Believing in Ourselves: Urban Middle School Reform

Believing in Ourselves

Part I - Chapter 4

PARENT INVOLVEMENT:
A MISNOMER FOR URBAN SCHOOLS?

Every Clark school -- every inner city school, for that matter -- cries out for more parent involvement. If only parents would come to the school and make the connections, then perhaps they could be persuaded to be "on the school's side" and get their children off to school on time, take an interest in homework, pressure their children to achieve, and attend school functions.

These are worthy goals and reflect an understanding that among poor families, parent involvement must be defined in nontraditional terms. The bake sales for school trips or the fund raising for computers, typical of a suburban school, do not always fit with the needs or possibilities of poor families. However, even a revised understanding of parent support from low-income families relies too much on efforts to get parents on the "school's side," not enough on what it takes to get the schools on the "parents' side."

Efforts to involve low-income parents in urban middle schools must use a language and actions that convey a commitment by the schools to support parents and a message that the schools are family-centered.

Daisy Cubias and Shirley Owens have knocked on hundreds of doors in the Milwaukee neighborhoods that send students to Kosciuszko and Parkman Middle Schools. These two energetic parent coordinators set up parent centers at each school, started classes for parents, and served as mediators between families and teachers/administrators. They named their effort the Empowerment Project, and it worked.

Before the Empowerment Project, says Cubias, "parents weren't welcome in the schools." Now, they have their own places there, use newly acquired computer skills to publish their own newsletters that talk about school issues frankly, and volunteer for tasks that the parent coordinators try to make meaningful. With local funds beyond those supplied by the Clark Foundation, the Empowerment Project has expanded to two other middle schools and to the high schools where students from the four schools usually matriculate.

Surveys show that parent satisfaction with the Clark network schools is up considerably. This becomes even more impressive when compared to a 1995 citywide study of black parents that found 47 percent convinced the schools in general had become worse in the past five years. Parent involvement and approval of "Kozy" and Parkman, however, weren't enough to make the differences needed. Even as parent satisfaction went up, indicators of student success at the schools went down-achievement in reading and math, as well as attendance.

How can more involved parents approve of schools that are not serving their students well? On the surface, says Owens, "parents are concerned only about their own child's progress." The numbers of parents brought into the schools through the Empowerment Project represent dramatic increases, percentage-wise, from previous years, but they still make up only a minority of parents at the two schools. Because of their involvement, their children probably are doing better in school, or the parents at least are in accord with the schools' goals. If the school-wide indicators stay the same, however, Owens predicts that a next stage may be anger.

Underneath the parent involvement issue in inner-city schools is a deep mistrust by parents that schools hardly comprehend. What Kozy and Parkman accomplished was a change in parents' perceptions about the schools. Schools became more welcoming places, and thus in the minds of parents, better environments for their children. However, as Martine Makower of the Urban Strategies Council in Oakland points out, "parent involvement is not a substitute for teachers being professional and making sure students learn." More parent involvement might minimize teacher behaviors rising from cultural misunderstandings, she says, and an informed community is better able to hold schools accountable. But, "we're all going to get stuck if there are no consequences for poor teaching."

LOUISVILLE: SCHOOLS REACH OUT

In Louisville, the excellent training and materials offered by the Effective Parenting Information for Children (EPIC) provided a base for teachers and parents on how to connect better. Yet, the number of parents drawn into the schools grew very little.

At Western Middle School, where grandparents and parents of today's students hold their own memories of hostility and failure as students at the same school, luring parents back is tough. Western began a monthly awards program, the Falcon Awards, at which students nominate their parents for the honor and read their essays aloud at luncheon ceremonies for the families. These are heart-warming experiences -- tear-jerkers for many -- and they increased parent involvement to some extent.

"Dealing with the love/hate relationship of parents
with the school means that we have to work through what parent involvement means."

But reaching parents requires more. For Principal Mary Grace Jaeger, "dealing with the love/hate relationship of parents with the school means that we have to work through what parent involvement means." Parent attitudes are more important than involvement, she admits, but the dilemma is how to change attitudes on a scale beyond the few parents who respond to overtures by the school.

