Parent-Teacher Conferences Exhaust Teachers and Students

A student sobbed outside Adam Patric Miller’s office after missing a writing conference for a personal statement. Miller rescheduled it for the following week and reminded the student that weeks remained to polish the nearly finished statement before the Nov. 1 deadline. That episode reflects a school routine Miller says can turn student support into another demand on teachers and families.

Miller, a special contributor to the Chicago Tribune, says his school holds conferences next week, at quarter’s end and during a stressful stretch as early college-application deadlines approach. He argues high schools should stop holding routine parent-teacher conferences. The practice exhausts teachers and can interfere with students learning to manage their own work.

A schedule built around institutional demands

Miller describes five hours of virtual 10-minute appointment slots after school and on Tuesday. Faculty then stay in the building to meet parents in person until 7:30 p.m., after a full teaching day. The next day, exhausted teachers return to the classroom. Miller says they recover at home Friday and have also had a grading day when students stayed home, even as schools tell them conferences aren’t about grades.

Grades often become the focus anyway, in Miller’s account. The meetings add administrative work during an already demanding quarter, with teachers expected to remain available after their regular teaching day. He calls conference week one of the most “inhumane administrative imperatives” in high school. Teachers call in sick afterward, he says, with depleted immune systems.

Miller says conferences make developmental sense in early grades, but high school students should gain independence. Most can drive, he writes, and many seniors can vote. Soon, they’ll deal with college professors or bosses. Grades already show parents a student’s progress or lack of it, he says, and parents can email teachers with concerns. A parent with a genuine concern can schedule a conference at any time.

When access turns into a power play

Miller recounts a parent challenging his officemate over an essay grade: “Do you know I've published six books?” He also recalls teaching honors freshman English in a suburb of Ohio, where parents lined a hallway to meet a teacher who wasn’t giving A’s in the first quarter.

One parent asked, “Do you know with such a low grade for my son, you're making it impossible for him to get into Johns Hopkins Medical School?” Another asked, “Don't you know the average IQ of students in your class is 130?” The meeting meant to discuss a student’s learning becomes, in these encounters, a contest over grades, credentials and parental influence.

Miller says conferences serve public relations, too. Per-pupil spending and taxes are high, he writes, and meetings give taxpayers face time with teachers who are “presentable, articulate,” showing that buying a home in the school community was a wise investment. Teachers must perform for families as well as teach.

A refusal the system hasn’t made

Why don’t teachers collectively refuse the practice? Miller says public-school teachers are the last people making decisions that affect their own well-being and students’ learning. The question points to collective refusal, but the article describes no organized refusal or other teacher action.

For parents, Miller advises skipping a meeting if their child has an A or B, calling it a “victory lap conference.” If they’re worried about learning, he says, they should ask the student what can be done, then contact the teacher if the student doesn’t know. But when districts present conferences as mandatory, parents fill every slot.

Miller closes with the quotation, “If the fool would persist in his folly,” a poet wrote, “he would become wise,” then says it feels like a teacher’s epitaph after a week of conferences. Miller has taught high school for 25 years in three states, currently teaches in St. Louis and is the author of “A Greater Monster.”