
To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays - gscott
http://news.ufl.edu/articles/2018/12/to-protect-kids-dont-send-report-cards-home-on-fridays.php
======
seltzered_
Somewhat related, there was another article this week that mentioned kids (and
parents) now get notifications sent over the phone of their grades:
[https://www.vox.com/first-
person/2019/1/10/18174263/anxiety-...](https://www.vox.com/first-
person/2019/1/10/18174263/anxiety-kids-burnout)

“As the retreat group started to tell me more about why they felt such a
collective sense of stress and pressure, a few major themes emerged. All of
them said they voluntarily get their grades pushed to their phones through
notifications. It took me a minute to realize just how annoying and agonizing
that must feel. It means that at any moment, they could find out they bombed a
test or missed an assignment. Instead of having the time to mentally prepare
to receive a bad grade when a teacher returns an assignment, they receive a
notification as soon as the teacher posts their grade to the online portal
they all use. Further, their parents sometimes receive the same
notifications.”

~~~
legionof7
Yeah, I'm in high school right now and they have this system. They also had
the same in middle school. There's no way this instant feedback system is
mentally healthy. Also, a lot of times, teachers push a 0 as a placeholder
grade and parents aren't in the classroom, so they see that and flip out.

Also, with the notification system, both parents and students see each
assignment grade in a bubble, so it affects them a lot more than if they saw
the whole semester grade (i.e getting an F on a homework assignment isn't a
big deal)

~~~
paganel
But why send the grades (real or invented, it doesn’t matter) to students’ and
parents’ phones? Who does that help? Does it help the students? Apparently
not, because it looks like it makes them more anxious. Does it help the
parents? It probably only helps those “tiger” moms and dads who are toxic
anyway, I honestely think a parent shouldn’t care about the intrinsic details
of his kids grades and day-to-day activity at school, it only causes more
anxiety for said kids as it makes them even more nervous and risk-averse.

And on a more general note, how did we manage to screw this up? (I’m talking
about people in my generation, late-20s, 30s, early 40s). Why are our kids
anxious? Why do they kill themselves? Why do I hear of a close friend’s niece
cutting herself when she’s only 12? We weren’t like that, at least not at this
magnitude/level, so the screw-up is on us.

~~~
idrios
>how did we manage to screw this up?

I was a teacher last year and while I can't answer this question fully, I do
know that it's a result of perverse incentives and group pressure.

Where I taught at school (a private English school in China) we also had an
app that shows parents how their student is doing. They'd see test scores as
soon as I uploaded the grades, and I'd get complaints from some of the parents
if I was more than a day late in uploading those scores.

In the case of my school, we were competing with other private English
schools. If we stopped or had never started using this app, we would get a few
parents complaining "why can't I see my son's grade? [school z] does it, so
I'm going to switch to their school!" We would lose some parents -- and for
our student-retention team, losing too many parents means a pay for cut the
following year. They would do anything to keep those parents so promises get
made, and ultimately the school would certainly go back to using the app.

Meanwhile the group who built the app gets fabulously wealthy because they've
built a (albeit harmful) service that their clients can't possibly get rid of.

Depressingly, the only way I see it turning back would be a force of equally-
upset parents who removed their students from the school while asking "why do
you use this at all? It's fostering anxiety and depression for my kid".

People vote with their wallets.

------
xupybd
>“It’s sad, but the good news is there's a simple intervention — don't give
report cards on Friday.”

Yeah that avoids the one instance of child abuse but that's not the big
picture here. How is it that there are that many people that struggle to cope
that this is common enough to show up in this research. I feel for both the
parents and the children here. If something like grades are causing the
parents to lash out at the kids it's a sign that the parents are struggling to
cope. That makes things horrible for these poor children. But how on earth
does this get fixed? How does society change to provide enough support and
training to these parents to give them the resources to handle these
situations?

