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How do parents not know how bad the school is? Are you not, on a daily basis asking what they learned in school and challenging them on it? I do it whenever I

How do parents not know how bad the school is? Are you not, on a daily basis asking what they learned in school and challenging them on it? I do it whenever I have a chance with my niece and nephew. They're learning about multiplication? We're doing times tables in the car trip. History of some Native American tribe? What happened, who were their leaders, etc. With my son it's simpler stuff - what color is this? What letter is that? Does our house have a door? And it's mainly my wife and I teaching him, but still - evaluation is critical. During the lockdown it took my sister one to two weeks to move her kids to private schools. I can't imagine not understanding, first intuitively, and second empirically, that online education is a poor fit for young children.

hadlock 3y ago
> How do parents not know how bad the school is? Are you not, on a daily basis asking what they learned in school and A lot of parents work 2, 3 jobs to make ends meet. When they get home there's barely enough money left over for food. They get up at 4, 5 am and work until 10 or 11pm. Working 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a real luxury for some people.
- ALittleLight 3y ago
  Looks like it's a little less than 5% of job holders working multiple jobs [1][2]. Average hours of work per week is around 34 [3]. If you're telling me that you don't know how your kids are doing in school because you never get a chance to talk to them because you're so busy working, that's sad, but it's probably not typical. It's also the case that people with greater income work more hours [4]. So, maybe you should reprioritize money versus family if you're working more than you need to. 1 - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 2 - https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat36.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat36.htm 3 - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP 4 - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-actual-working-hours-of-different-income-levels/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-actual-working-h...
  - bob_theslob646 3y ago
    "Looks like it's a little less than 5% of job holders working multiple jobs " What's 5% of 300 million?? That's not an insignificant amount of people, so I'm not sure what your point is at pointing that out. 15 million people is insignificant to you? It doesn't take away from what they were saying that a lot of times people don't have time to do the job of being the teacher. They cannot reinforce the job every day.
    - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
      You would think the other 95% would know what is going on in their kids school though.
      - simfree 3y ago
        This assumes there isn't a statistical deviation in who is working multiple jobs amongst the working parent community. Just look at https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=58386 https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery... and tell me there isn't a severe income issue in 1 out of 5 kids lives that causes them to be SNAP eligible. You don't end up on SNAP cause your parents are doing well financially!
      - chelical 3y ago
        This assumes that everyone is equally likely to have children and in the same quantity.
    - ALittleLight 3y ago
      Your post is clearly an example of "You said X, so you mean worse Y??" In general, you should try to engage with X and not invent your own Y. As I previously wrote working so much you can't talk to your kids is not typical. Not every multiple job holder has kids, not every multiple job holder has multiple full time jobs, not every multiple job holder lacks ten to fifteen minutes a day to talk with their kids, some multiple job holders have spouses/parents/etc who can talk to their kids on their behalf, some multiple job holders could afford to work less. I don't know, but I suspect the previous reply comes from someone not in the situation they're describing. That is - the basic question I posed is how you could not know that your kid's school was bad. A response was that poor people had to work so many jobs they have no time to talk to their kids and I responded in turn by explaining that no, that's not the answer. I suspect the respondent is not particularly poor and isn't even explaining his own situation. Now, as for what my point is - my guess is that the modal reason people don't know how bad their kids schools are is that they aren't evaluating what their kids learn. I think that's bad and I'm trying to shame that behavior. Parents should be involved, should be tracking what their kids learn, and should be doing something about it when problems arise. I think attitudes like "some people have to work multiple jobs so we can't blame parents for being complacent with the poor public school system" are bad. Going back to what I wrote about the previous commenter not being in the situation he's describing - I think it's a common pattern for the rich to give bad advice to the poor. "Oh, you poor poor person, don't worry that you don't know how your children are doing at school, it's probably because you're so busy working! This isn't your fault, etc etc". I would say that if you don't know how your kids are doing in school you are failing as a parent and should immediately correct that. Education is vital to improving your child's circumstances and if you want a better life for your child you should do your best to insure your child is well educated. Again, just going off guesses, I bet the previous commenter holds himself to a higher standard. He won't ignore the education of his children, but will defend others doing so - assuming they're too busy to pay attention.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- welshwelsh 3y ago
  Why would people in this situation have kids?
  - jbm 3y ago
    Because it's a basic biological urge. Alternative why do you feel the poor should be deprived of literally the definition of biological success (IE: Progeny)?
  - PawgerZ 3y ago
    Religion. Terrible sex education due to the terrible school system. No access to abortion. If they were in a better spot financially before having kids, they could've been pushed into poverty in any number of ways--medical issues in the United States would be the easiest example.
Scubabear68 3y ago
In our case, the school was OK but became progressively worse as a new Superintendent came in. We do check our kids general knowledge, but we don’t grill them regularly or anything. We are all too busy for that, and given the amount of time they are at school, and how much it costs, it’s not unreasonable to assume a bit that it going well when the report cards look good. Our first hint was when our daughter stopped having any homework. Her teacher said it “upset the children’s work-life balance” (really!). We started to see declining proficiency in reading and writing at home. Then the standardized test scores started dropping precipitously. They are reported on by grade, and you can literally see which grades have the higher percentage of bad teachers from that. It is crazy that our kids were in a legally required and tax payer funded school for 6-7 hours a day, 9 months a year, and weren’t being taught.
quags 3y ago
The minimum should be to ask what happened in school , how’s home work is it done and seeing the work sent home. It isn’t hard to see how engaging school is and what they are learning instead of waiting for gasp…test scores to go down. Some of these responses look like they are guesses from people who aren’t in schools or don’t have kids. Seriously 10 min from the above you’ll have and idea of how school is going.

hadlock 3y ago

> How do parents not know how bad the school is? Are you not, on a daily basis asking what they learned in school and A lot of parents work 2, 3 jobs to make ends meet. When they get home there's barely enough money left over for food. They get up at 4, 5 am and work until 10 or 11pm. Working 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a real luxury for some people.

