(Vol. 1, No. 2 - Spring 1997)

Connecting Parents to Middle School Reform

by Reagan Walker

Before the school board's mandate, before President Clinton declared the Long Beach schools "trendsetters," before dress codes were "cool," the students at Rogers Middle School were wearing school uniforms.

The idea came from a core group of Rogers' parents and educators, who sold other parents and educators on the concept. From this small example of parent-school partnership has grown not only a districtwide mandate for school uniforms but something of a national movement, as the "Long Beach model" draws loud applause from across the nation.

The decision to require uniforms, as LBUSD superintendent Carl Cohn has often said, was the district's way of setting a standard for appearance and behavior. For the last several years, with a good deal less publicity, Long Beach educators have also been working to establish other standards -- standards that describe what students should be learning in school.

While a public concerned about school discipline and order has been quick to grasp the essential message behind the uniforms standard, the job of explaining and winning support for standards-based academic reform is much tougher.

"We need the same kind of grass roots effort and support that we saw with uniforms to make it happen," says Deputy Superintendent Myrna Fujimoto. "We have these new standards and can make a strong case for them. People in other districts across the country know about what we are doing, but not the people down the street."

Most parents and community members admit that they have a clearer idea about how children should behave in school than they do about how they should be learning. Many see the issues of teaching and learning as matters best left up to the educators.

But Long Beach's education leaders take a different view. Although they know that middle school is a time when many parents back away from school involvement, they believe they must gain the support of parents and the wider Long Beach community if students in the middle grades are going to meet LBUSD's tough new standards.

Building that support will require the district to abandon its business-as-usual approach to community engagement. Fujimoto says it's going to take "teachers knocking on doors, parent talking to parent."

Getting parents involved in reform begins with the basics of communication

The school district already does a lot to get parents involved. The superintendent holds a periodic "parents' forum" with representatives from every school in the district. Area superintendents, each with reponsibility for a group of elementary and middle schools, have parent task forces.

At individual schools, there are many avenues for parental input into important school decisions. Site-based councils -- which must include both teachers and parents -- approve budget and policy actions that help determine each school's direction. Parents also serve by law on committees that oversee the spending of federal dollars for bilingual and remedial programs.

All of these efforts to involve the community in the schools have their place. But something extra will be needed to build the kind of momentum needed to change the way schools traditionally go about the business of instruction. And that's what standards-based reform is all about.

"It's really a two-step process," says Kristi Kahl, who manages middle school reform efforts for the district. "First we have to convince parents that their kids still need them involved in the schools, period. Then we have to find effective ways to help them understand what we hope to accomplish through standards."

LBUSD is involved a variety of strategies to accomplish these two goals. The advisory committee that helps steer middle school reform includes several active parents who participate in high-level discussions about building a standards-based school system. Parents also participate in "Carpe Diem," an annual professional development conference for teachers designed to advance the standards agenda.

This spring, LBUSD sponsored its first Parent Institute, which seeks to link larger numbers of parents with middle school educators and professors at local colleges who are supporting reform. The range of Institute topics illustrates the district's two-pronged approach to parent/school relations. Workshops on understanding adolescent development, preparing students to go to college, and helping children with schoolwork all speak to the basics of parent involvement. Other sessions on academic standards, classroom assessment, and new teaching and learning strategies are aimed at helping parents understand why the classrooms of today and tomorrow may look different than the classrooms of old.

A tradition of "stand-offishness"

Long Beach Unified's parent outreach efforts are impressive, but the task before the school district remains daunting. The problems are rooted in a tradition of "stand-offishness" between middle grades teachers and parents that's common across the nation.

LBUSD's Parent Institute is an outgrowth of a smaller conference held in the spring of 1996 called "Middle Matters," which helped launch the district's drive toward standards-based reform. At that conference, one common concern was voiced by both parents and teachers time and again: home/school communication.

Two parents who jotted comments on their conference evaluation sheets summed up the feelings of many others: "I would like parents to not be dismissed by school secretaries and teachers so that they feel important in the process," said one. "I just want teachers and parents to treat each other as partners," said another. "Why is that so hard?"

One reason it's hard, says a Long Beach administrator who doesn't want to be named, is that teachers themselves often feel insecure about the quality of teaching and learning in their schools. "Many teachers know that they need to be doing a better job, but they don't always have the knowledge and skills, and the support they need to do better," the administrator says. "By remaining aloof from parents, teachers can avoid difficult discussions about what a child is really learning."

District leaders hope that as teachers begin to use standards and constant classroom assessment, they will have something more concrete to say to parents. Instead of telling a parent, "your son has a 'D' in my class," they will be able to show parents examples of a student's work and describe clearly what each student is expected to learn and where they are in relation to the district's standards.

"This is already happening in some classrooms," the administrator says. "But until most of our teachers really learn how to use standards and assessment to talk about student performance, parents are going to feel put off."

Making involvement meaningful for parents

Even when parents have the confidence and time to volunteer, schools don't always know what to do with them.

Colleen Hubbell has always devoted two days a week to volunteering at whatever school her two sons attend. When her oldest son first started at Hughes Middle School, she says she spent most of her volunteer time running off copies of materials teachers needed. While that was worthwhile, she felt she could offer more.

In Hubbell's case, persistence paid off. Now she tutors students and assists teachers in labor-intensive efforts like the Writer's Workshop, which requires students to write almost daily and works best when they get quick feedback.

HUbbell has worked closely with school counselors and others to come up with a meaningful list of things parents can do to help educators at Hughes. Still, not every parent feels welcomed or needed.
Jeanetta Johnson has a child at Hughes who is in special education and who often has behavior problems. "It seems I only hear from the school when something is wrong," she says. "I'm off from work on Mondays and Tuesdays and have said many times I could come to the school to help out, but they don't seem to know what to do with parents. I want to do whatever I can to help."

Johnson's experience points to a need for schools to reexamine their methods of engaging parents. "We want to bring more parents in, but unless we proactively channel their efforts from the very beginning, the whole effort could go off target," says Fujimoto. "We need to train school officials on how to better involve parents in the heart of what we are doing to meet the high standards."
That will be the push in coming months -- getting more parents to come to the school and getting schools ready for more parents.

"It starts with how schools introduce themselves," says Wendy Weber, one of two communications consultant working with the district to create new ways to get the community involved. "When a child starts a new school, there should be major efforts to educate the parents about that school, about how they can be involved."

Maria Busatto, an active parent at Rogers Middle School, agrees. She's always tried to be involved at her children's schools, but she admits it took awhile at Rogers. In many ways, parents have to make the same adjustment from the elementary to the middle school level as students.

"You are transferring from a small setting at the elementary school with one teacher as your contact," says Busatto. "At the middle school, your child will have several teachers. You could walk in an elementary school and talk to your child's teacher. At the middle school, you have to make an appointment. I made the adjustment, but it took some time."

Parents may have a better idea

As educators become more savvy about getting parents into schools, "they will also have to be willing to let them participate in ways they believe are meaningful," says Marcia Sharp, an LBUSD consultant who helps school districts and non-profit organizations improve communications. Some will be satisfied with menial chores, but others will want to feel like they are helping the school reach its most important goal: raising student achievement.

"We have to continue to build the skills of principals and teachers to deliver the message of what the high standards are," says Sharp. "But that also means they will need to know how to listen better.
"That's the essence of parental involvement," she says. "Not just that parents show up and do what they are asked to do. But they show up and think about what's going on in the school, and if they have a better idea, then educators need to be ready to listen."

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Finding a Common Language -- School-home communication is
doubly difficult when parents speak more than 40 different languages.