(Vol. 1, No. 1 - Winter 1996/1997)
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Parents in the Schools
ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
By Holly Holland
"I would have thought this room would be packed," said Vici Crites
as she looked around the nearly empty Westport Middle School auditorium
on a school night in late September. "I wonder where the parents are.
Given all the school problems, you'd think they'd want to be here."
Crites, whose 6th grader attends Westport, was one of eight people who showed
up to learn more about The Right Question Project, a new program designed
to boost parent involvement in Jefferson County's middle schools.
The poor turnout was not a surprise to Cheryl Wheeler, mother of an eighth-grader,
who recalled a similar experience at a PTSA meeting last spring. "Twelve
hundred kids," she said, "and I was the only parent here."
Mike Suttles, Westport's new principal, tried to put a more positive spin
on the evening. "I just want you to know how grateful I am that you
are here," he told the group. "It's a small turnout, but it's
a start."
The lack of parent participation certainly isn't unique to Westport. Walk
into the majority of middle schools around the country and you will find
few parents actively involved in their children's education. A 1994 national
study found only 24 percent of parents volunteer in middle and high school
-- about half the elementary school numbers.
A new kind of parent involvement
These days everyone from teachers to talk show hosts feels free to speculate
on the reasons why parents drop out. They're busy. They're apathetic. They're
angry. They're intimidated. They're confused about how to treat their children
as they move through the tough transitions of adolescence.
All good reasons. But there's another cause that often gets overlooked.
Although educators believe parent support and student achievement are closely
linked, schools haven't always done a good job of welcoming parents into
the fold or engaging them in a serious dialogue about what and how their
children are learning.
Organizers of The Right Question Project hope to change that practice. Started
six years ago by community activists in Massachusetts, the organization
helps parents advocate for their children -- not through confrontation but
by supporting and monitoring their education through democratic participation.
The idea, said executive director Dan Rothstein, is to "create a climate
of people looking at learning."
Prichard Committee's first program
The Right Question Project is at the heart of a broad effort by the Prichard
Committee for Academic Excellence to get parents more involved in and knowledgeable
about education. Although the Lexington-based group has been active in Kentucky
school reform for nearly two decades, the middle school program, begun with
a Clark Foundation grant this year, is Prichard's first direct involvement
in the Louisville public schools.
To kick off the project, Prichard hired a director (former JCPS middle school
staff member Cynthia Williams) and recruited trainers with connections to
community centers and neighborhood associations to help train parents in
the Right Question process. In a show of support, the school district used
its own Clark funds to hire six part-time coordinators to work in tandem
with Prichard and offer parent support at 12 district middle schools.
Bev Raimondo, director of community support for the Prichard Committee,
said organizers saw a need for this kind of parent advocacy program after
a discussion last year with a group of Louisville middle school teachers.
"We asked teachers how they would feel if a parent asked about how
they were preparing students to graduate from the eighth grade and meet
the state's academic standards," Raimondo said.
"One teacher said, 'I would need more time to put together information.
I would need to set up another conference and have time to think.' Another
teacher said, 'I would begin to see that child differently. My expectations
would change.'
"Parents are going to find both kinds of teachers," Raimondo said.
"The lucky ones will get the second one."
Parent crave feedback about their children
Instead of accepting pat answers and simple reassurances from teachers and
administrators, The Right Question Project encourages parents to probe deeper.
And as the discussions at this fall's training revealed, middle school parents
have a lot on their minds.
They are struggling to understand and reach their children. They feel less
connected to the larger, less nurturing environment of middle schools where
their children have five or six teachers compared to one main teacher in
elementary school. They crave feedback about their children, good and bad.
The Right Question Project trainers try to build on parents' basic understanding
of school issues and help them sharpen their ability to ask questions about
academic standards and classroom teahcing.
"As parents we have to be teachers, nurturers and advocates,"
explained Roz Daugherty, a parent support coordinator who has worked with
Meyzeek and Western middle schools. "If I don't ask those questions,
I can't be any of those things for my child."
The "right questions" can be threatening
There are risks involved in the RQP's questioning process. Many teachers
and principals are uncomfortable with active participation by parents. It
means they must be more accountable, more open to suggestion. What some
parents consider involvement, for example, some educators consider meddling.
As one parent said at a training session: "Teachers in the schools
have to be prepared for all these questions that parents will ask. I don't
want to be negative, but I don't think schools are ready for this scrutiny."
The part-time parent support coordinators were supposed to smooth the way
for more active involvement in middle schools, but they had a difficult
start. Because they began work several months before the school district
decided to join The Right Question Project, the coordinators didn't begin
with a clear plan for helping parents focus on teacing and learning.
At 20 hours a week, they complained they had too little time to serve two
schools each. In the absence of a clearly defined agenda, some school administrators
began to use the coordinators as "utility players," asking them
to perform any odd job involving parents.
The lack of clarity -- brought on in part, perhaps, because The Right Question
Project is the first effort at collaboration between JCPS and Prichard --
ultimately resulted in the resignation of two parent coordinators and the
near-resignation of a third.
The resignations came at about the same time former middle school principal
Cheryl DeMarsh was appointed director of JCPS's middle school reform office.
DeMarsh, has spent the last two months working with Prichard, the schools,
and the coordinators to clarify everyone's expectations about the Project
and the coordinators' roles.
"We asked every school to take another look at The Right Question project
and decide whether it met their current parent involvement needs,"
DeMarsh says. "If it did not, they opted out."
As a result, three schools left the program, making more coordinator time
available for those that remained. Now each coordinator is working 27 hours
a week "with more time to engage parents and help schools know more
about their students."
Program must be tailored to
different parents' needs
There have been some rough spots in The Right Question Project parent training,
too. Some parents, particularly those in professional occupations, complained
that the six-hour workshops -- stretched over two nights -- were too long,
and they wanted to spend more time getting "concrete information"
and less coming up with model questions. But other parents, particularly
those in non-managerial positions, said the training would help them be
better advocates for their kids.
Dan Rothstein, who directs the national RQP program, suggested that some
parents may not be willing to invest in a project that encourages them to
look beyond their own agendas.
"We're not teaching parents everything that they need to know about
advocating for their children, or middle school reform," Rothstein
said. "It's a beginning step...trying to get them to understand some
of the subtleties and complexities of education."
After meeting with the parent support coordinators and attending some workshops
in Louisville in mid-October, Rothstein recommended that the coordinators
adjust the length and pace of the sessions to fit the needs of each group.
He also agreed to make some curriculum revisions based on the early training
experiences.
Changing the relationship between families and middle schools will not be
easy, particularly when people are asked to focus on tough issues such as
academic standards. The process will require more of teachers, principals,
parents and students. It will involve more meetings, perhaps more disagreements.
But for many people involved in the early stages of Jefferson County's parent
involvement project, learning to ask the right questions seems a good place
to start.
For more information about the Right Question Project, contact RQP coordinator
Cynthia Williams in Louisville at 502-588-7178.