http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/0...-parents-repeatedly-miss-teacher-conferences/ wow that is crazy!
I have a friend who was taken to court because she was sometimes late in dropping her son off at school. They actually threatened her with jail time if the tardiness continued. That doesn't seem exactly legal to me, but that's what they told her. Needless to say, she will be putting her kids in a private Christian school this upcoming school year.
Compulsory attendance of parents to a parent-teacher meeting that can be set up for whatever reason perhaps when the parent cannot possibly show up due to work or has no transportation or has a sick baby at home or is in the hospital...not a good law at all. Too much power in the hands of the teachers, who are hired to educate children, not tell parents how to be parents. It is just plain ridiculous. They have tried this in other states and so far this kind of law has not passed to my knowledge. If it has, it still would be difficult to enforce and would most likely be a scare tactic, but then with states needing revenue...who knows? Still, teachers policing parents is a slippery slope as we all slide into socialism. They cannot legislate a parent to care and parent-teacher conferences don't make a parent start doing all the right things. All they can enforce is that the parent show up just like compulsory attendance with schools. They cannot legislate that a child has to learn in the classroom, but that he just attend school. Any parent forced to be in a parent-teacher meeting that does not want to be there but does so to avoid a fine....yeah, that is the parent every teacher is eager to try to talk to. :roll: What are they thinking? Now if it was a two-way street, as in the parents, who really do care, could sue the teacher for their children not learning...or if we could have a rating system to get teachers fired who are not doing the job.... I bet the NEA would have a fit!
Agreed, bad news all around. I couldn't read the whole article b/c it made me angry. What are they thinking?? There were times my parents couldn't make it to parent teacher conferences and my handicapped brother made it even more difficult to attend. When a teacher begins to dictate things they need not have alot of business doing then we need to watch out. However, I doubt this will get too much traction.
I have mixed feelings. on one hand it is unbelievable that the school could punish parents for this. but part of me wants to see these parents take responsibility for their children!! they have got to learn to parent these kids and that means showing up and being accountable for their kids actions. I know you cant legislate good parenting,but sometimes I just want to slap those folks who procreated without a long-term plan to make it succesful! I know how a law like this could translate in the homeschooling community, I get that we would all be at risk for charges of "educational neglect" but I can't stand parents who don't have a clue or a care about their kids. ok,sorry, I'll get of the box now.
There is NO WAY that you can force parents to be involved. Some uninvolved parents are that way because they're idiots. I mean, if my 12yo was out at 2 AM, SOMETHING would be done about it!!! How do you get to that point to begin with? GEESH!!! But some other people (single moms in particular) are uninvolved because they're too busy trying to keep food on the table. And do we HONESTLY think bringing parents in to Teacher's Meetings will accomplish anything? OK, so you've got a kid with an attitude, you drag in a parent who either has an attitude themselves or one who feels so guilty for not being able to deal with the situation. The first parent is apt to blame the school and go off on you. They will NOT be your "partner". The second will try to do whatever you suggest for about a week, and then life takes over again. Either way, nothing changes. Carl sees it all the time. He calls parents, they promise that their kid will do x,y, and z, and it happens for about a week. He finally gets tired of calling home.
Time to sit back and remember: Parents are responsible for the education of their children. Some parents choose to delegate that task, in whole or in part, to teachers in government schools. Those teachers work for, and on behalf of, the parents. They answer to the parents, and the parents can determine how their children are taught. Once these things are acknowledged, it becomes abundantly clear in just how many ways this case is wrong. Only in that context is it worth noting that the more involved parents are in their children's schooling, the better the child's education is likely to be. In other words, it makes a lot of sense to attend teacher conferences - but the teacher is reporting to the parent, not vice versa!
Yes Steve in a "perfect" world this is how it would work, however the state sees it differently! The state sees it as you turn over your children to us they belong to us and you must do as we say. Basically it's like our children belong to the state and the state PERMITS us to care for them at certain times.
Considering that at the last 2 elementary schools my kids went to, the percentage of parents that actually attended parent teacher conferences was 2%....not sure this would be a bad thing. However-I have attended many IEp meetings and parent teacher conferences-and have always made it clear what my schedule could accomodate. And very often it was NOT what the teacher wanted to accomodate-I've even arranged early evening conferences. Not only should they require the schools accomodate certain needs-but parents have just given their children over to schools. It's a double edged sword. The schools are not there to babysit and if you're not gonna take the 2x a year to speak to your children's teacher....shame on you. This is a biased forum-we ALL would pay much closer attention than what I personally have witnessed from the public at large. I would be prone to say we all would be all over what our kids were doing-whereas I have seen 1 week of teacher conferences where a teacher was required to schedule conferences and 1 parent showed up-out of a class of 32. A 2% ratio out of 450 kids, is just ridiculous and shows the disregard the general public has for teachers.
It is a double edge sword because of cause and effect. The cause is the compulsory attendance law and the effect is that government will educate your child how it sees fit, while perpetuating the concept that only in its classrooms with its teachers can children be properly educated...but now it comes down to this is only true IF the government also controls the parent. Because of the compulsory attendance law, all the parents absolutely must do is be sure their children attend public school (if they do not seek the state's permission to homeschool or enroll them in a private school, because neither can be done unless the state permits it). The short term effect is that the public school system becomes the default method of education. Then add that the government has chosen to accommodate to the lowest level of academic standards, while trying to keep that illusion that public school is not a government-ran educational system, and this what public school becomes in the long term. Parents, who leave education to the experts they were told to leave it to, and teachers blaming the parents they educated to think that way and lawmakers thinking more laws will have a different long term effect...which certainly will end up placing more children as wards of the state, I would think. For every law, there is cause and effect, which is why I am not so eager for more laws in general, but certainly not this one which will in the long term only make people more dependent on the government than they already are.
In other words, an effort to legislate parental involvement will ultimately remove the parents from the equation completely.
Not only do I agree...but we all have seen the stories where school systems pretty much say this out right. While, Steve is correct in his assessment, sadly it's not the way things are being seen.
Yeah, I just posted on FB that you cannot FORCE a parent to care about their kids. Just like a PP said, they're going to be there unwillingly. On top of that, my mom was a single mom of 3. I don't think she made it to a single parent-teacher conference. Why? Because she was working her butt off. And here's the other thing that made me mad. Under this idea, my mom would have been okay, because I was a straight A student. But if you're arguing for trying to make the parent care, why wouldn't it matter that parents of bright, actively engaged students care? I mean, that's the kind you REALLY want to encourage and have grow. I'm not saying that I think the law is right, but I think a selective application is bull. But mostly, the idea that some idiot thinks they can legislate parents into caring about their kids shows just how much faith she has in big government.