This dilemma is borne out in a survey of parents at Western and Southern Middle Schools by the county-wide Coalition of Middle Schools. Parents talked about several barriers that are very real to them: "a discomfort with the confrontational setting" created by schools when communicating with parents; negative past personal experiences; an inability to do what teachers ask them to do; and a put-down attitude toward workshops, training, or other meetings between parents and school people. This mistrust makes seemingly innocent school practices take on different meaning for parents. Teachers, for example, may believe that a team conference is more helpful to parents than conferring with individual teachers, but to a parent facing a group of teachers at the same time, the experience could be formidable and more threatening.

SAN DIEGO: LEARNING TO COMMUNICATE

In San Diego, diversity is the "parent problem." Throughout the Clark project, the Home/School Partnership Collaboration, coordinated by the June Burnett Institute at San Diego State University, brought together seven agencies in San Diego to create a multi-ethnic effort to increase parent involvement. It included the traditional parent groups (PTA, Junior League, Parent Institute), but also reached out to Chicano, Asian, and African-American groups.

The Partnership succeeded in putting diverse groups in the same room together for the first time. It sponsored parent training at different levels. When barrio parents at Muirlands Middle School protested what they perceived as discriminatory practices/attitudes by Muirlands teachers, the Partnership helped work out a compromise that extended barrio parent involvement and barrio student participation in school affairs. At Mann Middle School, the various parent groups work through a Parent Center that provides interpreters for teachers, classes for parents, and volunteer coordination.

The Partnership helped work out a compromise
that extended barrio parent involvement and
barrio student participation in school affairs.

Over the years, the Partnership's strategies to handle diversity changed. Originally, its institutes for parents were separated by language/ethnic group, with parents coming together only for plenary sessions. However, commonalities became more important than differences. All parents now meet together, discussing the same issues with the help of translators. At one meeting, for example, the film "Victor," about an immigrant boy caught between the culture of his family and that of his American school, resonated among all of the parents, helping them to feel a kinship with each other. "Parents from very different backgrounds find they share the same problems," says Jean Taylor, the PTA representative on the Partnership.

While the Partnership has brought together cross-cultural leadership among various groups and increased the number of parents coming into the schools, the percentages of increased involvement are still not large. Nor is Taylor, who is white, convinced that many teachers' attitudes are changing toward culturally diverse families. However, incidences of the lack of understanding are more likely to be with individual teachers, not a whole school, says Tomi Onibuwe-Johnson, project coordinator; and parents know the Partnership will step in and help.

BALTIMORE: PARENTS GET HOMEWORK

In Baltimore, the Fund for Educational Excellence sponsored the Teachers Involving Parents in Schoolwork (TIPS) project, funded by the Clark Foundation. Using research consultants from The Johns Hopkins University and working with teams of teachers, the project developed more than 200 homework activities in language arts, science/health, and math. The assignments are for parents (or some other adult at home) and students to do together.

Widely publicized at meetings and other parent contacts, the project undoubtedly increased parent knowledge of schoolwork and stimulated teachers to think of academic content from the parents' viewpoint. Anecdotal evidence says that student behavior improved at both Baltimore schools. Students return TIPS more often than regular homework assignments.

Still, the impact of TIPS on student achievement appears negligible. Overall student achievement at the schools remained among the worst performing in Maryland, according to state assessments. Nor did the program significantly increase parent involvement at either of the Clark schools in Baltimore.

LANGUAGE AND SERVICE

Looking through the parent involvement policies and summaries presented by the different Clark sites, one gets the impression that at least in the language used, the schools still perceive themselves as the leader, parents as the follower. Despite rhetoric about forming partnerships with parents, schools do not seem to have gone the extra step to become family-centered. For example, the Committee for Parent Empowerment of the Coalition on Middle Schools in Louisville wants parents to be advocates for their children, and parents and schools to develop mutual respect. Yet, the wording of the goal was less inviting: "All parents have the responsibility to be involved at high levels to enhance their children's opportunities for academic success." A parent might read that as an ultimatum, not an invitation.

