leadership that gets the job done for their students as well as their teachers, the flexibility to hire and keep good teachers, and a funding system that meets the needs of kids, not the salary structure of the adults in the building.
And for doing the seemingly impossible, we should reward these heroes of education accordingly.
Mike R. – I agree with the need for high expectations and strong curricula, but please don’t dismiss the call for smaller class sizes as a “union talking point.” There have some been some well designed studies demonstrating the benefits of smaller classes, particularly at the elementary level (google the Tennessee STAR class size study for example).
Let’s peg police salary to crime rate! Yeah, that’ll go over pretty well.
Bullsit Mike R! If the parents don’t care and the child doesn’t care, there is nothing a teacher could do.
Von – Yup, and what would happen if you did that? The best officers would leave the high-crime areas, leaving the most inept officers in areas that most need effective policing.
I’m really not a fan of teacher accountability.
Except spend their valuable time dealing with those who don’t care rather than those who do.
Exactly.
It also invites shenanagans – working the system.
Are they “evil shenanigans?”….
I say give ’em a nap is they can’t perform…better than a so-called study hall and, maybe, a function of detention.
re: class size……good teacher/pupil ratio is one of the things on which independent schools pride themselves.
Falsifying records, cheating, etc….
When people believe that the ‘system’ is inherently unfair, all rules are out the window.
It’s a basic human response.
SHENANINGANS!!!
i think we should bring prayer back in school. Then we can all be safe knowing that god is in each child. Then magically they will suceed. Shitty teachers wont matter at all. We can then blame the parents for not being christian enough.
Franciscan nuns do a decent job instilling the fear of SkyDad into ya!
A 4’8″ little ‘ol lady with a yard stick!
“Jeebus loves ya, now stick out your hands, palms down!!!” WHACK!
– Sister Mary Francis Cabrini, 1979
Why the hell did my link have a DE Lib address appended in front of the URL?
Ugh…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok85BmPyl_I
nemski, they can lead by example. Kids don’t inherently not care about school, they have to be taught to do so. Some of that comes from their parents, but if they don’t have anyone saying something different in their lives, that BS attitude is all they get. We can’t be surprised if they tune out when they walk into the building. If every adult in their school is truly dedicated to seeing every student succeed, the results are quite impressive.
These same kids that we are talking about, mostly low income and minority, are also more likely to have less experienced and lower performing teachers, they go to schools where turnover is highest among teachers and administrators, and they are less likely to get the support services they need in their schools. Increasing parent involvement is barely going to dent those issues, meanwhile these kids fall further and further behind until they don’t see a way out, so they stop trying.
As for teacher accountability, it isn’t all about pay, though that would make a difference in attracting and retaining more well qualified young people to the profession. Lets start with creating a decent way to evaluate teachers based on their skills and not just their length of time in the classroom and how many college credits they have. Then use those evaluations to just start getting rid of the bad teachers. A kid with a bad teacher for one year can fall up to two years behind their peers with a decent teacher. Every bad teacher in every school is contributing to this problem, and getting rid of them should be a whole lot easier then trying to legislate parent involvement.
How do you hold parents responsible for when their kids go to bed? Arrest ’em?
Report cards for the parents.
If your kid falls aslep in class you get an “F” for bad parenting.
Why would they care?
You can’t hold the parents responsible, and there lies the problem.
How do you hold parents responsible for when their kids go to bed? Arrest ‘em?
It is my understanding that parents are held responsible by law in Delaware for a child’s traffic violations while riding a bike.
Bad grades, why not hold the parent responsible?
Any guardian who fails to cause his child to wear a bicycle helmet shall be fined for the first offense $25, and for each subsequent offense $50. The court may dismiss all charges if presented evidence that a violator has purchased or obtained a bicycle helmet meeting the standards mentioned above.
Show me the politician that is willing to take that on and I will show you someone who will be loosing their next election.
Schools can send all the scathing letters they want to parents, but they don’t because then the kids is more likely not to show up at all, and there goes the funding for that student. Its better to have them in school then have them drop out. (Maybe it isn’t since they disrupt class for other students, buts its either that or steeling your car.)
It isn’t pretty or easy, but the only option here is to create schools that can get results for all students, regardless of their parents interest or any other demographic distinction.
There’s a lot more at play than simply being well-rested…
Mike R. –
The general ratio of parent support in a school CAN be a great help. To me, one of the worst problems in schools right now is the segregation and ghettoization of students and schools. It is embarrassing.
We know that kids with conscientious parents are more likely to succeed; some kids who see other kids reflecting good behavior and studiousness are more likely to emulate that behavior and benefit from exposure to the trickle down conscientiousness.
If we lump kids all together by socioeconomic background, they are just going to reinforce the pros and cons of their cultural attitude toward the academic environment.
It’s sad to see how much less diverse the system is than when I went through…We’re in Red Clay, and I look around and see schools which are 90% black (Warner, Kuumba and other charters); 90% hispanic (Lewis) and 80-90% white (Forest Oak, Brandywine Springs), and are further sub-segregated by relative wealth.
