<p>This is not a competition to see how many hours a parent can work and still be involved, I really don’t care either way. But the attitude of “I did it, so everyone should be able to” is inherently flawed. As is the attitude “If they want it bad enough, they’ll make it happen”. These both only work to assign blame, which is ever so much fun, but do nothing to deconstruct and thus further examine individual circumstances at play.</p>
<p>Again, I think a lot of problems have to do with creating an environment where students know they can succeed and see others who identify with them succeeding. I won’t repeat what I said in my earlier post, but I will share a short story. A friend of mine student teaches at a school with students from various racial backgrounds. The first couple times she came in to teach, she noticed many of the black students listening to her intently and flocking to her to ask questions during break time etc. She eventually realized from talking to them that these students had never seen someone who “looked like them” in a position of knowledge and authority at the school, and she was an instant role model. </p>
<p>I’ll more or less leave that there, but just add that it’s a micro-level example of what I’m talking about as far as giving African American and Latino children a diverse academic environment. And it goes beyond simply the authoritative figure in classroom, but the content of the knowledge being taught and WHO gets to be in the forefront of every history/literature/geography book. But that’s perhaps another topic for another thread!</p>
<p>I agree that the blame game is waste of time. We know many public schools and many parents have terrible challenges. Rather than enumerating them all for either side of the equation I am much more interested in ideas to help those students who are literally stuck in the crossfire. Simply assigning blame to their teachers, schools, communities, or parents isn’t going to alleviate their current predicament. </p>
<p>If anything, this so-called bribe merely reflects the dearth of ideas there are to save these kids. Yes, it’s desperate, it’s probably even fruitless, but at least it’s something going up against a pretty dire backdrop besides mere talk and finger pointing. </p>
<p>Unquestionably, we have to come up with something much better than bribes, but even those are better than just sitting around passing judgement.</p>
<p>Des pommes et des oranges! Or apples and oranges as we confuse “being there for the kids” and teachers being responsible to provide the required education.</p>
<p>There are plenty of parents who do indeed rearrange their schedules. I know my parents did. My parents showed up for games and plays at school, for parent-teachers conferences, and even for the “suggested” lunch serving assignments at the cafeteria. I know they were there in case I might have needed help, but the reality is that they did NOT get involved in the academic process. For starters, the schools I attended would simply not have been interested nor accepted parental involvement beyond the EC and fundraising. Parents understood that there was a strong line drawn in the sand. Parents were there to support but the teaching was the responsibility and discretion of the … teachers and administration. Fwiw, parents complied for the very good reason that the system worked. In a way, I am quite convinced that the environment where Oldfort’s children were educated while in the US was none too different from the one I experienced, and hardly the world of urban Chicago or Detroit!</p>
<p>The entire discussion of parental involvement in education is often circular on CC. It is obvious that a family environment that is stable economically and socially is MUCH better than the alternative. It is also obvious that parents who participate in the education process by also adding resources is better than the alternative. The real issue is about what happens from 8 to 3 pm within the four corners of the school. As an example, a country that is often described as the most successful in turning around its system of education (read Finland) is NOT relying on parental involvement (or on massive homework amount to shore up a lacking education delivery) and … it works. </p>
<p>It does not take a Rhodes scholar to understand why this parental involvement (and blame game) exists. Our education system is very competitive in the early years, slows down in middle school, and reaches the abyss in high school. Simply stated, the difference comes from the ability and desire of the parents to complement the education. They are able to do so in the early years as many attempt to send little Mary and John to school with the ability of reading and writing. As the subjects get more complicated, the support and ability erodes. Read the tea leaves correctly, and you find that the system is simply failing from inception to end. </p>
<p>So indeed, parents should be blamed. After all, they fail at eradicating all the deficiencies through the entire K-12. Shame on them! </p>
<p>And so it goes! A much better alternative to admitting that decades of declining talent and desire amoung the teachers is getting harder to hide. Indeed!</p>
<p>Fwiw, since this is an anomymous forum, you’ll have to admit not knowing anything about me and having to be a pretty poor judge of my credibility or my experience. </p>
<p>As far as getting tired of my rants, here is a suggestion to your problem. Do not read them, or use the ignore function. Because I am afraid that I will indeed never miss a chance to berate the cancer that teachers’ unions are nor miss a chance to discuss the state of our education.</p>
<p>I am taking advantage of my right to share my opinion, and so could you!</p>
