I’m The Proud Child of An Honor Role Parent

 Recently, Florida State Representative Kelli Stargel proposed a bill which calls for teachers to assess and grade Pre-K through 3rd grade parents.  Trust me, most parents know without my telling them what their grades are.  The parents that I do speak to are never pleased, and instead of improving, usually blame me or the school for their child’s shortcomings.  Schools already are asked to be social service providers.  Teachers are asked to be nurses, secretaries, counselors, mentors and role models. While performing these and countless other quasi-parental duties, we are also required to supply a top notch education for each and every child … well, an education which at least teaches students how to do well on standardized tests.

 Now someone is asking us to grade parents too?  Well why not?  But in exchange, let’s give teachers more freedom to teach science, history, music, foreign languages, physical education (this might help the overweight children we are already required to monitor and report), and all the other subjects that have been eliminated or reduced in order to improve those subject area test scores upon which it appears our future pay will be based.  Also, let’s make the parental grades meaningful.  For grades other than an “A”, let’s have the parents pay a “supplement” to the school.  That money can be used to pay the teacher’s back for the last few years of missed “step” increases, reinstate and protect pay for advanced degrees and training, eliminate the need to gouge our pensions, pay for the

Constitutionally mandated but consistently threatened reduced class sizes, cover the cost of new tools and equipment that will allow us to keep up with the rest of the world (that is, if we can get back to teaching science), and to bring us up from our dismal near bottom ranking of dollar per student spending.  With broken homes, single parent homes, foster homes, parents in prison, rehab and hospital, foster parents, stepparents, and grandparents raising children, exactly how the supplement will be calculated is beyond me.  But if they can figure out a fair system of merit pay for teachers, I’m sure our lawmakers will be able to make this program run smoothly.  If they don’t, maybe we’ll have them pay a supplement back to the citizens of Florida, which they in turn can use to pay their school supplement, which in turn may help us climb out of the basement of educational funding.