It’s so bad, that I have heard people opted for Brandywine Springs due to its statistics of white wealthiness despite the fact that there are 1100 children there, in class sizes far exceeding the recommended number. How can you have a community feel in a huge school like that?
The race stuff is somewhat of a historical/institutional coincidence…the income statistics are truly telling.
I am thankful we got in at the school with both reasonable racial and economic diversity, and only 300 students (schoolwide, K-5). It is rare in the district.
Public school, especially in elementary years, is more about socialization than anything…where are our priorities?
Mike R,
What amount of failing students per class would equal a bad taecher? 2,5,8,12.
It’s not even students failing, there are likely to always be one or two kids who fail to perform for one reason or another even with the best teacher. With the right assessment system, we can track student growth over the course of a school year. If a significant proportion of the students in a given classroom are not making at least one year worth of growth, regardless of where they start the year, then I would argue that that teacher is under performing and should be evaluated as such.
What that means is that even if you are a fourth grade teacher and you get a student that is performing at the second grade level and you manage to bring them up the the 3.5 grade level, you are doing a good job even though that student isn’t meeting the 4th grade proficiency targets.
At the same time, if you are a fourth grade teacher and you get kids at the 4th grade level in the beginning of the year, and they are still only at the 4th grade level at the end of the year, you made no progress with those students and there is something wrong with what is happening in your classroom.
Now, defining that significant proportion of students is a good question. I am not sure where the right line should be drawn, but I would suggest that it should be higher then the state proficiency targets (which for 2008 were 50% in math and 68% in reading). This would get tricky as those targets increase towards 100% over the next five years, but that is a nice goal even if it is impossible.
Mike R.
You are clearly on top of this stuff but you still don’t even want to try to bring some parents into the accountability loop.
Seems that putting even a little focus on the parents could help some students and if it worked 20% of the time – that’s a bunch of kids who might be helped.
I certainly think bringing parents along can help, I just don’t think we should be spending huge amounts of time trying to find ways to require them to be active when we have more control over a number of solutions that can have a greater impact on all kids.
There is work that we can do to encourage schools to become more open to parents and do more outreach to build family and community engagement, and if we can do that effectively we will help bring along some of those parents that either can’t or don’t want to be active participants in helping their children succeed. Most of these parents didn’t have a good experience with school when they were young so just expecting them to walk through the door and offer to be highly engaged is a bit far fetched.
DOE is leading a group to define what high quality family and community engagement is, with the hope of getting a definition codified in legislation and then challenging schools and districts to implement initiatives that match up to this definition and holding them accountable by putting their results on the school profiles/dashboard. This is still a long way off, but it is a step in the right direction. If we hold schools accountable for actively promoting high quality family and community engagement, maybe we can bring along some of those parents.
When I was in school, the teachers taught us and sent us home with homework. We did the homework (without parental intervention) and turned it in. We took tests and passed courses. I can honestly say that my parents rarely were involved with my schooling, other than to look at my report card every 6 weeks.
These days, schools demand that parents teach their kids at home through monumental homework assignments, “math/reading/science nights” and other forms of pressure to force parents to be “more involved” with their kids.
I have 3 kids. The two girls have always done well with little intervention. My son, OTOH, has been called a “future delinquent” by his kindergarten teacher (!) because I wouldn’t put him on Ritalin. He wouldn’t read at an acceptable level for the first 4 years in school. This last year, his final grades were a rainbow of letters (A-D) and, for the fifth year in a row, I had a teacher tell me he was “capable but not motivated.”
All 3 kids have been raised the same way, with the same advantages. They have parents who love to read and have always had books available. We’ve bought them all sorts of educational computer games, as well as done all sorts of “enrichment” activities. Yet my son has always been a butterfly chaser, excelling at reading and science and bombing at math. Should we be fined because he doesn’t perform?
I don’t think my experience is unique. Some kids like school and do well at it. Others tolerate school. Some families encourage education while others don’t. I’m not sure there’s any way to force parents to be better parents, at least without violating every tenet of Western civilization.
Sorry to say my kids put me to bed….but really, much of this could be eliminated (the little guys at least) is if you wear them out. It’s outside on bikes, in trees, chalking the driveway until dinner…..I abhor the “screen time” until other work is done or you set my dinner table and are waiting….The teens are tough–their little clocks just love night life, and I really just demand quiet at 9–no phones, cells, etc…all plugged in the kitchen. Amazingly, they naturally wind up heading upstairs (we’re a one TV family), around 10 anyway. They are exhausted….and their day starts at 5:15am….wear ’em out is working for me…knock on wood—and oh yeh I will have them chopping wood soon.
Anon—Pre-labor day start is due to the “mental” check-out we have seen of kids from Memorial Day on. Therefore, the administrators felt they got “more work” out of the students on the front end vs. the back end of the calendar. Furthermore, so many families were involved w/ sports/marching band camps families were having to be around from about August 15th on anyway…so it was figured to make good use of the time, and not create resentment. Believe it or not, it has been nicely received…when you know you are out around June 6th every year. The engaged student at the front of the calendar was key though.