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These e-mail comments were originally made in response to a reforming
school system's explanation for its reluctance to consider outside help
in increasing parent involvement in its middle schools. They have been edited
for more general application.
What Does It Mean for a Reforming School System
To Get Serious about Parent Involvement?
What a school system wants to do or not do about parent involvement is entirely
up to the school system. But quite often, even in districts committed to
raising student achievement, a district's initiative and coherency on the
instructional side is not represented on the parent support side. School
systems tend to resist outside help in this area, even when the outside
groups can demonstrate an organized approach and a proven track record in
helping parents understand how the system works and how to support the education
of their children. Districts will sometimes say that the use of outside
help is cost-prohibitive, but what appears to be expensive may, in fact,
be quite reasonable when one factors in the results an effective outside
agency can produce. The burden is always on the school system to demonstrate
that it can produce equal results at a lower cost.
Can school systems help parents understand the purpose, application, and
anticipated results of standards-based school reform? I would certainly
like to believe that if parents understand standards they will use them
to hold schools and their children more accountable. This does not mean
that every parent involvement initiative has to be standards-based, at least
not in the beginning. Parents have a lot of other needs and concerns that
one must address before they will have the interest and self-confidence
to grapple with standards. It is tempting for school systems to repeat the
old cliche, "We have to take them from where they are." But even
that is wrong. **We** shouldn't be **taking** them anywhere. Rather the
school system should be helping parents obtain the information, experience,
and insights to take themselves where they think they need to go.
I have personally made all the mistakes most school systems make in working
with parents: assuming my issues are more legitimate than theirs, failing
to make the effort to learn how to use language they can understand and
that connects with their frame of reference, and being unrealistic about
the roles most of them can play. After many years, I think I "get it."
Unfortunately, most school systems and schools don't.
Some years ago In Milwaukee, we funded two powerful women to work on parent
involvement in two middle schools. (See: "Innovations in Parent &
Family Involvement" by J. William Rioux and Nancy Berla, foreword by
Anne T. Henderson; published by Eye on Education, Princeton Junction, NJ
08550; 1993) They operated independently of the schools but interfaced with
them. While we have been long gone from Milwaukee, these two women have
built this project into an entrepreneurial endeavor that is now in more
than 16 schools that contract with them to foster parent involvement. I
make no claims for the results or efficiencies of this approach, but it
does illustrate that there are some schools that have the good sense to
recognize that they simply don't have what it takes to foster parent involvement
and have turned to outsiders who can do it better.
If a school system and its schools don't have the interest, will, or know-how
to get the parent involvement they say is so essential, then why not find
and contract with people who do? I don't mean parent liaisons. In most cases
I have seen, either schools do not let them do what they should do, or they
do not use them effectively, or the liasions approach parent involvement
with the same bureaucratic, strait-jacket, don't-rock-the-boat mentality
that impedes parent involvement in the first place. Understandably, the
liaisons first loyalty is to the school system and that fact is all too
obvious to parents. What is needed are people who can operate either independently
or semi-independently of the school system. That is the only way they will
have the credibility and discretion necessary to ensure that parent involvement
is more than just parent control.
Are there risks in this? You bet. But meaningful, effective parent involvement,
that is to say, parent involvement with the potential to hold schools accountable
for results, will not occur if it is only on the school system's/schools'
terms.
What is the school system's responsibility regarding parent involvement?
This is another issue where the school system needs to decide just how important
it thinks the issue is, and whether it really wants to do anything about
it. The system may decide that while parent involvement is desirable, it
is not worth the political capital it would cost to get schools to take
it seriously. That is the view of most school systems. If the school system
concludes that it is so impotent that all it can do is coax and persuade
individual schools to make greater efforts to engage parents, then perhaps
it should focus its energies elsewhere. The first thing it could do is eliminate
the charade that parent liaisons represent, and redirect the funds to increase
the capacities of a few schools that have a genuine interest in fostering
parent involvement that counts, **and** to evaluating the results.
Hayes Mizell, Director
Program for Student Achievement
Edna McConnell Clark Foundation