Is your honor-roll student at grade level? Maybe not
- Joanne Jacobs
- Apr 17, 2023
- 1 min read
“87% of Sacramento County parents think their kids do math at grade level,” reads one billboard. “28% of kids actually do." The goal of the #GoBeyondGrades campaign is to persuade parents to talk to teachers about their child's achievement and take advantage of summer programs, writes Sawsan Morrar in the Sacramento Bee.
In addition to Sacramento County, the foundation-funded billboard campaign is targeting Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York City and Washington, D.C.
In all six regions, 80 percent of parents said their children earn As or Bs on their report cards," according to a recent Learning Heroes survey, and 89 percent believe their child is at or above grade level in reading and math. Parents are very confident that their children will be prepared for success in college and the workforce.
It ain't necessarily so.
It's no wonder districts can't fill seats in summer learning programs. "While this is an all-hands-on-deck moment in public education, most parents are not aware they need to be in the boat," said Cindi Williams, co-founder of Learning Heroes and mother of two. "Parents are problem solvers, but we can't expect them to solve a problem they don't know exists."
We need to start with appropriate grade levelling, and then define grades within those levels. Most systems around the world teach integrated mathematics, rather than single domain courses, but their equivalent of an American "Geometry class" is reached around Secondary 8: if Americans are studying that in tenth grade, they're already two years behind, regardless of what their reports cards say.
A few years ago, I had a student who transferred in to my District (a highly regarded one throughout) from a neighboring District (quality varies widely from one school to the next). The rules stated that she had to be placed in classes comparable to those in her former District. She entered my Honors Geometry class about a third of the way through with a transfer grade in the low to mid-80s. She ended with a grade in the upper 40s. So, yeah, if you're in a cruddy school, your "honors" appellation may be worthless.
"Carthago delenda est" To modernize Cato: The public school system must be destroyed.
It's past the point where it can be "evolved" or "transformed" into something sane. It has to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up.