(Vol. 3, No. 2 - Fall 1999)
School Reform's Little Secret:
"Educators Can't Do It Alone"
Some middle grades educators and parents are joining forces to help
kids achieve more. But old fears die hard.
By John Norton
Go find a thoughtful teacher in any Jefferson County middle school and talk
about parent and community involvement for awhile. Sooner or later, you'll
probably hear them say something very much like what veteran JCPS middle
grades teacher Barbara Staples says:
"I think that we have been as intimidated by our parents as they have
been by us. We felt a little threatened. I don't think we've reached out
in the past and said to them: 'We need you here.' I think we were rather
arrogant and exclusive. Maybe not on purpose, but I think we've projected
that message."
Middle schools across America have a long history of minimal contact with
parents. And the same is true in Jefferson County. While most schools have
active PTAs, a handful of parent volunteers may do most of the work. And
that work is frequently limited to traditional activities like fund raising,
helping in the office, chaperoning field trips, and organizing parent nights
and teacher-parent conferences.
Even the most ardent advocates of greater parent involvement admit that
this kind of help is important to schools. But they argue that schools leave
too much of the responsibility for parent participation to PTAs, and most
fail to engage parents in the school's most important mission: student academic
success.
Why? Susan Weston, director of the Kentucky Association of School Councils,
travels the state teaching parents how to use achievement data to measure
whether schools are serving all their students well. At a middle school
parent training session in Louisville, Weston told participants they have
a right to ask about student performance, but she warned that many schools
will resist such questions. "When you ask 'What is the curriculum,'
that's where you begin making some schools nervous if they haven't been
working on curricular and teaching issues in a serious way."
A few JCPS middle schools are encouraging a deeper level of parent involvement.
Conway Middle School is the district's parent-participation
trendsetter, but other schools are also reaching out, asking parents to
join with teachers to examine student work or analyze school performance
data. Noe Middle School recently sponsored a "transition night"
for new 6th graders and their parents - an effort organized by a team of
volunteers and led by a graduate of the Commonwealth
Institute for Parent Leadership. Parents not only learned about safety
issues and volunteering, the discussed the district's academic standards
in some depth. The Noe discussion was led by the "Clark Fellows,"
a team of JCPS educators who work to improve teaching in the district's
25 middle schools.
JCPS's Parent Involvement Efforts
Sandy Ledford, assistant superintendent for districtwide instructional services,
says the district has made great strides in reaching out to middle grades
parents in recent years.
As Kentucky school watchers know, KERA requires schools to include at least
two parents on their site-based decisionmaking councils. But observers say
that, for the most part, the JCPS middle school councils have not been active
and effective agents for school improvement. Since she assumed responsibility
for SBDMs last year, Ledford has campaigned to increase their focus on student
achievement and says councils will receive professional development to push
that agenda forward.
Parent involvement is important, Ledford believes, although she cautions
that the lack of parent involvement in a school should not be used as an
excuse by educators for a failure to raise student performance. Ledford
points to Conway Middle School's success with parents (which she ascribes
to principal leadership) as the result of "the fact that parents are
in the school more often and are dialoging with faculty and administration.
The mystery is taken out of the relationship. The parents are sending the
message to the faculty that parents really do care and they will be involved
as much as possible."
"We do have schools, of course, that are not to the point that Conway
is of getting parents in and focusing on instruction," she says. "Across
our district, K-12, there are schools where there are some faculties still
making excuses."
The district's myriad efforts to reach out and involve parents, Ledford
says, are becoming sharply focused on a single agenda: "We have to
make parents understand that the reason we have schools is student achievement.
That's the bottom line." Some district initiatives include:
* A twice-yearly "Parent University" for middle school
families, held in the evening, with sessions on topics like improving reading
and writing skills at home; communicating with teenagers; helping kids get
organized; and improving math, science and social studies skills. About
600 parents attended last spring's program.
* "Make the Connection," a program that brings business and community
representatives together with middle grades students to talk about careers
and the importance of school work.
* N.I.C.E. (Neighborly Inviting Centers of Education), a program that sets
standards for community-friendly schools and certifies schools that pass
an assessment "test," which includes anonymous calls by a review
team.
* A variety of efforts, including handouts, brochures, and descriptions
in student agenda planners, aimed at explaining the JCPS academic standards
and expectations.
Making Community Accountability a Priority
Many of the JCPS middle grades outreach programs are supported by the district's
Middle School Coalition, whose membership includes school, district, and
community leaders. The Coalition is responsible for "disseminating
information regarding middle school issues to the greater community"
and "bringing a business/ community/agency perspective to issues surrounding
middle school concerns."
