LaShanta Mire’s daughter was, at least on paper, thriving at her public school in Fort Worth, Texas. Her grades were good. The then-second grader was ostensibly learning to read and was performing at the level expected of kids her age.
But the child’s assessments told a different story: She did not yet know how to read. She was missing out on crucial content. She wasn’t performing at grade level.
Mire, like possibly millions of parents across the U.S., received flawed information about her daughter and her two other school-age children. After realizing there was a mismatch between her perceptions and the realities of how her child was faring academically, the single mother of five took it upon herself to find a parents group to help her navigate school bureaucracies, engage with educators and seek information such as test scores. As soon as she got the information she needed, Mire transferred the three oldest children to new schools last fall.
Now they’re getting grades that offer a more accurate – if sometimes disappointing – picture of their achievement. “I felt like I was failing my child because the school was failing her,” Mire said of her now-9-year-old daughter. Her new school, she said, “doesn’t just give you (good) grades. … You have to earn them.”
Mire's daughter is among a generation of children who missed lots of class time and lost significant academic ground during the pandemic. Four years after the onset of COVID-19, schools are still struggling to catch kids up. They’re also struggling to get young people to show up. Chronic absenteeism – when students miss at least 10% of the school year – remains rampant and in some cases has gotten worse.
Yet schools aren’t adequately communicating these challenges to families and often, in fact, mistakenly communicate that all is well. Research suggests parents are getting limited, if not inaccurate, messages about their kids’ performance.
New survey findings, shared exclusively with USA TODAY, underscore the problem: Nearly half of parents say they want better communication from their kids’ schools – especially about attendance.
Continue reading at USAToday.com.