Everyone told us it was wonderful and the kids were getting A's. We all know teachers who give A's for no work. The grade standards are dependent on, are not a good way to measure how kids are doing. You have to look at tests which are normed over the country to compare. I also wanted to talk a little bit about not only things that make action possible, but also obstacles.
Parents run into a lot of obstacles.
There is a lot of lip service to supporting parents. However one of the things that happens is you become a bad parent. They like you if you write check and hold parties for the teachers and cut paper dolls and chaperone field trips. It's true that most parents can't really make curriculum, they can't describe how to write standards and things like this, but they do have a gut sense of what they want from their school. I also wanted to mention that the school improvement and school based management in Los Angeles very rarely look at curriculum.