My son attends Kindergarten at an open-enrollment public school near our home. Even though we live a mere five-minute walk away, there was no guarantee that he would get in, but he got in. This K-6 school has an API score in the 940s out of a scale of 1,000. In comparison, the middle school at which I teach just surpassed 700 for the very first time this year. Those inner-city hellhole schools that Hollywood loves to make movies about usually score in the 400-500 range.
So what makes my son's school so much more successful than most other schools in the state? Yeah, yeah, it's open enrollment... so what? I have read of plenty of charter schools out there whose scores suck and they are closing up shop, so park that excuse. My wife and I got a taste of why our son's school scores so high when we received a contact list of all the parents of all the students in our son's class. My wife immediately noticed something about the list that she felt compelled to share with me.
Of the 21 students in my son's class, every single one of those students was living with his or her married, biological parents. Coincidence?
There were no single mothers; no custodial parent with the other as an alternate contact; nothing but two-parent families who both share the same last name (except for one couple who kept their own last names, and their son has a hyphenated last name). Coincidence?
The day after my wife showed me this list, I spent about 10 minutes scrolling through the "Guardian Contact" information on my PowerSchool program at work. I was hard-pressed to find any students of mine who live in a two-parent household that is so prevalent at my son's school. Students at my school predominantly live with only their mother, or with a parent and stepparent, or with a grandparent, or with a sibling. I have a minute number of students who live only with their fathers, and they tend to be just as well-adjusted as my two-parent students. The only class period I teach that did have a majority of two-parent households just happened to be my one and only XL/GATE class. Coincidence?
Don't misunderstand what I am saying here. I teach some wonderful, hardworking students who come from single-parent households, and I teach some apathetic and/or misbehaved students who come from biological two-parent households. But statistically, there is no mistaking the fact that overall, students who come from households in which they live with both married, biological parents tend to be the ones that shine both academically and behaviorally. It is no coincidence.
Good Day to You, Sir
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson
9 comments:
No, not coincidence.
But what is interesting is the number of times I have bumped into the notion in the last 10 days, when for years I have felt like the ridiculed voice-in-the-wilderness about it.
The number at the moment is "3"--your article, Ann Coulter's "Guilty" (she goes on and on about it), and Thomas Sowell's "Black Rednecks / White Liberals" (peripheral to his main points which have to do with notions like -- my words -- blacks with a southern heritage are more like whites with a southern heritage (and the whites in the parts of the British isles they came from) than they are blacks from the West Indies, which are in turn more like northern whites.)
I think that Maslow's hierarchy influences student success. Broken homes = broken performance, whether they are living with both parents or not. If you don't feel loved or aren't well fed, etc, then learning is the last concern on your mind.
Kids with two parents generally don't have to worry about food, security or comfort. Ask the high performing kids how much time they have to study quietly in the house, or if they have their own desk, etc.
Oh, so its the fault of my wife and I that our two boys always seem to be at the top of their class, have earned 4.0 gpa's ever since there were letter grades on their report cards, that we read to them before they could read themselves, that we buy them books they want to read, that we encourage them in their arts interests, we take them to places of cultural and historical interest, have dinner together as a family 90% of the time (their church youth group meets Sun. evenings and they eat there).....they have been limited on their time playing on the computer, watching anything on TV, get to bed at a reasonable time and of course, recieve praise when they deserve it, that we talk to them......I could go on, but anyhow Chanman, I've taken up enough of your commenting space. Thanks for a NICE POST.
I have noticed the same thing here in the desert. But I have also noticed lots of kids who have been able to overcome the grease fire that is their home life and succeed anyway. That's why I teach.
Polski, if your kids miss Sunday night family dinners, then they're getting only an 85-86% family dinner rate, far less than the 90% you claim.
You lie!!
:-)
Sad when the only activity on a blog deteriorates to spam.
And makes my point about captcha.
(Hard on loyal followers with failing eyesight, trivial speed bump (at most) to spammers.)
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