Education; Teachers want Family Involvement with Student Behavior

Many teachers across the country complain about the loss of learning in public school classrooms due to undisciplined children who come from dysfunctional homes. Their parents are children who have children, are usually single parents, and uninterested in the upbringing of their hapless children. The greater percentages are minorities and they are poor. These parents send their children to school and expect teachers to control them because they cannot or will not. You do not have to be rich to teach children acceptable behavior and respect for their elders and peers.

Alternatively, parents who do care send their children to our public schools where they sit in these disruptive classrooms waiting to be educated by teachers who are continually distracted by a minority of disruptive students. Teachers can no longer overtly discipline these out-of- control children due to current laws and politically correct rules and regulations.

Teachers need HELP! They need it from their principals, their unions, their parents, and society in general. We must allow teachers to teach in classrooms where order prevails and respect for authority is the law.

A.L. Lannie and B.L. McCurdy wrote a book in 2007, “Preventing Disruptive Behavior in the Urban Classroom: Effects of the Good Behavior Game on Student and Teacher Behavior”. They verified that classroom disruptions are associated with lower student achievement for the offending student, as well as for that student’s classmates. In the “Schools and Staffing Survey”, conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics, public and private school teachers were asked if student misbehavior, student tardiness, and class cutting interfered with their teaching. During the 2007–2008 school year, 34% of teachers agreed or strongly agreed that student misbehavior interfered with their teaching, and 32% reported that student tardiness and class cutting interfered with their teaching. A greater percentage of public school teachers than private school teachers reported that student misbehavior (36% vs. 21%) and student tardiness and class cutting (33% vs. 18%) interfered with their teaching. For example, among the states and the District of Columbia, the percentage of teachers who reported that student misbehavior interfered with their teaching ranged from 59% of teachers in the District of Columbia to 29% of teachers in Pennsylvania. This is a serious problem not only for teachers but for children whose parents care and take the time to parent and teach values.

McGraw-Hill Education and the Kellogg Institute at the National Center for Developmental Education have published that, “…63 percent of students at two-year colleges and 40 percent at four-year institutions are in need of remediation nationally, and statistics show that those who take remedial courses are more likely to drop out”. Who is responsible for this great American tragedy – the Parents or the Teachers?

All are to blame for shirking their responsibilities to a generation of children who are competing in a world where India, China and other third world countries are churning out highly skilled innovative students. Will American children be the order takers for the educated, disciplined, respectful, cultured, innovators whose parents take parenting as a serious responsibility in this century?

Parents need to send disciplined children to school and teachers need to be prepared to teach them the skills they go there to learn.