BOSTON — Evena Joseph was unaware how much her 10-year-old son was struggling in school. She found out only with help from somebody who knows the Boston school system better than she does.
. Opportunities to catch up are plentiful in some places, thanks to federal COVID aid, but won’t last forever. It will take better communication with parents to help students get the support they need, experts say. “Sometimes I can’t understand the writing or the main idea of the text,” J. Ryan said after putting away his homework.
Last spring, she sought treatment for what was becoming obvious: Her son was depressed. She was teamed up at the hospital with the parent advocate who speaks English and Haitian Creole. Before this year, it was up to Boston schools to share midyear evaluations with parents, but it’s not clear how many were doing it. In the fall, Boston rolled out a communications campaign to help teachers explain testing results to parents as much as three times a year.There are many reasons teachers might not talk to parents about a student’s academic progress, especially when the news is bad, research shows.