Commenters on the AJC Get Schooled blog debated whether middle-class parents are more concerned with giving their own children an edge than in leveling the playing field for all. The governor’s education reform panel is grappling with how to improve equity, especially for poor children whose parents may be unwilling or unable to advocate for them. Here is a sampling of reader responses:
Bear: In my 31 years as a teacher, coach and administrator in both public and private schools, I found parents who genuinely cared about all kids to be relatively rare. Not unheard of, but rare. This was especially true in the area of discipline. Everyone wanted a strict code of conduct until their child was involved.
Lee: Hint: Whenever someone mentions "equity," watch your pocketbooks. It means they think you haven't given enough to their cause. I've always said you could give everyone a million dollars, and someone would complain about it.
Carlos: Looks to me like schools ought to be thinking about issuing report cards not only to the kids but to their parents.
CSPINKS: How much can we expect parents to care about other people's kids? How hard and smart are we educators willing to work at developing, implementing and evaluating strategies and tactics to elicit such caring?
Class: This is like a parent bringing cupcakes to her son's classroom for Halloween, and everyone griping because to be "equal," she should have brought cupcakes for everyone in the school.
Teacher: Kids who are born to interested, capable and committed parents will always have a leg up, not because of their own merit but because they had the good fortune of winning the "parent lottery." This is not just an American phenomenon; there is evidence of it all over the world in educational outcomes and (later in life) in earnings disparities.
Boo: I have two sons to bring up and, in all honestly, it takes just about all my spare time and energy to make sure they have all they need to succeed. It is mind-boggling all that is required of me for my oldest who is a freshman in high school. And he is motivated enough to search for his own resources in education, too. I am not sure I can organize a college fair for kids in other high schools.
Straker: This need has existed for many years now. That little or nothing has been done gives you a pretty good indication of future inaction.
Redweather: I think parents should care as much about "other people's children" as they care about the communities where they live. In reality, however, I suspect that for most people in metro Atlanta, their sense of community does not extend beyond fairly narrowly defined borders — i.e., my neighborhood. That is one problem with urban living. It is very difficult to get people interested in what's going on in other parts of the city. They don't see a meaningful connection.
Liberal4Life: Other people's children are irrelevant to most people until they become "disruptive" in their kids' classrooms.
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