Begun in the early 1990s, early participants in the Coalition complained
that it lacked clout and was used primarily as an instrument to raise matching
funds for the district's middle grades improvement grants. In recent years,
the Coalition's role and influence has expanded somewhat, thanks in part
to the persistence of community members. But some observers continue to
complain that the district has given only limited support to the group's
core mission of explaining and promoting standards-based education in the
community.
Perhaps as an outgrowth of this criticism, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation
agreed last year to fund the development of a Community Accountability Team,
staffed by long-time community activist Lynn Rippy, who has also served
as chairperson of the Middle School Coalition. The Accountability Team's
40 members include a mix of parents, community and agency representatives,
and JCPS employees.
Rippy says the Team's sole purpose is to accelerate student achievement
in the middle grades, using five "key questions" to direct its
work. "Our goals are in concert with the district's goals," Rippy
adds. "We expect that every middle school will strive to be academically
excellent, developmentally responsive, and socially equitable." CAT
subcommittees focus on parent and community involvement, gaps in achievement
among different groups of students, and effective teaching strategies.
The Team's current activities include a study of middle school student life
and an exhaustive review of middle school performance data. CAT plans to
release a school accountability report in November, with the help of a national
education communications consultant. Although the Team includes district
representatives, its assertive approach to middle grades improvement has
made some JCPS leaders wary. In the first months of its work, relations
with the district were decidedly cool, although Rippy and others say the
relationship has improved -- and cite the support of Sandy Ledford and middle
grades reform coordinator Sherry DeMarsh as positives.
Just about everyone seems to agree that "trust issues" have to
be worked through before the district will accept the Accountability Team
as a legitimate voice on the subject of middle grades reform. Ledford says
it's important to have "organized structures" like the Community
Accountability Team, the Middle School Coalition, the PTA, and the Commonwealth
Institute for Parent Leadership "that keep giving the message to parents
that student achievement is why we are here." Although the PTA has
traditionally been the district's primary communication vehicle to parents,
Ledford adds, "we share information about standards and achievement
data with other groups like the Community Accountability Team. We're very
open about that."
Marty Bell, superintendent Steve Daeschner's deputy for community development
and government relations, has major responsibility for parent involvement
efforts. Bell oversees the district's parent coordinator, its PTA relationship,
and the community schools program -- and participates in SBDM training.
Although Bell's involvement with the Accountability Team has been minimal,
he says, he is aware of the feeling of distrust toward the Team in some
district quarters.
"The anger and distrust centers around, as I understand it, (a small
minority of) members," he said in an interview last May. "When
you see the group has 25 or 30 people, and you see that 15 or 20 of them
are people you have worked with who you know always look for positive ways
to make change, and then you see four or five or six or ten that have had
problems in the schools they are in, and they're the ones that always show
up, you've got to wonder who's running the agenda. Is it the silent majority
that doesn't come to the meeting, or is it a few people that for whatever
reason have been disgruntled and have an agenda they want to run."
For the most part, Bell believes, parents are satisfied with Louisville's
public schools. JCPS checks the temperature of parents regularly through
a districtwide survey that asks questions about school climate, the quality
of education, and other issues. In the 1998-99 study, parents indicated
a fairly high level of satisfaction in most areas surveyed. But parents
gave some of their lowest scores to questions that bear on parent-school
relations.
"One of the lower scores that tweaked my interest was that parents
would like to be more involved in decisionmaking," Bell says. "So
it's an issue we've got to address."
"Sitting here doing what I do every day of the week," he adds,
"(the parent response) tells me a mixed message. It tells me on the
one hand that they want to participate in the decisionmaking, but when I
go out and I look at the schools -- and I don't want to say it's universal,
but these are the complaints you hear -- when the school runs an election
to elect two people to a school council, and only two people run, that doesn't
suggest too much interest in participation."
On the other hand, Bell adds, "the message could be that parents try
to get involved in the process and they get frustrated -- either the meeting
times aren't right or they're so overwhelmed by the educationese that they
can't get involved and so forth. There are all these issues that we need
to find out more about and get more involved with."
To learn more about what folks are thinking, Bell says JCPS is planning
to hold public forums in every school this year. "We hope to have the
PTA support us and invite all the PTA people, and the principal can invite
the whole school community, and then we will do a facilitation to gather
community feedback school by school."
The information gathering, Bell says, " is less important than the
possibility of creating new energy around the school by getting parents
involved. One thing we will do is give data back to the school-based councils,
because there will surely be information that's useful to them. And if we
find districtwide patterns - say, you heard people complaining that they
couldn't get into schools or on committees - then that's something we'll
need to address at the district level."
Back to the index page