ALittleLight 3y ago
Looks like it's a little less than 5% of job holders working multiple jobs [1][2]. Average hours of work per week is around 34 [3]. If you're telling me that you don't know how your kids are doing in school because you never get a chance to talk to them because you're so busy working, that's sad, but it's probably not typical. It's also the case that people with greater income work more hours [4]. So, maybe you should reprioritize money versus family if you're working more than you need to. 1 - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 2 - https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat36.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat36.htm 3 - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP 4 - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-actual-working-hours-of-different-income-levels/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-actual-working-h...
- bob_theslob646 3y ago
  "Looks like it's a little less than 5% of job holders working multiple jobs " What's 5% of 300 million?? That's not an insignificant amount of people, so I'm not sure what your point is at pointing that out. 15 million people is insignificant to you? It doesn't take away from what they were saying that a lot of times people don't have time to do the job of being the teacher. They cannot reinforce the job every day.
  - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
    You would think the other 95% would know what is going on in their kids school though.
    - simfree 3y ago
      This assumes there isn't a statistical deviation in who is working multiple jobs amongst the working parent community. Just look at https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=58386 https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery... and tell me there isn't a severe income issue in 1 out of 5 kids lives that causes them to be SNAP eligible. You don't end up on SNAP cause your parents are doing well financially!
    - chelical 3y ago
      This assumes that everyone is equally likely to have children and in the same quantity.
  - ALittleLight 3y ago
    Your post is clearly an example of "You said X, so you mean worse Y??" In general, you should try to engage with X and not invent your own Y. As I previously wrote working so much you can't talk to your kids is not typical. Not every multiple job holder has kids, not every multiple job holder has multiple full time jobs, not every multiple job holder lacks ten to fifteen minutes a day to talk with their kids, some multiple job holders have spouses/parents/etc who can talk to their kids on their behalf, some multiple job holders could afford to work less. I don't know, but I suspect the previous reply comes from someone not in the situation they're describing. That is - the basic question I posed is how you could not know that your kid's school was bad. A response was that poor people had to work so many jobs they have no time to talk to their kids and I responded in turn by explaining that no, that's not the answer. I suspect the respondent is not particularly poor and isn't even explaining his own situation. Now, as for what my point is - my guess is that the modal reason people don't know how bad their kids schools are is that they aren't evaluating what their kids learn. I think that's bad and I'm trying to shame that behavior. Parents should be involved, should be tracking what their kids learn, and should be doing something about it when problems arise. I think attitudes like "some people have to work multiple jobs so we can't blame parents for being complacent with the poor public school system" are bad. Going back to what I wrote about the previous commenter not being in the situation he's describing - I think it's a common pattern for the rich to give bad advice to the poor. "Oh, you poor poor person, don't worry that you don't know how your children are doing at school, it's probably because you're so busy working! This isn't your fault, etc etc". I would say that if you don't know how your kids are doing in school you are failing as a parent and should immediately correct that. Education is vital to improving your child's circumstances and if you want a better life for your child you should do your best to insure your child is well educated. Again, just going off guesses, I bet the previous commenter holds himself to a higher standard. He won't ignore the education of his children, but will defend others doing so - assuming they're too busy to pay attention.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
welshwelsh 3y ago
Why would people in this situation have kids?
- jbm 3y ago
  Because it's a basic biological urge. Alternative why do you feel the poor should be deprived of literally the definition of biological success (IE: Progeny)?
- PawgerZ 3y ago
  Religion. Terrible sex education due to the terrible school system. No access to abortion. If they were in a better spot financially before having kids, they could've been pushed into poverty in any number of ways--medical issues in the United States would be the easiest example.

Scubabear68 3y ago

In our case, the school was OK but became progressively worse as a new Superintendent came in. We do check our kids general knowledge, but we don’t grill them regularly or anything. We are all too busy for that, and given the amount of time they are at school, and how much it costs, it’s not unreasonable to assume a bit that it going well when the report cards look good. Our first hint was when our daughter stopped having any homework. Her teacher said it “upset the children’s work-life balance” (really!). We started to see declining proficiency in reading and writing at home. Then the standardized test scores started dropping precipitously. They are reported on by grade, and you can literally see which grades have the higher percentage of bad teachers from that. It is crazy that our kids were in a legally required and tax payer funded school for 6-7 hours a day, 9 months a year, and weren’t being taught.

quags 3y ago

The minimum should be to ask what happened in school , how’s home work is it done and seeing the work sent home. It isn’t hard to see how engaging school is and what they are learning instead of waiting for gasp…test scores to go down. Some of these responses look like they are guesses from people who aren’t in schools or don’t have kids. Seriously 10 min from the above you’ll have and idea of how school is going.