Letter: Time to rank students' parents
Some $450 million in aid is at stake in New York City regarding teacher evaluations. (Jan. 13, 2013) Credit: Istock
Certainly accountability for student success is necessary ["Ads to oppose teacher rankings," News, March 12], but how about accountability for all of those responsible?
There is a simple solution. Education experts continue to stress the importance of the home in student success. In the spirit of accountability, schools could publish parents' efforts toward the success of their children.
This could include records of parent-initiated contact with school staff, student attendance, missing assignments, students attending extra-help sessions, and discipline reports. This information could provide a much more detailed record of reasons for student performance, far beyond the teacher evaluation. This information is readily available.
To promote transparency and encourage parents to participate in their children's performance, many school districts created "parent portals." These enable parents to easily log in and see how their child is performing. Parents who fail to do so, and are not aware of attendance or performance problems, could have this record published as well.
If shaming teachers into improving student performance is expected to work, surely shaming parents should be effective too.
Marshall Aykroyd, Blue Point
Editor's note: The writer is a retired teacher.
