(Vol. 4, No. 1 - Spring 2000)
This Parent Outreach Program
Puts Student Achievement First
Rogers Middle School enjoys an active PTA and a generous
supply of parent volunteers who raise funds, tutor in classrooms, and even
run a "sweet shop" for students. But support for student achievement
is the school's first parent-involvement priority.
By John Norton
The November 1st memo from Rogers Middle School was friendly but firm:
"When you signed the contract in the Code of Academic and Behavioral
Excellence," the memo read, "you agreed to provide support for
my child to meet the academic and behavioral expectations of Rogers Middle
School. We need to meet with you and your child to share with you the ways
we can support each other and develop a plan for 1999-2000 school year for
your child. This meeting is required for those parents/guardians of students
who earned a D or F in any class on the first Progress Report and have not
met with teachers."
Parents were offered a choice of three meeting times: 9 a.m., 2 p.m. or
7 p.m. Rogers principal Linda Moore admits that attendance could not be
enforced, "but it's our job to get them here and get everyone focused
on the problem early in the year, when we can do something about it. We
have to set the expectation."
The memo and the subsequent meetings are just one example of Rogers' proactive
approach to home-school relations. The southside school enjoys an active
PTA and a generous supply of parent volunteers who raise funds, tutor in
classrooms, and even run a "sweet shop" for students. But support
for student achievement is the school's first parent-involvement priority.
"We try real hard as early as we can to create opportunities to work
with the parents on academic support," says Rogers community worker
Pat Pollock. "If we get the parents to buy into education, then we've
got the ticket."
Because Rogers enrolls children from well-to-do families, it has a reputation
in some circles as an "upperclass" school. But the sprawling Rogers
campus, located in a quiet section of Naples, has its share of low-income
families - more than 45 percent of its students are in the free lunch program.
And Moore says that when it comes to student support, it's impossible to
predict parent behavior based on socio-economic factors.
"Of course there are differences due to education and the time parents
have to spend in our school," she says. "Some parents are in a
better position to help their kids with school work and so forth. But when
it comes to caring, that cuts across all the demographic lines." When
parents gathered for her "D" and "F" conference, Moore
says, it was obvious to everyone in the room that "you can have a 'D'
or 'F' on your report card, whatever part of town you're from."
During the meetings, Moore and another staff member "role-played"
typical home conversations between students and parents. "She would
say 'do you have any homework,' and I would say 'I did it already.' And
then she made it clear she was going to make me sit down and do an hour's
worth of something that had to do with school, whether it was homework or
not."
Moore required students to attend part of the meeting with their parents.
"I had them sit together and write improvement goals in the kids' student
planners. Someone heard one parent say as they were going out that 'our
goal is that we don't have to come to this meeting any more.' Which is fine
with me. I don't care how they motivate themselves, so long as the kid does
the work."
"Everything within our power"
Over the past several years, teachers and administrators at Rogers have
developed an early-warning system to identify every student with academic
problems. "I have to feel by the time those kids leave me in 8th grade,
we've done everything we could possibly do to make them successful as students
and as young people," Moore says. "Everything within our power
with the resources we have."
The Rogers staff has adopted several strategies to provide extra help and
support for struggling students. After experimenting with programs before
and during school, they concluded that they could be most effective by strengthening
after-school programs - offering tutoring, study halls, special instruction
and intramural activities.
Homework is a major focus for kids who stay after school. "We want
to help them develop new scholarly habits early in their experience here,"
Moore explains. "Writing down your homework, doing your homework, turning
in your homework. Those three things are what we emphasize."
Many district leaders consider Rogers' parent outreach efforts a model for
other middle schools. In addition to PTA and other typical parent gatherings,
Moore sponsors parent coffees to discuss the school's academic focus and
its standards-based approach to teaching. The school publishes regular issues
of a parent-focused newsletter in English and Spanish. Middle school parent
liaison Kathy Scott works with Moore to monitor parent feedback and develop
new programs to meet identified needs. Community worker Pollack contacts
parents by phone and through home visits when students are flagging academically.
Despite all these effort, Pollack says, some parents refuse to become actively
involved in helping their kids. "If you have a parent that says 'yes,
I'll help' but doesn't hold to it, then we're back where we started,"
she says. Thanks to Rogers' expanded afternoon program, however, Moore and
her staff are in a position to act even when parents don't.
"Even if we can't get them to do anything on their own, we can usually
persuade them to sign a permission slip for their kids to stay after school,"
Moore says. "We call parents all the time, and we hope they will partner
with us. We do everything we can to hold them accountable, but the final
thing is, what are we going to do to make this situation better for this
child?"
What parents want to know
Rogers, of course, has many parents - perhaps most - who are actively involved
in their children's education. Those are the parents, Moore says, who are
most likely to attend meetings like the parent coffees last semester, where
teachers explained how students are graded in a standards-based classroom.
Libby Casper, an active parent who attended one of the coffees, says that
as the standards process has evolved and been refined by the district, "it's
so much clearer. It's easier for parents to understand.I think the staff
at Rogers has helped us see that our kids are thinking more critically and
deeply than we ever did in school."
"When a parent comes in to talk to you, it's often a back-and-forth
conversation, teacher-parent, parent-teacher," says Rogers history
teacher Paul Jenkins. "What standards help us to do is bring the student
into the conversation. Here's where the student is failing, here's what
they need to do.
"Then the parent becomes your ally, and that's exactly the kind of
relationship teachers and parents need to have," Jenkins says. "If
we take the time to explain the standards and the student work and the purpose
of the lesson to parents, that's when the students are going to show some
improvement. I have yet to see a time when the parents left a meeting with
me unhappy since I've been following this process."
[See this interview with Paul Jenkins]
Principal Linda Moore is quick to say, however, that the job of educating
parents about standards is on-going and never-ending. "It's important
for us to have parent education about what standards are - that they are
really a way for us to make sure that everybody's kid is challenged to learn
and understands what is 'good enough.'
"I don't expect a parent to be an expert on standards. I would be content
if she looks at her student's assignments, looks at his homework, and she
knows that there are scoring guides so she can be effective in helping her
child with school work at home.
"Some of the standards talk is verbiage. It's not so important that
you as a parent can say, 'we're a standards-based school; we're a standards-based
district,' as it is that you have a pretty good idea of what your kid can
do at the end of 8th grade if they've been in this school for three years.
Can they do the things they need to do to be successful in high school?
That's what parents want to know."
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