(Vol. 2, No. 1 - Winter 1998)

Bringing down the wall between parents and schools

by Bev Raimondo

A recent newspaper article about a controversial decision in a Kentucky public school quoted a parent who complained that he was not told in ad-vance by the school district what was happening.
That might be a reasonable complaint. But then the parent said: "Lots of us don't watch the news or read the papers. All of the parents should have gotten a letter. We feel we've been excluded from this decision."

At the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, we take two lessons from this story:

1) This parent was a willing accomplice in his own ignorance, his own exclusion. He is saying, "Since I don't take the time to inform myself, it's somebody else's job to do it for me."

2) There is a big wall between parents and schools-made up of distrust and inadequate and haphazard procedures.

What needs to happen in this and many similar situations is that parents and educators both need to change. Parents must take personal responsibility for the education of their children. And schools must make every effort to reach out to the parents and families of all students.

Reaching parents

In Louisville the Prichard Committee has worked for two years to help parents take responsibility. In "Families+Schools=Learning for Kids" workshops, parents build on their basic understanding of school issues and sharpen their ability to ask questions about academic standards and classroom teaching. Over 450 parents participated in these workshops and left feeling, they say, better prepared to talk with their students' teachers.

The training also helped parents think about the best way to organize a conversation with someone in their child's school. "I write questions down before I go to the school so I am prepared now," one parent told us. Another said: "Before, I would have just blown up, or probably would have done something that would have gotten me in big trouble."

Researchers Donna Gaus and Gordon Ruscoe of the University of Louisville found that, as a result of the project, parents developed a keener understanding of how schools work and how they can take on more personal responsibility for their child's success. The researchers also reported that:

Parents said they made more contact with schools and had discussions about academic issues with their children and with teachers and principals.
After the workshops, both more and less actively involved parents said they talked about issues they had not discussed before, including teaching styles, KIRIS testing, portfolios, and what children will know and be able to do at the end of the year.
Parents discovered that their concerns are not unique and that they can work on problems more effectively by working together.
Parents learned how to manage their anger better. Because they have a deeper understanding of the complexities of schools and the teaching and learning process, they are more likely to approach problems from an informational rather than merely emotional point of view, and to respect others' points of view.

These parents have new skills that increase the likelihood they will participate in school life. They have received help that many more parents need.

Laurence Steinberg of Temple University collected data for over four years from 20,000 teenagers and their families for his book Beyond the Classroom. The biggest problem in public schools today, he believes, is the failure of parents and schools to connect. Steinberg describes these broken links between school and home as "a public health problem" and offers this proof:

Two out of every ten parents have no connection at all to their child's educational life.
Only one in five parents attends school programs regularly. Only 40 percent have ever attended.
One-third of the students say their parents have no idea of how they're doing in school.
Only 30 percent of students say their parents spend any time talking to them each day.

Responsibility of parents

There is no doubt that parents need to take responsibility for their child's educational success. A major research study by Ronald Ferguson indicates that nearly half of a child's achievement in school can be accounted for by factors outside the school, including parent support. We are talking about parents paying more attention to their kids-talking to them; having reading materials in the home and controlling television watching; reading to young children; creating places to do homework and sending the message that homework is important.

We're also talking about parents asking smart questions at school; demanding meaningful information and spending the time and mental energy required to do so; working with teachers to improve teaching and learning in classrooms. When parents do all these things, children (and schools) benefit tremendously.

But many parents do not know how to begin to take responsibility and need to be encouraged. This is where the schools as well as outside agencies like ours come in. We can provide the encouragement and training. But we can not guarantee what happens when a parent goes to school. Schools must be sending the message that what the parent does matters and must be setting high expectations for parents, too.

Responsibility of schools

Just as professional development for teachers must be fully integrated into the life of schools today, parent engagement must be woven into every school's fabric. It is easy for school leaders to think parent involvement is taken care of because they have an active PTA, or parents on the SBDM council, or a parent support coordinator. Two scheduled days for parent-teacher conferences, while very important, should be just the start of serious thinking on the part of faculties about how to engage parents.

Schools do have to reach out. We're talking about bringing the parent involvement part of the school mission statement to life; about identifying and communicating clear expectations to parents about how they can help their children; about systematically including parents on committees and decision- making bodies.

A school that's truly committed to parent involvement continuously identifies ways parents can help, using all levels of parent expertise. The school regularly discusses and assesses where headway is being made with parents; it identifies ways for faculty members to make home visits; it solicits ideas and information from parents in a variety of ways; it develops a good public relations plan for communicating about the school and how it is working to achieve its academic goals. The school comes up with strategies for reaching the parents of all students. Most important, it finds ways for every teacher to become a "parent support coordinator."

Just as parents must work to gain the knowledge and skills to take an active role in and responsibility for the education of their children, so too schools must do their part. The engagement of parents must become an integral part of what schools do on a regular, sustained basis.
It will be hard work at first, but it will be worth it: for the parents, for the teachers, and most importantly of all, for our children.

Bev Raimondo is Director of Community Support for the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence. The Prichard Committee is pursuing funds for a new project in Jefferson County that would link middle school parents, youth service workers, churches, and schools around helping children meet academic standards.