School closures are teaching some parents a surprising lesson, writes Beth Hawkins on The 74. In particular, low-income parents are “shocked at how far behind their children are academically.
“Our children, now we see why they tested so low,” says Christina Laster, an NAACP family advocate. “People come to a rude awakening quick.”
A 2017 national survey by the organization Learning Heroes found that nine in 10 parents think their children are performing at or above grade level in math and reading, while results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that just one in three eighth-graders meets that bar.
The same research showed that 89 percent of parents rely on report cards to determine whether their child is performing at grade level. A majority of teachers, by contrast, say grades reflect effort more than achievement.
Nehemiah Frank, a former teacher and administrator who edits The Black Wall Street Times, is overseeing learning for his 5-year-old cousin, Caillou. The teacher hadn’t told the family that the kindergartener has speech problems, “did not know all the alphabet, could not recognize the most basic sight words and had terrible penmanship,” writes Hawkins.
“With the help of a friend who is a speech pathologist and some online resources, Frank used the first month of the school shutdown to teach Caillou to pronounce his letters and helped him rocket ahead in math,” writes Hawkins. “But he wonders how far behind the boy would have fallen.”