~~~
geofft
> _If something like grades are causing the parents to lash out at the kids it
> 's a sign that the parents are struggling to cope._

I think that's starting from a mistaken premise. Why expect parents to cope?
Parenting takes an amount of empathy and patience and care that many people
simply do not have and will not have.

In pre-modern society the nuclear family made sense, but at what point do we
say, being someone's biological source gives you no particular right to
control their life and the task of guarding and raising children should
actually be given to those who can do so humanely? Why try to retrain inhumane
parents instead of just not subjecting kids to them in the first place?

If you look at the much bigger picture—children who are gay or trans, children
who date outside their race, children born into cults or to antivaxxers,
children born with disabilities that expect particularly uncommon levels of
support from parents, etc. etc.—the problem is simply that we assue that your
physiological ability to engage in tbe reproductive act means that you're fit
to be a parent. There's zero reason to believe that.

~~~
owens99
> If you look at the much bigger picture—children who are gay or trans,
> children who date outside their race, children born into cults or to
> antivaxxers, children born with disabilities that expect particularly
> uncommon levels of support from parents, etc. etc.

I'm confused about what you are saying is the connection between these four
groups?

~~~
geofft
Those children are quite often mistreated or abused by their parents in often
quiet ways, and offering resources to the parents to learn how to parent
better is unlikely to help.

~~~
owens99
Got it. Makes sense.

------
nkozyra
I don't think the actual study[1] takes the kind of correlation=causation
approach this snippet does.

That said ...

> In addition to distributing report cards earlier in the week, schools could
> consider including messaging to help prevent corporal punishment that
> crosses the line into abuse. But that’s a sticky issue in Florida, where
> some counties still allow corporal punishment in public schools. (Florida’s
> not alone: 19 states still allow schools to hit students, according to the
> Gundersen Center for Effective Discipline.)

This is absolutely insane. It's 2019. I grew up in Florida and remember "the
paddle" from my elementary school days but had assumed it had been stricken by
now.

[1] [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-
abst...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-
abstract/2717779)

~~~
educationdata
What is absolutely insane? The existence of "corporal punishment" or "physical
abuse"?

According to the quoted sentence ("prevent corporal punishment that crosses
the line into abuse"), corporal punishment is not the same as abuse. The
article also says: "Corporal punishment may include pain but is not supposed
to result in injury; corporal punishment resulting in injury is physical
abuse."

So the line is whether the punishment resulting in injury. But it is not clear
what is counted as "injury".

~~~
mirimir
Yeah. What about punishment resulting in emotional injury?

All that corporal punishment teaches is that it's OK for the powerful to
punish the weak.

~~~
nearbuy
All punishment results in emotional injury. That's what punishment means...

~~~
mirimir
Of course. And punishment tends to produce damaged people, who hate themselves
because they're bad. Because, you know, they must be bad, because they've been
punished. And because they're bad, and hate themselves, they take it out on
others, whenever they can get away with it. So it's a recursive cycle of
punishment.

~~~
kabouseng
Citation needed for that statement. Corporal punishment has been a part of
human societies for thousands of years, so you need stronger evidence for such
a statement.

~~~
mirimir
Crime and war have also "been a part of human societies for thousands of
years".

> deMause, L. (2002). The emotional life of nations. London, England: Karnac
> Books.

> Abstract

> Describes a psychogenic theory of history, arguing that childrearing and the
> interpersonal expression of love impact upon the national and international
> arenas with greater force than any bomb. The author discusses the role of
> mothers in political progress, our psychological dependency on our enemies,
> and the concept of the "social alter"\--that part of the mind that
> infinitely restages social trauma. Furthermore, he delineates the ways in
> which inadequate parenting and overabundant technology interact to produce
> the crises of our age. Part I of this book describes how shared early
> personal experiences determine political behavior. The three chapters
> describe historically recent political events to demonstrate how shared
> emotions can cause political violence. Part II details a psychohistorical
> theory of history, first as it applies to politics and second as it explains
> the causes of war. Part III is a history of how child rearing has evolved
> and how more loving, trustful parenting has produced new kinds of human
> psyches, which in turn have resulted in new social and political
> institutions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

[http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-17655-000](http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-17655-000)

Also:
[https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=...](https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=2015&q=psychohistory+punishment&btnG=)

------
ddebernardy
> 19 states still allow schools to hit students

As one living in a country that bans parents from hitting their own children,
I find that number shocking. Do they actually hit the kids in practice, or is
this some left-over regulation from the past (like the French ban on women
wearing trousers in Paris that got formally repelled a few years ago)?

