The past policy of avoiding dropouts by advancing students through the grades regardless of whether they have demonstrably mastered their grade-level academics, serves at end only to deceive our students and to work a fraud on their parents and on the community. Students need to be more engaged in their schoolwork as measured by the amount of time and intensity they devote to their academic subjects. We must demand extra effort from our students and need to provide support for them, recognizing that not all students achieve at the same rate. These supports include in effect lengthening the school day, the school week and the school year by providing extra instructional time after school, on Saturdays, and during vacations and intersessions. Schools cannot accomplish the changes alone.
Parents have a crucial role in helping to improve student achievement.
They must step further forward to become active participants in their children's education. Many parents in our community lack the skills necessary to advocate for their children or to help their children become better students. A collaborative for parent involvement charged with developing a strategy for assisting parents to work together with teachers and school staff to help improve student achievement has developed a series of recommendations the Board of Education will soon consider. All of us have a stake in our the education of our children and it is important that we include everyone in this discussion. The new Academic Achievement Council enables us to do that.