Posted on 11/15/2023 1:00:00 PM PST by LouAvul
Nearly nine out of 10 parents believe their child is performing at grade level despite standardized tests showing far fewer students are on track, according to a poll released Wednesday by Gallup and the nonprofit Learning Heroes.
Report cards, which many parents rely on for a sense of their children's progress, might be missing the whole picture, researchers say. Without that knowledge, parents may not seek opportunities for extra support for their children.
“Grades are the holy grail,” said Bibb Hubbard, founder and president of Learning Heroes. “They’re the number one indicator that parents turn to to understand that their child is on grade level, yet a grade does not equal grade-level mastery. But nobody’s told parents that.”
In the Gallup survey, 88% of parents say their child is on grade level in reading, and 89% of parents believe their child is on grade level in math. But in a federal survey, school officials said half of all U.S. students started last school year behind grade level in at least one subject.
In a report examining grade point averages and test scores in the state of Washington over the past decade, researchers found grades jumped during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many districts had eased their grading policies to account for the chaos and hardship students were experiencing.
Some of that leniency could still be in place, masking gaps in learning that are showing up in standardized tests, but not in grades, said Dan Goldhaber, a co-author of the report and the director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.
Districts across the U.S. have invested federal pandemic relief money in programs to get students back on track academically, from intensive tutoring to summer academic programs. But often far fewer students show up than the district had planned, Goldhaber said.
For programs like summer school or online tutoring, where the family chooses whether to participate, "what we see is that it’s only a fraction of the students that are invited or eligible to that are actually participating,” he said.
The Gallup poll findings underscore that trend, pointing to families who may not realize they should take action about their child's academic performance.
In the poll of more than 2,000 parents of K-12 students, half the respondents say they've discussed their child's academic progress with a teacher. But among parents who know their child is behind grade level in math, the percentage skyrockets: 74% have spoken with the teacher.
Report cards generally don't convey enough information, said Sarah Carpenter, director of The Memphis Lift, a parent advocacy organization in Tennessee.
“A report card is really tricky in our opinion, because you're just looking at A's and B's and C's,” Carpenter said. Nowhere on the report card does it say "what reading level your baby's on, and that's what's throwing parents for a loop.”
By talking to parents about issues like literacy and the nuances of grading, families are better able to advocate for their children in the school system and work in partnership with educators, said Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, a parent and founder of the advocacy group Parent Shield Fort Worth in Texas.
“Knowledge is power,” she said. “Parents don’t know what they don’t know. So we don’t want them to blame themselves. But now that you have the information, use the information to demand better and ensure that your child and all children get exactly what they need.”
““A report card is really tricky in our opinion, because you’re just looking at A’s and B’s and C’s,” Carpenter said. Nowhere on the report card does it say “what reading level your baby’s on, and that’s what’s throwing parents for a loop.”
If the scale were true, C should be at grade level. D you are falling behind.
D’s and F’s need parental intervention ASAP.
If you don’t know your kids intellect, emotional maturity, and problem solving skills, you ain’t much of a parent. That’s not the school’s job, it’s your job as a parent.
I’m a teacher and they can get up to date info immediately nowadays.
You have to know what is being taught in order to determine if the grade received is a good grade. Getting an A in socialism is still failure.
And who is to blame? Teachers.
Do you have children in school, as of this moment?
I thought pretty much every school gave parents inline access to the work assigned as well as the grades where they can check daily if they wanted.
From our experience in the 1980s and 1990s, believe NOTHING in “report cards”.
When I was in Fourth Grade, I hid my report card. My mother did not know it was reporting time (grades were okay, behavior was an issue). I might have gotten away with it if Mrs. Auster didn’t ask her about my grades. I went to school with her son Jacques.
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My grandkids must be the exception. Their report cards are stellar, they’ve both been identified as gifted, and their test scores show they’re above grade level in every subject. Of course, they go to a traditional charter school in Arizona (Legacy) which is known for its rigorous curriculum.
My daughter suffered.
I was getting a computer science degree at the same time she was learning in school.
After dinner when I was doing my homework, I made her do hers. Both of us at the same table.
I checked her work.
She’d have 100 arithmetic problems to solve.
I could easily see 3 to 4 wrong answers.
Computer science is mostly a mathematics discipline.
I would tell her how many wrong answers she had and ask her to correct them, but I would not tell her which ones were wrong. I also offered to explain things she didn’t understand.
She hated those few sessions, but she became a top student in arithmetic and math.
Too many parents don’t pay attention to the education of
their kids.
You were “homeschooling” after school. Some call it “after-schooling”.
if you are not reading at grade level, you should be getting an F
same with all subjects.
compared to 40 years ago, A+ students are way behind
Huh? My mom got phone calls from the teachers and school if there was something off, so did I about my daughter.
Many, many parents pay $10,000+ per year for their retarded kids to go to “the best schools”. They expect A+ grades, so they get them, even when their little idiot is failing.
Pretty soon schools will not allow parents to know how their kids are doing. None of their business. Just keep paying school property taxes though, its not cheap to have PP and trannies keep shop in the school.
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