We know that the quality of parenting is critical to the educational outcomes of children and that in fact, it is the single greatest influence on their overall academic progress. Indeed, so important is the quality of parenting to individual student success in schools that neuroscientist John Medina argues that courses in what he calls “authoritative parenting” should be offered by school districts to enable parents to be better at their job in order for schools to be better at theirs.
Yet even so-called “authoritative parents” can have their blind sides, and that, in turn, can affect how well their child is learning. Which is why I was disturbed to read recently that 90% of parents of school-aged children in this country currently believe their child is working at grade-level. Given that reading scores on national assessments are down 6%, math scores down 12%, and half of all students in this country have been identified as behind grade level in at least one subject, there is clearly a serious and concerning disconnect between parental perceptions and academic realities—with all the attendant consequences for our efforts in schools to recover fully from the pandemic (see my The 2023 State of Education for a full accounting of the pandemic’s impact so far).
However, while this parental blind spot disturbs me, it does not surprise me. For well over a decade now (and long before zoom school brought parents into their children’s classrooms), polling has regularly shown parents decrying the state of education in the United States, adamant that our schools are failing today’s youth. Yet when asked about their own child’s specific school and/or district, their thumbs are always firmly up. It’s almost like a reverse NIMBY: the quality of my child’s education is just great; it’s everywhere else that’s a mess.
Zoom school may have changed that, though. Many a parent of early elementary aged children was inadvertently introduced to the pedagogical “reading wars” going on in American education, frequently discovering to their horror that their third grader couldn’t read after all. Others experienced the impact of the digital divide on their child’s school and, consequently, on their child’s learning, and still others found themselves banding together into small pods of kids, learning that they could provide both centralized instruction and the appropriate social development without the constraints of any form of institutional regulation. The result of all of this has been that as many as 20% of children in any given district have still not returned to their former schools—with all the negative impact that has had on school funding—and what’s more, there has been a revolution in the home-schooling movement as the pod idea has led to the creation of what are essentially mini-schools of 10 to 20 families, allowing for what home-school advocates argue is the best of consolidated teaching with individuated learning.
Where, then, does all this leave us as a society? The potential problem with parental ignorance of their own child’s learning loss is that when a real loss is genuinely identified, there may be resistance to addressing it properly. Given the power of parenting over teaching, that could result in a failure to adequately remediate, and consequently, we could have some portion of our population who never fully cognitively recover from the pandemic’s impact on their learning (which is going to happen anyway, but let’s not allow parental blindspots to make it worse). As for the impact of the “reading wars,” I’ve already addressed that in my post, Sound It Out, and with the digital divide, both the federal and state governments have finally started addressing the issue through the BEAD program, allotting nearly forty-three billion dollars for states to use to expand their internet access to underserved regions and populations (in fact, Maryland just revealed its plans for its share of the funding a little over a week ago).
Which leaves my random thinking focusing on the drop in school attendance and the rise of mini-schools within the home schooling movement. These thoughts actually have me more concerned than the parental blindspots about their child’s grade-level progress because our traditional schools are struggling enough already without finding themselves underfunded due to decreased enrollment. Just recently, for example, the Baltimore County Public Schools announced that they have endured 100 resignations since early August, and even my small school has abruptly lost two teachers this academic year due to economic need. The profession is hemorrhaging educators right now, and it is in no small part due to salaries that do not compete with the employment opportunities available to individuals with comparable skills and academic backgrounds.
But what concerns me even more about this increasing move away from traditional schools is the greater threat this transition presents to what Jonathan Rauch has called “the republican virtues”—those common values and ground-rules for public discourse that make shared democracy possible. Independent of the potential for actual physical and psychological danger these unregulated mini-schools pose for the children attending them (I am fingerprinted and my institution accredited for a reason), they also contain the potential for spreading one of home schooling’s greatest weaknesses: the possibility of children learning contorted and misinformed understandings about the world without any external curb or check. Granted, home schooling (whether for liberal or conservative motives) has always run this risk of creating a biased view of the world. But now, with these mini-schools making it easier for more parents to leave traditional schools for the echo-chamber of their choice—because they can still earn income while someone else home-schools their child—the opportunity to avoid being challenged by a pluralistic worldview only increases.
