Elementary Steps Hold Great Promise

Schools send home piles of paper every fall on topics as diverse as AIDS education, Internet access and guns in the classroom. Yet, parents still can wind up baffled by one simple question: What will my child actually learn this year?

Some teachers spell out their plans in great detail, sending letters home on the first day of school and talking frequently with parents. Others communicate only the vaguest details or not at all. Parents are left to wonder: Is second grade the year for rain forests and dinosaurs? Or is that third?

This fall, Spokane School District 81 took a helpful step forward by sending home a list of learning goals with every elementary student. Now, whether your child attends Holmes or Hutton, you can count on butterflies in the first grade, honeybees in the second.

These details may sound trivial, but they’re not. Parents can’t reinforce classroom learning when they’re in the dark. Yet, research shows that children from actively supportive homes do the best.

When parents know what’s ahead, they can plan appropriate outings and purchases. Now, a District 81 parent can pick up a learning-goal list and realize that second grade is the year to stock up on books about dinosaurs. Fifth grade, with its emphasis on U.S. history, makes the perfect year to buy an Oregon Trail CD-ROM or visit the Whitman mission near Walla Walla.

These lists are designed to help prepare students to pass assessment tests required by state education reform. Given the tests’ tough new standards, soon a fifth-grader in Puyallup will be studying the same topics as a fifth-grader in Pullman.

It’s way too early to know whether the state reform will be a success. Parents, recognizing that education can be counted on for at least two new fads per decade, are likely to be dubious. But certainly, a program that places more emphasis on early learning sounds like a positive step. Now, fourth-graders will be expected to demonstrate higher levels of achievement than in the past, giving primary teachers incentives to pack as much learning into the early years as possible.

And equipped with new information, parents are more likely to do their part. Surely, any parent who ever has witnessed the sheer volume of Disney trivia a child can memorize (Do you remember Mufasa from Pumba in “The Lion King”?) realizes the enormous potential for soaking up knowledge in those early years.

With a set of new leaflets written in plain English - not educational jargon - District 81 has helped make parents’ job a lot easier.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jamie Tobias Neely/For the editorial board