~~~
c3534l
Public schools sure don't hit kids. Private schools might. I know Catholic
schools were infamous for smacking the crap out of kids, but I don't know how
much they've mellowed on that since my Dad and uncles went through Catholic
school in the 70s. I think parents would be pretty irate if a public school
administrator hit their kids, even if they themselves hit their kids.

Edit: I looked at a map and the states that don't forbid hitting kids in
school are all the South:
[https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/533438e769beddc92a184...](https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/533438e769beddc92a184b21-480-273.jpg)

That's a pretty big cultural disparity, so while I can't imagine hitting kids
to fly in a million years in any state that I've lived in, I suppose my
account could be biased. There can be a pretty big divide between southern
states and northern ones sometimes.

~~~
techsupporter
> Public schools sure don't hit kids.

They for darn sure do. On the ordered list of reasons why I yanked my kid out
of the school he was in, number three (will shock you) is that one of his
friends "received corporal punishment" (the polite euphemism for "was struck")
and the school and school district had no mechanism for parents ordering the
school to not do that to our children.

> I looked at a map and the states that don't forbid hitting kids in school
> are all the South

Yep.

> There can be a pretty big divide between southern states and northern ones
> sometimes.

You're not wrong. High up on the list of reasons why my immediate family does
not now and never will again live in the state listed on the top of all of our
birth certificates is cultural differences like this. My "home" state shows no
real signs of changing this or many other of these things. I sincerely hope
they do but me and mine will be witnessing it from afar, at least until my kid
becomes an adult and chooses for himself where to live.

------
joshuamcginnis
If my years of adolescent beatings for anything less than an A taught me
anything, it was: don't bring report cards home on Friday and sign your own
progress reports.

~~~
miyhhbftdx
It taught me something else: deal with similar situations for my kids in a
better way.

Some things I have inculcated as a part of my children's education:

1\. Lots of peer interaction and physical playtime.

2\. Pomodoro technique: just 10-15 minutes of assured focus to cover exam
topics starting several weeks before the exam date.

3\. Treat all grades with praise of hardwork! Because they did put in the time
and effort. And briefly go over mistakes and skipped questions.

4\. Treat the school curriculum as a secondary medium of instruction and push
parental instruction as primary without speed limits.

~~~
Jach
Great points, especially #4 (reminds me of the "No Speed Limit" post from
Sivers), but I wonder about #3. It was (maybe still is?) common for lazy nerds
to bemoan "Why couldn't I have been praised for effort instead of smarts as a
kid?" as if that was the major cause of their laziness. I've suspected that
even if they were praised differently it still wouldn't have helped many such
lazy nerds because the effort required would still have been very minimal up
until they hit their limits where things weren't so easy anymore without
working hard (AP classes, college, sometimes all the way to grad school). As
far as the effects of praise can shape someone I've figured getting praised
for something you didn't do is worse than being praised for a trait, even if
being praised for something you did do is better than for a trait.

------
dorkwood
One possible cause I haven’t seen mentioned is that abusive parents are
perhaps more likely to get drunk on a Friday, and the report card provides
them a timely justification to beat their kids.

~~~
jakobegger
Yes. I don't think bad grades make parents violent. Alcohol does.

------
hvindin
I do wonder if there is any chance that the reason that there is a spike in
reports of abuse on the Saturday following report cards coming out on a Friday
is because it is more likely to be reported?

