CCSD Needs Effective and Fair PARENT-Teacher Evaluation Criteria

Rather than berating a Charleston County School District system that lobs students reading below fourth-grade level into eighth- or ninth-grade classes. let's focus on how to evaluate parental responsibility for their problems. If teacher quality were the only variable affecting these poor readers, agonizing over how to evaluate teachers' ability to succeed in improving reading where other teachers have failed would make sense. 

Yet, as any teacher and most parents will acknowledge, home life bears the burden of preparing children to learn and keep learning at grade level. If teachers must be evaluated by how much progress a student makes, then parents must be evaluated in tandem. What teacher has not experienced seeing mostly parents of students who are doing well at scheduled conferences? What teacher has not wished that [fill in the blank]'s parent had shown up? 

Heaven knows, CCSD cannot fix the unpleasant circumstances of every failing child's home life, but any teacher evaluation must take those circumstances into account.