According to a survey commissioned by Learning Heroes, 90 percent of parents with children in grades K-8 think their child is learning at grade level.
A shocking number of those parents are wrong.
According to the Nation’s Report Card, widely considered the gold standard of assessing students, only 40 percent of fourth-graders are proficient in math, and only 36 percent in reading, let alone both subjects. For eighth graders, the picture gets slightly worse: 33 percent are proficient in math, 34 percent are proficient in reading.
As reported by NPR, the grade-level belief persists for parents “no matter their own income, education level, race or ethnicity.” And before you say, “Oh, so white parents are right but minority parents are the ones who are overly-optimistic,” let me dispel that for you: fourth-grade math is the only area where a majority of white students are proficient. White students are proficient at higher rates than minorities (except Asians), but a wide gap between parent perception and student reality still exists.
The idea that the country’s schools are bad, but local schools do well has long distressed education reformers. According to the 2015 Education Next poll, 73 percent of parents gave the nation’s schools either a C, D, or F grade. In contrast, only 45 percent said the same about their local schools.
The gap between reality and what students actually know is why some advocated for standardized testing. Once parents realize how bad their schools are, they would wake up and start calling for education reforms, in theory.
Instead, parents just lash out against the tests. Hundreds of thousands of students opted out of the 2015 standardized tests in New York, with a similar number expected this year. The tests themselves don’t do much to improve education, but their purpose is to provide information on how well students are doing. If students aren’t taking the tests, parents aren’t getting an accurate picture of how well their schools, teachers, and most importantly, students, are doing.
Bibb Hubbard, who founded Learning Heroes, says parents have to be informed about how well their students are really doing. “There is this cognitive dissonance happening,” she told NPR. “We’ve got to find good, productive ways to educate and inform parents.”
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