It's not mentioned anywhere in the article, but if someone said to me that 2
things are true: 1\. There is some correlation between report cards being
returned and child abuse 2\. There is a spike in reports of abuse on Saturdays
when report cards are returned on Friday

I wouldn't immediately think "cool, lets return report cards earlier. Problem
solved"

Other than not really solving the problem of abusive parents, this also
doesn't actually rule out child abuse happening accross the board but not
being reported on weekdays.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
This isn't something designed to solve the problem. The actual problem is
really, really complicated and solving it is difficult.

It is unlikely that all the abuse simply shifts to during the week and stops
getting reported.

What it actually is, however, is a change schools can make to lessen child
abuse, even if it is just a little. It isn't something difficult or expensive
to do.

------
b_tterc_p
They had 2,000 data points... so they looked at the proportion of points on a
given day when there was a report card released the previous day and when
there wasn’t. Assuming Saturday’s accounted for, let’s say 20% of the
population (blindly assuming) then they had about 400 data points and got a p
value of 0.02. I’m assuming they did something to normalize for the number of
days because there’s going to be far fewer report card days... idk. I think
their statistics are probably shaky. Their confidence interval places the
effect size at (20% to 1100%) if I’m reading correctly.

I might believe that report cards increase rates of abuse but the idea that
Friday is something special is probably just due to not having enough data for
other days.

~~~
beatgammit
Perhaps, but a report card is likely to get more attention on a Friday than
another day of the week, and I could see consequences stretching into the
weekend, which is supposed to be a time for a child to relax from the school
week.

That being said, I think we should put _far_ less emphasis on grades and
report cards in general, so I'd rather just not give out report cards on a
regular basis. Grades and reports cause a ton of stress for kids that just
gets in the way of learning. I also think children should be allowed to go at
their own pace and have some level of control over what they learn. It's okay
if a child lags in one area and excels in another for a year or two. Interests
change, and children learn far more rapidly in subjects they're interested in.

I agree that just moving report cards may not solve the problem. We need to
reexamine _why_ we give report cards and decide if there isn't a better way
(and there are a lot of alternative teaching methods that may do better than
the way most public schools are run).

~~~
b_tterc_p
Maybe, but, it’s not especially convincing evidence that this is a widespread
problem. This is pure assumption, but if report cards effected rates
regardless of day they probably would have mentioned this. We shouldn’t assume
it is the case, and then even if it is the case, we should really take a hard
look at whether is a meaningfully large number.

------
rmrfrmrf
This is a great example of how contemporary medicine's obsession with
measurable outcomes produces interventions that are completely devoid of
humanity.

------
DeusExMachina
> “It’s a pretty astonishing finding,”

Is it?

I was never abused, but my parents were definitely not pleased by bad school
reports. It's not hard to imagine that people who look for excuses to abuse
their children, do so after getting a school report.

Why is it so astonishing?

------
solipsism
I'm going to put my money on alcohol being a factor. People drink more on
weekends, and of course the link between alcohol and child abuse is strong and
incontrovertible.

------
JustSomeNobody
It’s rather simple. Abusers are conscious of what they’re doing. They think if
they abuse their child during the week they’re more likely to get caught
because the effects of the abuse (physical and emotional) are still fresh the
next day. If they do the abusing on Friday night, by Monday they think they
have much less likelihood of getting caught.

This may actually work a few times. But eventually they go too far.

