re: #31 reine.de.tout

Yes, the facts of those circumstance certainly DO apply to some students - but surely not close to half?

In some schools, I’d say yes, it is. Each year, I had about 20-24 kids in my classroom. Each year, I’d have about 2 parents show up for open house. I had to track down parents to do parent/teacher conferences. I gave the students opportunities to improve their grades (as well as actually learn the skill instead of just giving a bad grade) by having them redo papers where they got the answers wrong, and very few had parents who would make sure they did so. I had a large number of students who didn’t do the homework or would only do part of it. Over half never did the reading portion of the homework. That was in early elementary school when parents are most likely to take part in their child’s education. Parental involvement seems to go down with each year the child is in school. It’s not surprise to me that some schools are failing. It really does take the parents and the community for a school to be a success.