I know, I know, this is what you said at the beginning, Will. But it answers your question. How are parents supposed to imagine that school should be different than it was for them? I didn’t when my kids were at school, except for a concern about a lack of a relevant curriculum in the computer class. And I’m a teacher, and I’ve only been made to think about some of these issues fairly recently. Most parents are not reading the education blogs.

It’s not that I did not want some of that good stuff you list for my kids. We tried to encourage our children at home. We as parents were the ones taking the kid interested in trains to train shows and on train rides and sitting through countless play rehearsals for the kid interested in theater. Maybe some of that could have been taken care of in the schools, but not all, I don’t think.

And those computer skills that my son was not getting at school? He acquired a lot of that at home, too, sitting in front of a computer and exploring, because it was a passion; and now he works for Microsoft.

Will, also, please consider the enormous pressure these institutions are under, both public and independent. If an independent school explicitly advocated what you call for, it would close. I teach at what would be considered a very progressive place. But parents still get worried about the college placements and the school needs to always be mindful of that.

One glimmer of hope I do have is that PSSA scores are not going to be going up much longer and some “successful” school districts are going to be labeled in ways they don’t like. Perhaps then a real backlash will begin to occur.

Finally, and this is only tangentially connected, parents basically want their own experiences in school to be replicated for their children.

How would that change assessment, what we do in our schools, and the digital footprint parents expect schools to help their children develop.

I guess my point is that the devil is in the details. Big picture stuff is not hard to reach consensus on – it’s the stuff that actually touches individuals that is hard.

Covey talks about “sphere of influence” (if memory servers) and is that just another perspective on “just fending for ourselves?” I am less inclined to try to change the world directly and more inclined to change what I can as much as I can and as fast as I can. If more folks did that, the revolutionary change we all want might just well happen.

Keep me thinking!

Doug

I agree with you that parents don’t get mad enough, but the ones that like traditional schools are often the ones whose kids excel in the boring 18th century system. My opinion is that reform of schools is going to be easier in non-affluent areas. I am writing from Canada where we don’t have all the goofy challenges you guys have (yet!).

And I wrote this in anger one night for the Board of Ed Meeting, but decided to sit on it until the first meeting next year.
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgdq8s8z_287c5bg52fj

You ask what’s up with the parents? I totally “get” why parents just wait it out each year hoping it will be better next year. If someone with some “expertise” can speak with a teacher, with the admin, and at the board of ed meeting and be made to feel like a total $!%, then I can only imagine how “Mr and Mrs I just love my kids and want the best for them but can’t battle your attitude and jargon in public must feel.” My wife and I have the experience, jargon, research, etc, to go toe-to-toe with the school, but when you are the only ones doing it, everyone—including the other parents—think you must be wrong, the school must be right. Weren’t most of us trained for 16+ years to believe everything our teachers and principals told us?

Having a 12th grade teacher tell my daughter that typed assignments are not allowed, because you’ll never get a job without good penmanship, and another tell her that they can’t use wikipedia because ‘the internet is wrong’ sums up our local school board’s attitude towards students.

The problem is, that other than teach subversive skills (like using a proxy bypass to get at most of the internet from school) and rant a lot, there is NOTHING that we can do. When the attitude of the administration, board, and much of the local community (who also went to that school, as did their parents) is that there is nothing wrong, despite a non-grad rate of over 40% (over 40% of students who enter grade 9 fail to finish grade 12), an isolated voice is lost.

We teach our kids the things we know are essential at home, and pray that they get the less poor teachers. We save our wrath for really big issues, like missing pre-requisites, teachers with severe bullying problems, and an attendance policy which makes students sit detention if they miss any days sick. And we really, really wish that we had the luxury to have kept our children homeschooled all the way through secondary school.

We talk to other parents about concepts like 21st Century literacies, hoping that eventually the grassroots buzz about these things gets loud enough to effect change. And we expect that our kids will one day homeschool our grandchildren, because we don’t have a lot of faith in the institution. In this small town at least, it is rotten and hollow inside.

Only for My Kid: How Privileged Parents Undermine School Reform – http://bit.ly/aM7o55

IMHO, this should be required reading for folks weighing-in on this debate.

If parents want some puritanical educational experience where compliance, obedience and basic skills are the core values, cool. I just don’t want any child I love going to that school.

Why are we afraid to let 1,000 flowers bloom?