------
rblion
To protect kids, we could create a new system of grades that involves more
data than just numbers and scores. Maybe that could be a long-term solution
for a lot of seemingly unrelated problems.

~~~
Tempest1981
Some schools are trying "Standards-Based Grading", where each class has 5-10
semester objectives. Students receive a proficiency rating (4,3,2,1) for each
objective. Essentially a more granular report of your skills, vs a single
letter.

Example: [https://www.teacherease.com/standards-based-
grading.aspx](https://www.teacherease.com/standards-based-grading.aspx)

------
nostrebored
How many Fridays follow a report card release vs. those which don't?

If it is the weekly release schedule that I experienced in Elementary School,
then this statement is effectively "people beat their kids less on public
holidays" which seems much less surprising.

Also, where are schools that do "non-standard" reporting located? This seems
like a geographically confounding factor.

------
rexgallorum2
This one requires a little lateral thinking. Why not get rid of report cards,
or grades, altogether? The use of online platforms where teachers are expected
to enter grades in real time sounds like a massive burden on the teachers, not
to mention a privacy/security risk. Terrible.

------
burlesona
I didn’t see an explanation (or theory) given for why there isn’t a problem on
the other days of the week. Did I just miss it?

The obvious guess would be people go get drunk on Friday night then come home
mad their kid got a bad grade... But I am surprised that it’s somehow not an
issue on other weekdays.

------
stmfreak
Another plea to change the behavior of the many because of the criminal
actions of the few. Can we please go after the criminals and not remove a
parenting tool from the law abiding?

~~~
tzs
How would sending report cards home on a day other than Friday be removing a
parenting tool?

------
aerovistae
I don't understand why this would help at all. Is it better to be beaten in
the middle of the week?

~~~
a1369209993
Actually, yes, for two reasons. Firstly, because you'll be beaten on (say)
wednesday night, rather then friday night and potentially also saturday
morning, saturday night, sunday morning and sunday night. Secondly, because
you'll be beaten less severely, for fear that there might be a teacher who
cares enough to notice if you show up thursday with bruises and a limp.

~~~
mbrumlow
Bruses and limps don't vansish afet Sundays service. Anything requring a
doctor to look at is going to last days.

I don't think there is any evidence that changing the day will change the
outcome.

In fact. If you randomized the day schools sent this info then you will
probably keep this stat hidden.

Seems like the solution is to hold parents who abuse their children
accountable.

------
ngcc_hk
Sadly the study is behind paywall. If there are more details and the data is
more open ...

------
Markoff
what is it report card? when i was young we had books with grades we were
taking home every day, so parents could follow progress and see our grades
every day, nowadays grades are published online do parents can check them
whenever they want

is this another case of some archaic american technology?

~~~
gizmo686
American schools do that as well to varying degrees. In addition to that, they
send out cumulative grades every semester or half semester. In theory, these
grades should not be a surprise, but parents don't always follow the daily
grades their child gets; particularly those parents which might be abusive.

------
vinniejames
How is this at all related to programming?

~~~
swebs
This is not a programming website.

------
daodedickinson
>She and her colleagues suspect that the increase is due to children being
physically punished for their grades, “but it might be something else we don't
know about,” she said.

Fucking duh. How could they have this statistic be accurate at all but not
have anyone ask any of the kids? We would have told them "FUCKING DUH". Got
into a #1 grad program for my major, dropped out because by then my parents
chilled out I realized I have ZERO motivation for anything unless someone is
going to beat me up if I don't do it. Tried getting a comp sci degree, all the
profs told us the degree was useless, profs and students cheated rampantly,
and I didn't see a single company in the industry making the world better
rather than worse. Now I live in my parents' basement and when they die I will
be homeless.

~~~
daodedickinson
Not like kids won't get beat on a weekday, but if my mom was mad on a weekend
I would have to hide under the bed all weekend and stay silent so she wouldn't
be reminded I existed.

Glad somebody loves to vote down abused kids here, thanks.

~~~
lostmyoldone
You seem to be in a bad place, I hope you don't get stuck there. I know how
hard change can be, there's nothing easy about it, and personally - I wouldn't
have been able to even get started alone.

Maybe you have already tried it, but if you have the means, see if you can
find a psychologist, or essentially any professional you feel is interested in
listening, and be prepared to at least consider their words.

An bad environment can corrupt both how the world looks and how we see
ourselves, that's why it's so important to get someone who can help you/us see
again.

I any case, whenever you do throw off the tiniest part of what is keeping you
down. Give yourself credit for it, and celebrate as a madman. Preferably as a
respectful and kind madman, but give yourself credit.

