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Comment by joshspankit | Hacker News Reader

With a parent working 3 jobs (probably just to make ends meet), they at some point have to rely on the implied social contract (as dictated by the law):

- That the school will teach what they are required to teach

- That the school will track absences/lates

- That the school will notify the parent if they see that the child is falling behind at either of those

Having seen similar cases myself, I can say almost definitively that one of the other huge parts going on here is that at some point the student fell behind and was ashamed to speak up. If no one is being accountable, students in this position can show up every day and still fail because they simply don‘t have the foundation to understand what’s being taught. It doesn’t take much at that point for them to simply disengage and stop showing up. By not being “disruptive” I would argue that they are more at risk of failing as these issues fly under the radar.

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Are we assuming the school put zero effort into bringing these issues up with the parent?

All the schools I attended would place an automated call to my parents if I was absent for a class or the day. Mid-Semester progress reports were mailed to my house for my parents to review. If a student fell severely behind, the teacher could request a conference with the parent.

Perhaps... perhaps this school did none of that (hard to believe). But on some level, the parent has to actually give a sh*t about their child and their education. Working 3 jobs or whatever is not an excuse to be an absent parent.

I'm close with several elementary school teachers, and we've had this discussion before. A parent that doesn't care at all, will nearly always yield a child that performs poorly, no matter how much individual attention the teacher applies to the child. Parents must be engaged in a child's upbringing - they are the primary role model for the child and are the only people that can enforce desired behaviors like doing homework instead of playing video games.

From the article it looks like that information was delivered through a web portal. My kids' school has a similar system and unexplained absences are notified through the portal. School reports are delivered there too, though at least for that we get an email notification asking us to access the portal. Why the report cannot be attached to the email is beyond my comprehension.

Accessing that portal is a technological barrier not every parent can overcome. Judging by the extent of the problem in that particular school, it might be a common issue in the community it serves.

Emails can be deleted, go to spam, go un-opened, etc. The content of the web portal cannot. I'm confident logging into a web portal isn't difficult, and I'm even more confident assistance would be provided if this parent had asked.

16% of the US population is computer illiterate [0], mostly amongst the poor. If information is only accessible through a web portal you are de facto making it inaccessible to a significant minority.

Sure the parents could take computer literacy courses, access internet at the library if they don't have access at home, or navigate the school bureaucracy (not easy and not always friendly, trust me!), and we could still play the blame game. But ultimately if we add enough friction that 50% of our users fail to engage, perhaps a review of the system is warranted.

[0] https://www.air.org/resource/description-u-s-adults-who-are-...

Actual functional literacy might be a problem too, let alone computer literacy. Although if she can operate an iPhone maybe not in this specific case.

I'm guessing information isn't put in the email because of federal privacy laws around education (FERPA). Email isn't considered a secure communication protocol since it isn't encrypted in transit, so schools can't email grades or other information related to education records. I'm guessing sending all messages through a secure web portal is just an easy way to avoid FERPA liability from the schools perspective.

I'm not in the US but you make a good point. They probably need to confirm parents' identities. An easy and well advertised low tech solution would be good for low tech parents though.

“There is a notice in your school portal.”, or “There is an unexplained absence. Access your school portal.” can be sent literally dozens of ways in the 2020s: SMS, email, Messenger, Instagram, phone call, custom app on Android or iOS, letter mail, etc.

I don’t want to tell someone what their ability is, but I have to believe that at least one of those will be the right choice for any individual parent.

There’s a good chance that those messages have to be setup by first logging into that portal which might not be easy or obvious to do. It could be made easy by having the default being sent mail notices every X days by default but it also could be that there’s some access code needed to create an account on some difficult to navigate website. In that case it’s likely that lots of parents who aren’t tech literate won’t be able to/know to access the portal or get the notices.

My point is that the portals and the configurations and whatnot don’t matter. The school should be able to easily and simply configure whatever the parent needs without requiring the parent to be tech literate.

The death of traditional phones has largely been overstated.

Even my dentist sends both SMS and phone calls for appointments. And they are a 2-bit operation. My doctor has a web portal but they rely on phones for important information like 'you missed an appointment without warning us'.

I'm struggling at the idea some random locked we form was sufficient for this critical information.

Not every school is good. Yours may have been, but the article says this:

> But in those three years, only one teacher requested a parent conference, which France says never happened. No one from the school told France her son was failing and not going to class.

The parent never scheduled the conference after clearly seeing it was requested. How is that the school's fault?

And that's after this child received dozens of failing grades and hundreds of absences the parent also ignored. Instead of disciplining this child, the parent bought him a video game console and a giant wide-screen TV (shown in the article!).

People need to take responsibility for their own inaction at some point.

It’s difficult to make either judgement with the information in this article.

The teacher requested it: is parent saying that the request never happened?

If the request did happen and it was only sent/seen once, where do the lawmakers draw the line between “The teacher asked once and the parent never took them up on it, therefore it’s the parent’s fault.” and “The school didn’t share what the concerns were and only tried to contact the parent once in 3 years. The school is at fault.”

This is one of the best responses I've seen when this topic arises and people wonder who's failing whom. I'm tempted to copy/paste it into every other post about how the kid is a lazy bum.

That’s high praise, thank you. I’m humbled.

You (and anyone else) have my full and unrestricted permission to copy/paste it.

I'll agree to that. I mean I'll hold my hand up today, to clicking the "accept" on that meeting invites and attending - but not having an f'in clue how to solve the problem, so keep quiet.

The immediate 'bad justification' is that if I didn't attend, I might get labelled as the problem.

The 'more rational' justification is that by attending and listening I get a better understanding, and by meeting #2 and #3 hope I can contribute constructively.

I know I'm definitely not going to be able to help by dodging the discussion.

Now there are exceptions - if I think others are better able and willing to solve an important issue, or I think the issue is ultimately unimportant - but that's high risk. Like saying I don't need school, so I won't go.

Agree, I get the sense we're not getting the full picture here. There's some information / context missing

On top of that, we don't know what the mother (who may be a single parent) needs to deal with on a day to day basis and how much cognitive load that is. Does her car need work? Does she even have a car? How much time does she spend commuting between three jobs? How much does heating/water/electricity take out of her paycheck? Can she afford to buy healthy groceries for her kids? Does she even have time to cook? I can guess, but I don't even know, and it doesn't feel right to judge her because of that.

This lady is in a hole and sometimes I feel our society just throws a shovel at her and thinks poorly of her when she doesn't use it.

Wouldn't that be a argument for the kid to be placed into a foster home?

This is a really concerning (and common) response to the hypothetical situation where a parent is putting in non-stop effort to try to do what’s best for her kids.

But as in divorces the state cares about child well being not how much efforts the parents put in.

I agree that the child’s well being should be primary concern, but I mean to say that if a parent is doing everything and anything we hope a parent would do, and they still can’t reach what the law says is a “minimum level of well being”, then that should really be looked at not as a failing of the parent, but as a failing of society.

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