Assessing Your Child’s Education
Do you know what questions you should be asking your child’s teacher? What is the level of subject proficiency that should be gained in each grade? Are you able to ask specific questions regarding the core knowledge in each of the primary subjects for your child’s grade? Are you aware of professional requirements your school, its teachers, and its administration should meet? Can you confidently select additional resource/learning materials for your child, such as enriching outside reading? Will you know if your child has successfully completed each grade’s necessary academics? In finishing my review of Bennett’s The Educated Child, I want to stress how much material is in this resource! You can deal with each of the above questions using this book. You will also learn how to assess your child’s progress yourself. As an added benefit, Bennett tackles the subjects most schools avoid defining for parents: whole language teaching (a proven failure) instead of phonics; authentic assessment (a red flag for inflated grades), and meaningless terms for grades and research and “experts” who back this illegitimacy (see p. 497). Bennett exposes the socialistic approach of supposed educators like Kohl (see pp. 162-163), and those who would have our schools make all children equal, especially in achievement, which sounds good but caps better students so that they may not excel (making others ‘feel inferior’) and provides little specialized help for those who are underachievers. “It’s like lowering the basketball hoop to make it look like everyone’s a great player,” Bennett says regarding lowered standards (p. 494).