What if I told you that good grades don’t really mean your child is getting a good education?  Would that surprise you?  If not, then my next question is why not?  Perhaps I should follow that up with: Are you content in letting your child ‘pass’ in school and ‘fail’ in life?

Good Teaching Doesn’t Have Gimmicks

When you do practically anything long enough, you start to see trends.  In fact, what I have really seen are trends come and go.  One minute we are talking about the next big thing, but really all we as teachers are getting is the old thing repackaged as the new thing.  Maybe some new tech is added, but really nothing new.

If you’re a parent, then you should truly be worried about the direction of education in our country.  My latest research shows that the average U.S. ACT scores are on a gradual decline.  Schools are constantly lowering entrance requirements even as the price of admission goes up.  What they are not telling you is that school should really be spelled ‘$chool.’ This isn’t so much about your child, but how your child converts into federal dollars.

Planning to Fail?

Are you simply content with sending your child to school and feeling pleased if they have ‘passing’ grades, then as a teacher and a parent, I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Teachers ‘modify’ grades all the time. F’s turn into D’s and hard worked for C’s can easily become a B.  Why? Easy.  It’s too much work to give a child an F.  Now we have to develop action plans, and daily monitoring, and, and…  Not to mention, schools and districts have to account for those high ‘retention rates.’  Do you really think principals or teachers want to sit in those meetings?

Now, is this happening in all schools? Of course not!  But more often than you think.  College enrollment in the U.S. has decreased for the eighth consecutive year, according to new data released Thursday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.  This too, isn’t surprising to me, being a teacher and all.  But as a parent, this terrifies me.  We can’t keep aimlessly looking at pieces of paper to tell the whole story about our child’s education.  And if we do, we will one day send  our child off to college, only to come back home…  This time, with no piece of paper.