Sunday, November 20, 2011
Education Student achievment: It's the parents, stupid
Posted by Max Brantley on Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 7:31 AM
- life123.com
- READ TO YOUR KIDS: It matters.
“Fifteen-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents read with them infrequently or not at all. The performance advantage among students whose parents read to them in their early school years is evident regardless of the family’s socioeconomic background. Parents’ engagement with their 15-year-olds is strongly associated with better performance in PISA.”... The kind of parental involvement matters, as well. “For example,” the PISA study noted, “on average, the score point difference in reading that is associated with parental involvement is largest when parents read a book with their child, when they talk about things they have done during the day, and when they tell stories to their children.” The score point difference is smallest when parental involvement takes the form of simply playing with their children.
Friedman mentions another study that found the same result for the National School Boards Association.
“Monitoring homework; making sure children get to school; rewarding their efforts and talking up the idea of going to college. These parent actions are linked to better attendance, grades, test scores, and preparation for college,”
Huh. What a bunch of academic idiots. They haven't gotten the word from Waltonville that education is almost exclusively about promoting charter schools and busting up teacher unions. (To be fair, the best charter operators recognize the inherent advantage of involved parents. KIPP, to name one charter organization, requires parental commitment in contracts with students it enrolls.) Conventional public schools, unfortunately for their standardized test results, don't have the power to eject students whose parents don't get involved. But the schools' "failure" is said to be the fault of the teachers, not the built-in home court disadvantage.
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Comments (11)
Showing 1-11 of 11
This hints of a need for family values and is almost an admission that achieved racial quotas and met teacher union demands won't educate our young.
Naaa.
like
dislikeThe blanket statement that parents "playing" with children is not effective, fails to take into account that football is not the only game around. My parents often mentioned that they did not finish 8th grade, and my father often bemoaned people who knew nothing but "what they read in a book", but my parents played board games and card games that were very competitive with us, read their newspaper daily, kept books in the house, and subscribed to multiple magazines. Those examples encouraged us to do the same. With our nine children, reading the comics at the breakfast table became ritual. Our younger daughter learned to read upside down and backwards because the paper was perused across from her. She is now a special ed teacher. For her students, the board games at the rear of her classroom are a special attraction, but only available to students whose assignments are finished. One parent thanked her and added that their family now sets aside Wednesday evenings to play board games.
Thanks for the "show more comments" tip, Norma. It works---tries my patience though. Hey, I'm pretty old and running out of time.
Your link to Cohn's reporting is a far more important read than the one Max has linked to by the "great mustache of understanding". I find it hard, even when he's right, to take seriously anything Friedman writes since most of his enlightenment comes from cab drivers. He also said on Charlie Rose at some point of the Iraq war that our reason for invading was "because we could" and we needed to tell some country in the Middle East to "suck on this". At least his cab drivers are real people, unlike the denizens of David Brooks' mythical salad bar at Applebys.
I am feeling dyspeptic today and probably shouldn't post more. I'm just so sick of those who are the 1% (Friedman) or earn their paycheck in service to the 1% (Brooks) interpreting the world for us rubes out here. How would we know what to think without them?
http://www.tnr.com/article/economy/magazin…
I'm off to feed the genuine critters across the road. Maybe the fresh outdoors and ordinary tasks will improve my humor.
No, it's the poverty and the deprivation. It's the hunger and the malnutrition. In shorter words, it's the system, smart guy.
But outlier, I disagree with you. I think the average cab driver has much better things to say than Thomas Friedman. I just think Friedman claims cab drivers say what Friedman wants them to. That doesn't have to mean he's a liar who puts words in peoples' mouths. After all, he has enough money to ride cabs until he finds a cabbie who agrees with him.
Reading to one's children is a 'family value' that many families do not have the economic luxury to do. When you are a single mom working two minimum wage jobs, things like sitting down for 30 minutes to read go by the wayside in favor of cooking, cleaning, laundry etc during the few hours you are at home.
Not to mention those are the kind of jobs that require working at night, or on Thanksgiving.*
Paying people less than a living wage creates a pool of future generations to employ at less than a living wage.
* Why does money burn such a hole in someone's pocket that they demand to start Black Friday shopping at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving night and require workers to leave their families and go serve them? Really? Can shopping not wait until the day after a national holiday?
Is Thanksgiving really about conspicuous consumerism? I guess I missed that part of the pilgrim story. Why did they need to be fed by Native Americans when they could have picked up some platters at Honey Baked Ham on their way to the mall to get 10% off on a Wii?
Given the ignorance that routinely flows from so many Republican presidential contenders/politicians and given the growth of Duggar-like home-schools (more religion, personal opinion than historical/scientific Truths), I'm surprised our children know as much as they do. Everyone, after all, knows that 'Amuricans' prefer a beer-swilling ignorant fool as President (DUBYA) to one of those smarty pants educated folks who are constantly weighing the conversation down with facts that contradict the local preacher's take on things. From Palin churlishly defending her fact-less version of Paul Revere's ride to Cain bragging about not being a 'reader,' the message is that ignorance is blessed and education is the liberal devil. If you truly love god/the Republican Party, you must turn away from science, history...'outside' education in general.
Then there's the constant drain of public monies from public schools so the religious zealots can fund their church schools with our tax money...government's good when it's funding their corporations/schools, churches...blah blah.
It's not an accident that we're headed downwards, education-wise, it's a purposeful ploy to keep the serfs ignorant of the true state of their lives.
This cartoon's for you, zelda.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/up…
The nice thing about getting your insights from taxi drivers is that you learn a lot about life in Ethiopia, Yemen, Algeria and Ghana.
We don't possess the national will to improve education. We can't be honest enough and meanwhile unions, lawyers, religionists, administrators, politicans and assorted airheads take advantage of our schools for their own gain.
Anybody can find 30 minutes and a free book. Dislike that.
Hell most Americans feel about education the same as healthcare. " we have the best ________ fill in the blank sysytem in the world. Not!!!!!!! in a very big way. Although, unlike many states, Arkansas has made significant strides in the past 11 years. I'm afraid that what I've seen of the charters is not spectacular, not even average, in most cases.
Let's face it. The primary thing most school patrons want is a winning football team. You ought to see all the rationalizing, apologestic theories being thrown around as the Bentonville school district debates whether to build a second high school, or continue as the largest high school in the state and the only one to go two seasons undefeated on the football field. The newly hired superintendent seems ready to go along with the football fanatics over the education advocates, who say that 5,000 students in a high school is too many--and that it is what Bentonville will have in a few years. If the majority of parents were near as concerned with academic achievement as football glory, educational standards would rise. Fortunately, Bentonville voters elected a couple of Board members in the last school election who seem to be sincerely interested in academic improvement.
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