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The Bottom Line

by JC Pennington; 193 pages. Subtitle: An Exposé of the Public School System

Do you believe that educators have your child's best interests at heart, that administrators work for the students, that report cards offer a true assessment, that academic or behavioral failures are your child's problem? This exposé suggests that those assumptions are not only naive but dangerous to your child's scholastic health.

It's a call to arms for parents -- of special and regular education students alike -- to question, verify, confirm, and check up.

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Pros

• Anything that gets parents more involved in their children's education is a good thing
• Offers the dual perspective of a parent and a school guidance counselor
• High school section has good information about making sure your child will be ready for college
• Starts with elementary issues and proceeds through high school, so you can pick your point of entry
• If you need to get mad to get going, this may be the push you need

Cons

• If reading of school abuses makes you feel hopeless, the book may actually be dis-empowering
• There are a few special-ed stories, but overall the focus is more on regular education issues
• With exhortations in boldface throughout, it sometimes feels like the book is yelling at you
• Overall, feels more like a rant from an impassioned parent/professional than a useful handbook
• May inspire some parents to take on the system in counterproductive ways

Description

• Part 1: Elementary School Years
  Chapter 1: Even Before Your Child Begins
  Chapter 2: The Power
  Chapter 3: Dylan
• Chapter 4: Choose Your Child's Teacher
  Chapter 5: Exceptional Needs Programs
  Chapter 6: ESOL
  Chapter 7: Academic Placement
• Chapter 8: The Gifted Program
  Chapter 9: Punishment
  Part 2: Middle School Years
  Chapter 10: Growing and Changing
• Chapter 11: Emotional Turmoil on Campus
  Chapter 12: A Middle School Nightmare
  Chapter 13: Medication
• Chapter 14: National Standardized Test Scores Are Important
  Chapter 15: Administrative Assignment
  Part 3: High School Years
  
• Chapter 16: Being Accepted
  Chapter 17: Registering for Classes
  Chapter 18: High School Scheduling - The Four Year Plan
• Chapter 19: High School Is Full of Choices
  Chapter 20: Preparing for Scholarships
  Chapter 21: The Unprepared Student
• Chapter 22: Other Tidbits You Need to Know
  Chapter 23: The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth
• Chapter 24: Does Graduation Mean Education - Not Always
  Chapter 25: A Different Type of School - Alternative Ed
• Chapter 26: Our Teacher of Today
  Chapter 27: You Are the Answer

Guide Review - Book Review: Wake Up Parents!!!

As bad as parents can get at complaining about school system outrages, in my experience we can't hold a candle to school employees. If you get them to open up and share their frustrations, you'll hear things beyond your greatest fears. Whether this is reason to seek out such confessions or duck them probably depends on your capacity for bad news. Wake Up Parents!!! falls firmly in the tradition of school-employee horror stories, with the added perspective of a parent who's gone through her own epiphanies about school priorities while viewing the other side of the street as a guidance counselor.

Pennington's overriding message is "The educational system must be held accountable, but we as parents must be held responsible," and those are good words to reflect on. Parents, having once been students themselves, may have a tendency to defer to educators and assume they know what they're doing. The realities of school funding, standardized testing, shortage of qualified teachers, and other administrative details that have little to do with giving students a competent education often get in the way of doing what parents assume. It's tough for parents to get a full picture of that from their position on the outside, but Pennington's got plenty of stories to share and warnings to sound.

If you have a student who's being blamed for failure, this book will be a needed call to look deeper. If your child's grades make little sense, it's an alert to meet with teachers and counselors for an explanation. The book is written more for families of students in regular education than special, but maybe there's something a little therapeutic for those of us doing the IEP dance to know that even advance-placement students get abused by the system.

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