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I’d bet it will be as effective as making criminals out of the parents that for some reason can’t get their offspring to attend school daily!

Prima facie, this seems to be a smart piece of legislation. It appears that this law intends to punish those guilty of blowing off an agreed to meeting, which for me, seems pretty sensible. Legislating good parenting isn’t going to ever happen, this we know. Punishing bad behavior seems to be a staple of a good system of justice. A teacher, who has only a limited amount of time like most, sets aside some of said time to address an issue which, if left untreated, could yield a Columbine-minded student at worst, or an under-achiever at best. If the parent does the “No show, no call” ditch, perhaps we know were the cycle began, and perhaps this is where it must be addressed.

A friend of mine told me of an interesting technique that was used at his private school. For repeat offenders, after school detention was levied, and a parent had to sit with the student through the entire sentence. The detentions only lasted 10 minutes, but the inconvenience to the parent was more than enough to encourage the parents to deal with the problem at home. Thus, the upper-middle class parents who might have to skip that day’s squash game, put a little more effort in to proper discipline before it disrupted the learning of other pupils. Perhaps a fine and misdemeanor conviction isn’t the best means; writing a check for a few hundred dollars and having a petty smudge on one’s record doesn’t offer much deterrence. Serving time, say in a room with other kids and their parents – as a parent myself, I don’t know if I would want to sit through that more than once. You can bet I would honor those meetings going forward.

You’ve got be kidding right? Criminal charges to enforce attendance at a meeting called by a teacher based on the premise that it MIGHT prevent crime or delinquency? Let’s not even get into the problem of schooling not even being mandatory these days for almost any age with home schooling laws especially in high school. The state of Wyoming has no legal obligation to educate my child after either the 8th grade or 16, which ever comes first. I bet Texas is similar. By the way Todd, if I don’t attend a parent teacher meeting at a private school where I have voluntarily enrolled my child, I guess they can levy any penalties they want that I should comply with if I want my kid to remain in that school. If the contractual infractions become serious enough on either of our parts, I have no obligation to leave my child at that school and the school has no obligation to keep him… problem solved.

I’ll bet teachers will love the results of this. Some parents actually work during the day, and it would be unreasonable for them to potentially miss a day’s work or use a vacation day to attend a 10 minute meeting. The teachers would have to provide office hours for these meetings to accomodate parents.
Yep, for the crowd used to working weekdays only, no holidays, no summers, this will be a rude awakening to life in the real world.

Perhaps I’m a product of strict parents and have thus become a subscriber to the traditionalist mentality. I got a detention once – once, and my mother had to pick me up, as opposed to taking the bus. I’ll spare you of the details of the consequences and say, it was the last time I had a problem at school – mysteriously and perhaps in response to my folks providing me with incentives, I never had any problems with school.

Yes, I know there are all sort of “problems” with schooling, weak teachers, and apathy. Ideally speaking, it would be better for discipline and education to be function served by a partnership between parents and teachers. I go with Plato’s advice and try to shoot for the ideal. Anything less would be a disservice to my son and civilization.

My wife is a teacher and always accomodates parents meaning most of her conferences are at night. Recently a snow storm wiped out conferences and she rescheduled and held them ALL at night on her own time as did her co-workers. Because the scheduled conferences were on an official snow day, the district is going to make her spend an extra day at work as though she hasn’t already. Somehow, I know nevins will applaud that decision.

Teaching is a sorry profession because it is disrespected and blamed for society’s problems, She doesn’t get the time off that nevins claims. Lesson plans don’t write themselves and papers don’t grade themselves. As I write this, she is at a PTA meeting in another snowstorm. I will be glad to see her retired and out, but not nearly as glad as she will be.

Married,

To start with, so am I (married to a teacher).

AND

I think teachers are, in general, overpaid.

“She doesn’t get the time off that nevins claims”

Most of them do. Even the ones who don’t gt as much time off still work FAR FAR FAR fewer days per year than any other “profession”.

Teaching is a sorry profession because it has been the dumping ground, the “fall back” position. Teachers have a bad reputation because our school systems have bn riddled with bad teachers and done nothing about them for years.

GOOD teachers are vitally important! GOOD teachers foster learning, good citizenship, all that wonderful societal stuff.

But the system has not REQUIRED good teachers. Good teachers are those who have CHOSEN to be good, with no additional incentives… Oddly enough, many teachers haven’t chosen to do that, since it’s more work for no more reward (well, no reward THEY recognize – students who make the world a better place because of you is a pretty good reward, too).

If you want to do something about this…take a look at the number of off-days and even half-days in your school’s schedule for holidays, “teacher training”, “professional (something or other)”, etc.
Just as an example: My local school district had scheduled the following….
>> Half-days every third Friday of the month;
>> Half-days on the four days after Labor Day;
>> At least one or two days off for teacher training, etc. each month;
>> Longer Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks than I did when I was in school, on a similar calendar–three days at Thanksgiving vs. two, kids went back after Christmas on Jan. 8 vs. Jan. 2, etc.

All of that leads to a schedule where the kids go no longer than four straight weeks without a day off or a short day–and somehow have a year that goes mid-August to the Thursday before Memorial Day. (In my case we went in the last of August–depending on when Labor Day was–and finished the first full week of June.)

If this seems odd to you, ask the school board AND THE TEACHERS’ UNION REPS the following:

1. Why can’t teacher training days or professional (whatever it’s called) days be added onto the end of the holiday schedules (i.e. added onto Christmas or spring breaks)? Or use that other “novel” concept–night school?)

2. Why do we need so many of those days, and what are they really for?

3. I agree, we need parents to attend the meeting with teachers at least once a year–can’t you schedule these conferences on two of the “professional” days if the original days are called-off for snow, etc.?

4. While I agree that, as mentioned in an earlier post, “lesson plans don’t write themselves and tests don’t grade themselves”, how can we solve that problem so it doesn’t take up as much of the teacher’s time? Any kid reading that would say something along the lines of, “Well, don’t give us so much darn homework every day, and so many tests!” Even I agree, that isn’t realistic–but what about setting aside a few days for tests only, no homework (besides the days for semester finals)?

Put it concisely, in my district, there were nearly 35 days either off completely or short days scheduled–nearly 15 more than when I was in school–and school started two weeks later and ended a week or 10 days later. Is this part of the problem or a problem in and of itself?