Mentor-led curriculum and operations improvement project for district schools

School Change Projects

A New Kind of PTA

Sometimes the most effective changes in a system come about through the simplest changes. Perhaps a better way to phrase this same idea is that sometimes the most effective changes in a system comes at the most basic level. This is the kind of change that I propose for my district, although it is not the same kind of back-to-basics plan that is still sweeping across the American educational landscape.

This suggestion does not touch on the issue of how basic the curriculum should be, although curricular reform is (of course) one of the central questions for every educational professional since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind act. Rather, the changes that I would like to see instituted in my district are a greater participation of parents and other family members in the students' educational lives. This is a simple idea that will take significant resources and energy to bring about and will require a great deal of planning and thoughtfulness to ensure that the range of families whose children attend district schools will all be able to be included.

The idea that children do better when their families are involved in their education is hardly a revolutionary idea, of course. Indeed, it is one of the most well-accepted tenets of modern education. It has even been held up as a panacea to educational ills, especially in inner-city and low-income schools. However, the fact that a push for inclusion of families has been recognized for so many generations of students (and educators) does not mean that there are consistent current efforts to bring parents (and other caregivers) into the educational process in my district.

This push towards parental inclusion is in fact part and parcel of the No Child Left Behind educational reform act, as described below:

Parent involvement is vital to the success of students and schools. This simple point anchors the federal law known as No Child Left Behind, but state education departments and school districts are still struggling to implement the parent involvement provisions of NCLB. (It takes a parent, 2010).

Several recent studies of the effects of No Child Left Behind that have been produced in recent years as Congress considers whether the act should be reauthorized and, if so, in what form.

This assessment of the law makes a very important point: Most critiques as well as praise of the law focus on the focus on standardized testing and the effect that such a limited range of subjects being on the test has on the curriculum. However, such critiques and praise (as valid and important as they are) ignore the fact that the law is primarily an instigation to get parents and families more deeply involved in the school lives of their children:

What is frequently overlooked [about No Child Left Behind] is the special power of parents to lift their children to new academic heights. The partnership helps to achieve the primary aims of that law.

Without better informed and involved parents, all of the testing and data becomes, for some, the proverbial fallen tree in the forest that no one hears. Thus, NCLB should be understood, embraced, and ultimately evaluated, in part, on its success in educating and engaging parents. (Appleseed Network, 2010)

There are obvious reasons for parents not to be involved in the schools. These reasons are, in general, often seemingly intractable. Parents are often overwhelmed with their own lives, working more than one job, caught in the dangerous eddies of the financial crisis as they wonder whether they will be able to keep their jobs or their homes or their marriages.

Most children in this district come from single-parent households or households in which there are complicated arrangements among parents, step-parents, step-children, step-siblings, half-siblings. These are just some of the barriers that parents may feel as they think about participating in their children's schools. This is on top of another factor, one that is terribly sad and yet is all too often true: Many parents are simply not as invested in their children's present or future as professionals would want them to be.

There are also other important barriers that many parents and other family members may face when they think about participating in their schools. They may not, for example, know that parents are welcome to join int. Or they may not speak English and so feel that they do not have the right or possibility to join in the educational process. They not believe that education is in fact important, which presents the school and the district with the opportunity to educate the parents themselves about the importance of education. In the case where non-parents are the primary caregivers, those caregivers (such as grandmothers) may feel that it is simply not their job to step in and do more for children who are not their own for than the most minimal effort.

This last is the key lever to begin the process of creating fundamental change: Ensuring that the family knows how important their contributions can be is the linchpin on which the whole project rides. Parents becoming involved are like the first domino in a series: When it goes over the rest will follow until barrier and barrier between the child and her future. Part of the impetus for parental involvement, part of what allows the parents to be that first domino to tip in the right direction, is educating them about the real effect that they can have in the lives of their children.

Perhaps because these parents were not successful as students when they themselves were young they do not know how important they are. Or perhaps it is the case that the professional educators may themselves either wittingly or unwittingly push parents away. Teachers are very much under attack these days from a number of different directions and it is hardly surprising that they would feel the inclination to band together to reassure each other of their professionalism and skills. This may well have the effect of pushing parents out of the process.