Being sensitive to the power images conveyed by language doesn't mean ignoring the responsibilities of parents. Schools should expect parents to expect a level of effort and stick-to-itness, as well as civility, of their children. Poor parents should "own" the determination that their their children prepare for higher education as much as do more affluent parents. Yet, much as young adolescents need security and self-confidence in order to cope successfully, so do many families if they are to function in a supportive way.

Public policy and some middle school initiatives now recognize that need. The Youth Service Centers (YSC) at all three Louisville schools, one of the benefits of the Kentucky reform law, are providing many supports for students and families that schools had been unable to address before or had met inadequately. They are a refuge and helper, says Western's principal, Mary Grace Jaeger, and do a lot of outreach that the school wasn't doing before. "Without their help in deaccelerating parent anger," says Jeager, "this school might be out of control."

At Iroquois Middle School in Louisville, the Youth Service Center and many of the support services of the schools have merged. Staffs from both the school and the YSC work together now on such activities as job shadowing, business-sponsored lunches for outstanding students, college visits, and self-esteem classes for students. The center provides "consistent support," says former principal Cheryl DeMarsh, especially for students and families with serious needs.

At Calverton Middle School in Baltimore, former principal Earl Lee wished fervently for such a support system for his students and their families, especially health services. As a neighborhood school, Calverton could provide a service center much more easily than schools where much of the enrollment is bused in.

In San Diego, Mann Middle School, with students from a wide geographic area, is part of the "Crawford Cluster," composed of all the schools that feed into Crawford High School. Through the Crawford Community Connection, families of students receive health and human services support. As a demonstration site in Oakland, King Estates Junior High School chose from several models to use the Comer model of developing a team approach to student support and including parents on the team. It also helped set up a Kids House in a nearby family's home, a place where a few students can go for homecooked meals, homework help from college students, and an opportunity to talk about whatever is on their minds.

Roosevelt Junior High School in Oakland expanded its counseling services in order to provide individual and group counseling to both students and parents. A Student Consultation Team meets weekly to consider individual students' problems. Also, the school offers facilities for on-site counseling provided by such groups as the East Bay Asian Youth Center and Filipinos for Affirmative Action.

This trend to offer family services within or through schools was not evident at the beginning of the Clark project. In most instances, it developed apart from the Clark efforts, but totally consonant with the initiative's emphasis upon high support. Furthermore, Baltimore's TIPS program and some of Louisville's youth service activities make the connection between higher student achievement and increased communications and/or services for families.

Schools that help parents make connections,
maneuver systems, and learn new skills are,
in effect, helping their students also.

There are good reasons to make that connection more obvious. For one, research on resilient students -- those who persevere in school despite terrible odds -- finds that such students have a consistent support system, an adult in or out of the family upon whom they can depend. There also is considerable evidence that family literacy, especially quality verbal interaction of mothers with their children, counts more toward student achievement than any other factor. Schools that help parents make connections, maneuver systems, and learn new skills are, in effect, helping their students also.

Despite many efforts to reach parents, none of the original Clark schools has been able to become a truly family-centered school, one in which parents are as much a part of the school's mission as are students. (This kind of environment, researchers point out, is a "given" for schools in Finland, for example, which ranks at the top of studies on language development of children.)

That it is possible to create such schools in this country is illustrated by Washington Middle School in Long Beach. Washington invited in, on campus, a city-sponsored parent center, a Head Start program, and a police neighborhood center. It helped establish a community center across the street from the school where students and adults receive a variety of services and which is credited with revitalizing what had been considered the most troubled neighborhood in Long Beach. Counselors at Washington have been relieved of most paperwork, using college interns for routine tasks; instead, the counselors focus on direct services to students and parents.

Parents still do not come out to meetings like the school wants, according to the principal, but they are in the school constantly for different reasons and the school is earning a reputation as a place that cares about families.

It will take a long time for many of the schools in the initial Clark network to create that sort of an environment for their families. However, there are hints among the schools in these blighted neighborhoods that they realize it is right for them to see parents as more than adjuncts to their goals. Instead of trying to get parents on their side, they are beginning to line up on the parents' side.

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from Believing in Ourselves: Progress and Struggle in Middle School Reform. By Anne C. Lewis. Published in 1995 by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.