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Margaret Caspe and
Holly Kreider Contents:
Case NarrativeIn a small rural state, an act is signed into law. The Act ensures overall educational quality in the state's schools through adoption of rigorous statewide and local academic standards, state and local assessments, individual school action plans based on assessment results, and mandatory reporting of educational results to communities. School action plans must be developed by committees with parent and/or community member representatives. These committee members will need to know how to interpret and act on school performance data, as well as how to communicate the information to the community at large. The Principal “When parents come to school we have to get them on the same page as us. This starts with the relationships between teachers and parents. Parents don't come to conferences to talk about social stuff. They want to know what their kids can and can't do. I am very clear with my teachers on how they should run their parent-teacher conferences. I don't say the specifics, but I remind them that we're dealing with the state standards and frameworks and that we need to articulate this to our parents. We need to educate them because it's different than when they came to school. We need to talk about new assessments. We need to talk about math, reading, and writing performance. They need to understand why we're choosing certain books for reading.” Dick believed from experience and research that what parents and families want most from schools is a good experience for their kids. Parents want schools first and foremost that are safe and treat kids with care, understanding, and fairness. There was no question in his mind that different parents wanted different things, but he knew they all want to see their kids succeed. “Parents need to understand what success is. They need to talk to their kids about the importance of school and listening to their teachers. On the flip side, teachers need to be able to articulate to parents what their kids should be able to do. You can't have high standards and low expectations for kids and families at the same time. Dick had initiated a number of new school-wide policies based on these beliefs. He had eliminated the practice of giving letter grades. At the meeting that morning he was quite vocal in explaining his rationale to his colleagues. “The kid might get an ‘A’ and the parents think they know what their kid learned. Well they don't know. They only know he got an ‘A.’ We need to show where a kid is in relation to the standards. We have to explain if a kid is meeting the standards, exceeding them, or below them. That's why standards were developed in the first place. You can tie your ‘A’ to standards. Standards are a tool that let teachers and parents monitor the rigor of the work children are expected to do. Unfortunately, standards might be public documents, but they're not accessible and understandable. I think that we in education need to take more responsibility in explaining to parents what standards mean. This will get directly at the issue of parents not having trust in the system.” Dick had talked about building trust back into the system. Over the years he believed that deteriorating confidence was one of the main problems that existed between the public and public institutions. If teachers and schools could communicate progress and standards with families better, then that would be the first step in building more confidence in the system. Dick thought of his own situation as a father. He had stopped going to parent-teacher conferences for his daughter when she was a sophomore in high school. During one back-to-school night, he asked his daughter's math teacher to talk about the standards in her classroom. Dick was shocked that the teacher could not clearly express what she expected from his daughter and the others. Nor could she show him some of his daughter's work when he requested it. He felt his time had been wasted. He drove into the parking lot, renewing in his vows to make things different at his school. The Parents “Reading is one of the areas where it took him a long time to pick it up, because he resists when he has trouble learning. But we're really working on helping him understand that just because things are a little difficult doesn't mean it can't be done. I keep telling him it's like playing Nintendo—not that I like him to sit there hour after hour, but there are things that are hard, and then he'll get help and he'll do it. So eventually this year he really did pick up his reading. He can read fluently and understand what he's reading. He's now on grade level exactly. And that was important to me.” Molly had advocated for her son to be in the special enrichment school-day reading program, but other kids were ahead of him so he couldn't enroll. Because of this she worked on reading with him a lot at home. “We read all the time. Even if it's the back of a cereal box. We read signs, we look at the board at the bus station, and if he recognizes that something looks colorful and interesting, he'll read that. We read a story every night. It's mostly the same books all the time, but he likes the repetition and knowing words immediately. “His teacher told me he was doing well, that he was on grade level. But now she's recommending him for summer school. I really don't think it was fair. Why is she concerned about summer slippage when we spend so much time reading with Nathan at home? We have nearly twenty library books taken out! Besides, I kept trying to get him help during the year, but there were other special needs kids ahead of him. And he's not even special needs. And now they want him to miss his summer, and he's only in the first grade. Why would she suggest summer school out of nowhere?” The other mother responded. “This school just has a lot of trouble letting us know how our kids are doing. My oldest son is in fourth grade, and his report cards have been getting stupider and stupider over the years. By fourth grade you really need to have some kind of letter grade. Let me know where he stands! I just can't figure it out. Last quarter I got this report that says ‘he's meeting the standard’ or ‘he's not meeting the standard’ or ‘he's exceeding the standard.’ These report cards don't even tell you if your kid is really doing okay. I mean they moved my son up a level, which is great. But we're also a little worried about that because I don't know if he's doing ‘A’ work, ‘B’ work, or ‘C’ work. You don't have any control over how they do the report cards anymore.” Molly thought more about it. She didn't mind having standards or benchmarks to show progress. Because of her loose work schedule she was in the school a lot and felt she had a good handle on what was going on. She understood the different strategies the teachers used in reading and how she could help Nathan beyond asking him to “sound things out.” But she also felt the curriculum was a bit overwhelming and that the new standards made it hard to read letters and notes sent home by the school. She was worried sometimes that even though she was actively involved, she was not getting the total picture and not getting a lot out of the communications with the school. Molly looked at Margot and said, “I think the school needs to send home information just to let you know in between how your kids are doing. I know that when the kids leave school, teachers are allowed to have their time. But if they could have progress reports or open houses or a potluck dinner—they don't do those things anymore.” Margot agreed, “Teachers just present a portfolio and tell a parent that their child is doing fine. Teachers need to show what ‘fine’ means. Teachers need to be able to give a parent a four-point rubric and explain where their child is and where they want that child to go. It needs to be concrete. You know, we come into school and they go over the kids' progress, their report card, and their strengths and weaknesses. Yes, you meet the teacher. You get the report card. Then she has folders with some work in them, but what does it all mean? What do I have to compare it to?” At this point Nathan came bounding out of school and gave his mom a big hug. “Let's go play in the park,” he yelled. The Teacher “Without the one-on-one, I'm not sure what would have happened. He might have picked it up, but because he was so much lower than the others, it's hard to say. But now I expect him to continue reading at the average level next year. He's doing well with his research on zebras and he's just so excited about anything he reads and writes. His mom's in school a lot and if she's walking by he'll bring her something that he's written and show it to her.” But Tammy was also concerned. “I just don't want him to lose what he's learned—we've worked so hard this year and he's come along so well. I don't want him to hit the ‘summer slide’ so to say. Molly acted surprised by this. Hasn't she been tracking his progress through the year? I don't even think she realizes how low he was coming in.” Tammy began to walk down the hall to the main office. She thought about all the times parents were surprised at the end of the year when their children's promotion to the next grade was questioned. But Tammy felt she did her best. “I send home numerous report cards and progress reports throughout the year. I even have my own progress reports that I send out at least two times during the report periods so that the door is open if parents want to discuss any problems. We hold report cards until the parent-teacher conferences to make sure that they arrive home and so that we can talk to the parents about them. In my class I explain what the different standards are, the way the report cards are marked, and what it means. I tell them how their child's doing in the different areas and let them know the concerns I might have. And then I ask the parent if they have questions for me, and quite often they don't. I don't know if that's because I've explained it so clearly or they just have no idea what to ask!” Tammy always felt her discussions with parents were positive experiences. She believed educators need to go into conferences with an attitude of “What can we do to make this situation better for your child?” or “These are all the wonderful things your child can do.” She walked into the office to check her mailbox. Inside, a flyer invited her and other teachers to take part in the school design team created as a result of the new law. She wondered under her breath, “What a waste of time! I recognize many of the parents in this school have a lot of strengths and a lot to contribute. But if parents don't even understand about their own kids' progress, how are they ever going to be able to participate in these school-wide teams?” The people and events in this case are based on real life accounts, but have been disguised to protect confidentiality. We would like to thank ethnographer Kim Friedman for conducting the in-depth interviews from which this teaching case was developed and her early analytical insights. This work was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of its Research Network on Successful Pathways Through Middle Childhood. Discussion Questions
Instructor NotesTo request instructor notes for this teaching case, send an email to FINE at fine@gse.harvard.edu. ^ Back to top |
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