Lawsuit against LAUSD could shake up how CA evaluates teachers
Poor test results by students? Blame the teacher! This is an increasingly common presumption and accusation. But, blaming the teacher for the ills and failures in student test scores is a fallacy. To blame teachers when parents are remiss or entirely absent from the quotient is shameful.
I agree that student success with the various tests is an important concern. But it is overly-simplistic to dump all the blame for poor test results on teachers. As the previous comment mentions, there is a long term legacy of problems in k-12 education that feed into poor test results, and this blame doesn’t only rest with bad teachers (however “bad†may be construed). Where are parents in this quagmire? In my view, many or perhaps most parents are missing in action–then voicing blame upon teachers for what parents are unable to provide for their own children.
As a teacher, I see parents who are nearly or fully disengaged with student learning at school, expecting the school/teacher to be an all-inclusive magic making problem-solver and baby sitter. I see parents who think their end of the bargain in free public education can be assigned to someone else and goes no further than dropping the child off at school and then driving away.
Many parents pay lip service to the importance of education and test results but do very little ensure that success can happen. They have little engagement with the daily work of children, at school or in the daily homework–and certainly not in test preparations. Learning for children should be a holistic activity with parents, teachers, the school itself and the child involved as one. The problem of poor test results is the also the result of insufficient parental involvement–this is at least as much of an explanation as poor teaching.
Parents—get more involved in the daily work of your child and you will surely see improved test results in the classroom!