And without that challenge, the intellectual diversity so critical to healthy public discourse can die. Hence, my concern at the spread of this mini-school movement is that the potential for disengagement from participating in a shared common reality becomes possible for an even larger segment of our population since its advocates have found a work-around to what has traditionally been the primary limit to home schooling—its economic cost. Yet, that’s where things get even crazier as the mini-school participants have started lobbying statehouses for the equivalent of “vouchers” to start paying the instructors at these schools. They are arguing that since they are not sending their own child to traditional schools, they should be able to use those tax dollars to support their home-schooling efforts instead. Therefore, we now have an entire educational movement in this country devoted to creating unlicensed, unregulated, and unsupervised private schools paid for by the state.
Could education in this country get any more dysfunctional?
It turns out the answer is “yes.” The one disadvantage I have when writing during the school year is that while I’m trying to wrap up one essay, I read yet another news story during the week, and the one I came across this past Thursday makes my concerns about the mini-schools seem positively quaint. You can imagine my reaction when I read about a school in Louisiana—Springfield Preparatory School—where for $465, you can simply purchase an accredited high-school diploma without taking a single course of any kind. Moreover, you can do this because apparently:
unlike public schools, formal homeschooling programs or traditional private schools, nearly 9,000 private schools in Louisiana don’t need state approval to grant degrees…[consequently] a list of prices is taped to the front window of the school building: $250 for diploma services, a $50 application fee; $35 for a diploma cover and $130 to walk in a cap and gown at a ceremony… [moreover] there is no way for the government to verify safety, quality or even whether a school exists [because] by law, the state does not have oversight over the unapproved schools (p. 8).
Wow. The educational standards in at least one state in this country have sunk so low that the dangers and expense of illiteracy and innumeracy can simply be ignored and glossed over for the cost of a TV, allowing the woman at the center of this story to buy a diploma as “her ticket to better paying work,” even though, having been kicked out of high school, she possesses few if any of the skills said diploma claims she should have. If the citizens of Louisiana ever wonder why they rank dead last in economic performance in the United States, they might want to look in a mirror.
Coda
I need to conclude by being clear that I do not think home schooling is an inherently bad way to educate a child. I have known and taught some highly educated, deeply thoughtful and self-reflective individuals who were home-schooled, and there are some excellent home-schooling networks with guidance (and even some oversight) by state departments of education. However, I do think it is a hazardous way to educate every child, and when 1.2 million students are no longer in traditional schools, I think the risks of those hazards increase. It is why I plan to start paying attention to the lobbying efforts of the Home School Legal Defense Association and others like them after learning what has happened in Louisiana. I want people earning diplomas that mean something—both for themselves and, even more importantly, for their communities.
Because the quality of a society depends directly on the quality of education it provides its children, and that is not a random thought.
References
BroadbandUSA (2023) Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program. National Telecommunications and Information Administration. https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/funding-programs/broadband-equity-access-and-deployment-bead-program.
Lurye, S. (Nov. 30, 2023) Diplomas $465, No Classes Required. The Baltimore Sun. https://digitaledition.baltimoresun.com/html5/desktop/production/default.aspx?&edid=d8b1c9d5-06ab-453e-b33d-f33caa3ac8b3.
Ma, A. (Nov. 15, 2023) Many Parents Unaware When Kids Fall Behind at Grade Level. The Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/school-report-card-test-score-poll-755cc4b52f5c7946f28207ab07fd5794.
Meckler, L. (Aug. 17, 2023) For Many Home-Schoolers, Parents are No Longer Doing the Teaching. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/homeschooling-microschools-pods-esa-vouchers/.
Medina, J. (2018) Attack of the Teenage Brain. Arlington, VA: ASCD Books.
Mullan, D. (Nov. 23, 2023) Teachers Union Asks District to Negotiate Amid Resignations. The Baltimore Sun. https://digitaledition.baltimoresun.com/html5/desktop/production/ default.aspx?&edid=6177b45c-15ad-4325-8fb9-a02b484c2fd6.
Office of Statewide Broadband (2023) Maryland State Plans for BEAD and Digital Equity. Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. https://dhcd.maryland.gov/Broadband/Pages/StatePlans.aspx.
Rauch, J. (2021) The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Light a Candle 