I have taught for 16 years as a kindergarten teacher. I’ve talked to a lot of teachers that have worked at a charter school. Charter schools simply divert money from student services to charter school companies. All corporate charter schools siphon money from the schools they run. Charter schools have less money than public, so they have less resources for kids. Charter schools are a way to remove teacher unions and thus eventually be able to pay teachers less money. Paying teachers less is not going to improve public school. What will improve student success rates is focusing on parents.
Politicians and the media are all focused on blaming teachers for failing students, when parents have the largest effect on a child ability to be successful in school and life. Data clearly shows that if parents nurture and support their children from the ages of 0-5, kids succeed in school. When kids are not nurtured supported by parents, kids fail–regardless of the quality of schools. The best schools/teachers can not make a major difference in a child’s overall success–What makes a difference is parents. Schools will never be able to turn around a child that has been neglected by parents for 5 years–data clearly shows this as a fact. When I talk to parents, I am stunned at the complete lack of understanding of very simple parenting strategies. If all parents had a handful of parenting strategies, student success rates would improve exponentially.
There needs to be a mandatory parent training class for all high school students–Every American needs to know how to raise a child to be successful. Parents need to know how to teach focus skills, emotion regulation, social skills, and perseverance skills. A national parent training class would increase graduation rates tremendously, decrease violence greatly, and increase individual productivity.
If you want to create capable productive citizens, start with training parents.
