A New Focus

There is no doubt that there are many stakeholders that need to be brought into the partnership that I believe is necessary for real education reform. Building a “National Education Consortium” that should, for all intents and purposes, become the main focus of a new United States Department of Education, will need to encompass representatives from every group that has a stake in the education of our children into the future. The largest and most important group of stakeholders, in my opinion, is parents. Every parent wants their child to receive the absolute best education available. They want opportunities for their children that perhaps they did not have. However, there is another reason for their desire for a better education system, one that goes beyond their own personal wishes. Parents as citizens of the World want to see the economy of the United States grow. They want the United States to be more competitive in the world market and they understand, perhaps through their own employment situation, the need for a highly trained and highly paid workforce. They know that the new jobs in the new and emerging industries will require new skill sets that every person entering the workforce must have in order to be successful.

This notion of increased parental participation in their own child’s education is not a new one rather; it has been the focus of many local school districts for the past decade. This is particularly true in the urban districts where numerous debilitating factors may exist. So to say that this is going to be easy, again, I say it will not. The new call for parental participation, particularly, at the level now required for this major reform will be monumentally more difficult than ever before. But not impossible!

As the ultimate optimist, I must share with you this quote from a similarly optimistic educator:

“My vision for family engagement is ambitious… I want to have too many parents demanding excellence in their schools. I want all parents to be real partners in education with their children’s teachers, from cradle to career. In this partnership, students and parents should feel connected—and teachers should feel supported. When parents demand change and better options for their children, they become the real accountability backstop for the educational system.”

Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education (2010)

For the educators who may be reading this I must ask if you can even imagine the day when you would have too many parents in your classroom for “back to school night” or having to move the PTA meeting from the library to the cafeteria because of the crowd. Too good to be true you say! Well this is the type of parental engagement that is necessary if real reform is to happen.

So where to begin? Well for years parent participation has been a completely voluntary and over those many years, parents have become increasingly busier. The number of single parent households has increased, more two working parent households have become necessary and schools have become presumably more responsible for child rearing. While all of these reasons may be understandable, they do not negate the responsibilities of being a parent. Teachers have become more and more aware of the demands put on parents today. Lest we forget, many of them are parents themselves. As demands on parents’ time have increased so has the flexibility of teachers. Most teachers are willing to do whatever it takes to help their students succeed and often will work with parents’ busy schedules to make that possible. But teachers can’t pull teeth. There must be a willingness by parents to engage in their child’s education.

Today in many school districts around the country there are efforts under way to promote parental engagement. While some are more successful than others they all seem to use a myriad of clever tactics and promotional programs geared toward getting more parents involved. However, if you ask any one of them, they would tell you that their efforts are not producing the desired result; increased academic achievement. Some of the tactics being used are well intended such as community outreach, having the schools represented at community activities, some schools offer ESL classes for parents with limited English skills or maybe they offer parenting workshops for young parents and classes on how parents can help with their child’s homework. All of these types of activities are very good and should be continued or even expanded to possibly include semiannual family health clinic check-ups, or setting up a employment referral service between and among local businesses and parents needing employment. These and programs like these are extremely worthwhile but often have limited results. Unfortunately, these results are contrary to study after study that prove increased academic achievement is directly proportional to the level of parental engagement in their children’s education.

So by now you are asking yourselves what more can be done, how can we guarantee that parents will take a more important and sustainable role in their child’s education? Well, we often need to remind ourselves that “desperate times require desperate measures”. For several years now, the accountability junkies have put the onus on mandatory standardized testing to hold students and teachers accountable. No such mandatory accountability requirements, to my knowledge, have ever been levied upon parents and guardians. What is their level of responsibility in all of this? Putting their children on the bus and letting the schools do the rest has gone on for far too long, in fact, in many school districts it is to the point where the schools have taken over the responsibility of feeding the students three meals a day, and school nurses have become the child’s only source of healthcare. This is what the nation’s educational system has become and I’m here to tell you that it is in dire need of reform. But, like I have said it is going to take a lot of courage to say what needs to said and then even more courage to get it done.

While I have often said that I am not a huge proponent of increased legislation or regulations however, in this particular case I must insist. It appears to me that the only way we are going to bring the first and most important group of stakeholders (parents) to the table is going to be through legislation. Student promotion to the next grade and finally their graduation must be tied to their parent’s involvement through the K-12 years. Parents must commit to a given number of meetings, workshops and social activities throughout each grade year in order for the student to be eligible for promotion. This requirement would of course be in addition to their individual readiness to move on. RADICAL you say, I don’t believe so! In fact this type of legislation would be one of the very few that wouldn’t cost the school district a penny. There have been so many laws that amounted to unfunded mandates placed on school districts and ultimately the tax payers, that this one would be a welcomed treat. The best part of this approach is that the research has already been done in fact ad nauseam.  Academic achievement is directly proportional to Parental involvement in their children’s education.

So there, I said it, there needs to be a shifting of at least some of the responsibility for educating our young people back onto their parents. So with that thought, I will leave you to ponder such a radical idea until next we speak.