Reply to Schools with high FARM rates

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Alleluia! Parents are the key to success. Many low income kids have parents that DO care. Those kids will be successful. However, many more parents in low income don't care and those kids, sadly, will not succeed. It's parents, not FARMS and not teachers, that determines success. 
[/quote]

.... Sure but FARMS percentages is one gauge for telling you what kind of parental situation you are dealing with. Somewhat.
The above previous post is true probably for some areas.
I have to say I live around a very large Ethiopian and el salvadorian immigrant population. Primarily 2 parent homes. The kids are clean and fed ( many using assistance, but I think/hope using it successfully). 
Language is a definite barrier. Lack of formal parental education is a barrier. [b]There is a fundamental difference though, when the parents are invested. Which seems to be the case with my neighbors. [/b]
It still makes me nervous sending DC to the local school in a couple of years. I wonder if all of the energy on esol will mean my kid isn't getting what they need.

[/quote]

What do you mean by "invested"?  The only thing you say about the kids is that they are clean and fed and that there are two parents in the house.  I teach ESOL in a high school in FCPS, and I would also say that most of my students are clean and fed and there are two adults in the home (whether they are biological parents of the children is another issue).  That said, most of their parents or guardians of low level ESOL students are not involved in school for various reasons - language barriers, work commitments, lack of transportation, etc.  They are also not very well educated themselves so while they may say they want their child to succeed in school and do well, they don't really have any idea what that means and how to help get them there.  I don't doubt that these parents love their kids, I know they do.  But they also don't understand what it means to graduate from a high school in the U.S. and how much work it takes to get there.  Just showing up each day won't do it - the student needs to learn to read, go to the library, study after school, bring pencils and paper to school, have a notebook, turn in work instead of losing it, etc, etc.  These are things that many of the parents of my students don't understand, and why many of my students struggle when they come here as teenagers.  [/quote]
Of course, this is true, but these things aren't black/white, they are a continuum.  A kid who comes from a home of recent immigrants, possibly with language barriers or lack of formal education, is still going to benefit from a two-parent home, from good nutrition and adequate rest, from good role models, from parental expectation to succeed, from the guidance that hard work = success, from good behavior models.  The benefits won't be as high as those enjoyed by children of middle- to upper class professional American families, but it will be miles better than kids from families of generational poverty where no one ever went to college, no expectation of success, no good role models, teen and unwed pregnancy/criminal record abound etc. [/quote]

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