According to a poll conducted on Wednesday by Gallup and the nonprofit Learning Heroes, nearly nine out of ten parents think their child is doing at grade level even though standardized testing indicate that considerably fewer students are on track.
According to academics, report cards, which are frequently used by parents to gauge their children’s development, may not provide the complete story. Without that information, parents might not look for ways to give their kids more help.
According to Bibb Hubbard, the president and CEO of Learning Heroes, “grades are the holy grail.” “A grade does not equate to grade-level mastery, but they are the primary indicator that parents look to when determining if their child is on grade level. But no one has mentioned that to parents.
According to the Gallup poll, 88% of parents think their child is reading at grade level and 89% think their child is doing arithmetic at grade level. However, according to a federal poll, half of all American kids began the previous school year at least one topic below grade level.
Researchers discovered that grades increased during the COVID-19 pandemic in a paper that looked at grade point averages and test results in the state of Washington during the previous ten years. In order to accommodate for the confusion and difficulties pupils were facing, many districts have loosened their grading guidelines.
Director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research and co-author of the report Dan Goldhaber suggested that some of that leniency may still be in place, hiding learning gaps that are evident in exams but not in grades.
Federal pandemic relief funds have been allocated by districts nationwide to academic re-engagement initiatives, ranging from summer academic programs to rigorous tutoring. However, Goldhaber noted that frequently significantly fewer pupils arrive than the district had anticipated.
“We see that only a fraction of the students that are invited or eligible to that are actually participating,” he added, referring to family-chosen programs like summer school or online tutoring.
The results of the Gallup poll support this tendency and indicate that some families may not be aware that they need to do something about their child’s academic standing.
More than two thousand parents of K–12 children participated in the survey, and half of them said they had spoken with a teacher about their child’s academic progress. However, the rate rises sharply to 74% among parents who have spoken with the teacher about their child’s arithmetic performance below grade level.
According to Sarah Carpenter, director of The Memphis Lift, a Tennessee parent advocacy group, report cards typically don’t include enough information.
According to Carpenter, “a report card is really tricky because all you’re looking at are A’s, B’s, and C’s.” The report card has no information on “what reading level your infant is on,
“Awareness is strength,” she declared. “Parents are unaware of their own ignorance. Therefore, we don’t want them to take the blame. But now that you know, make better demands and make sure that your child and all children have the exact resources they require.