<p>xiggi - We were not very involved with our kids’ academic learning, but we knew our kids’ progress and by being there for them they got a very strong message that their education mattered. Most kids care about what their parents think of them, even if they want to pretend the don’t sometimes. When parents do not care about their kids’ education then there is no reason for kids to care. Kids tend to learn from their parents and have them as role models. My kids were very lucky to be in the kind of environment where most parents put great emphasis on their kids’ education. My kids were able to go to classes where kids actually did their reading assignment, and teachers didn’t have to deal with a lot of disciplinary problems, so they could focus on learning. Were my kids’ teachers that much better than most public schools’ teachers? No. They were just able to teach a group of kids who cared about learning. </p>
<p>I am one who believe someone’s environment can have great influence in someone’s behavior and ability to learn, family (parents) have the biggest influence over their kids. If you put kids who do not have much of family support at my kids’ excellent private school, I am not sure if the outcome would be any better for those kids.</p>
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This is actually not true. If our kids had problem with learning in school, teachers and administration would have consulted us. If we didn’t think something was working we would also have raised it with the administration. Our kids’ school actually felt educating our kids was a joint venture between parents and school.</p>
<p>After 30 years in corporate world, one thing I have learned is that to have a good organization it takes more than just to have the best process and to have the smartest workers, what’s more important is to have the right corporate vlues that could be well understood/agreed by the employees. It is no different when it comes to education. It takes more than having the best teachers, facilities and efficiently runned schools. You need the students and their families to believe education is important and their buy in on what it would take, so they would be willing to put in the hard work.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that students will do best with parental participation, which is what the results of the OP study show and the Chicago schools are attempting to force.</p>
<p>Do you think it is possible to create a school where the success of its students does not rely upon parental support?</p>
<p>Parental support or involvement are loosely defined here. It seems to mean different things to different folks.</p>
<p>Looking farther than our academic island, it is quite easy to identify successful education system where the role of the parents is irrelevant to the performance of the teachers and the success of the students. Again, one such example is Finland. </p>
<p>On a local level, I think that most of us could bring up cases of students who did exceptionally well without parental support and others who did remarkably poorly despite massive support of their parents. But such anecdotes do not turn into data points.</p>
<p>My father (born 1912) went to a rural consolidated school district where there was one building for all grades (1-11 back in those days). Parents worked during the daylight hours and there was nothing like the parental involvement in ECs that we are discussing. There were no ECs as we would think of them. My father graduated from this hs, moved away and worked his way through college(s) and then went to UT law school where he got his law degree in the 1930s.</p>
<p>A really close friend (born in 1945) was one of 13 kids of an african-american sharecropper who lived in West Texas growing cotton. She had to start picking cotton with her sibs starting at age 5. They (and the other kids of sharecroppers) were pulled out of school when it was picking time. The mother farmed and cooked (and had babys). The illiterate dad worked the fields by day and made moonshine the rest of the time. The mother died while my friend was in her mid-teens. The sibs taught their dad how to read and write. Ultimately they all graduated from the local hs. Four of the sibs got college degrees. My friend has her own business.</p>
<p>I have a friend whose younger brother attended a post-Brown v. Bd. public school in Oak Cliff, Texas in the 1970s. He was one of 12 “majority” students in a large minority district class. He was the only NM Finalist the school had in the entire 12 year he was in that district. Both his parents had full time jobs and were not involved with the school. He is now a very well respected engineer.</p>
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<p>My S attended where xiggi went to private school in Dallas. There were full scholarship kids who attended who came from single parent households run by a mother or a grandmother who never attended anything at the school. I recall that to prepare for the senior year page in the yearbook for these students, the school would use “candid” photos taken at school functions and/or by other student’s parents to use since the “responsible adult” for the student did not send any in. In S’s class, one such student attended (and has now graduated from) Stanford. My experience was like what xiggi reported, the school made it clear that the education/academic aspect of the endeavor was the school’s function. I participated including working on the lunch line, but stayed out of the way in regard to the academics. Worked like a charm.</p>
<p>From these real world examples, I believe that it is possible for a very driven and committed individual to get an education from what is offered without (or in spite of) their parents.</p>
<p>I agree. But do you think it is possible to create a school that breeds such success in students without parents who might not be so driven and committed?</p>
<p>xiggi provides the Finland model as an example. If I recall correctly, isn’t that system based on the US model but with a teacher evaluation component added?</p>
<p>How interesting, 07Dad, that you posted immediately after me. When I was typing my reply, I was thinking … well, I am pretty sure that someone who has first hand knowledge of what happened at that little school in Dallas could tell stories.</p>
<p>One anecdote I had in mind was not about scholarship kids or immigrants, but about the son of a well-off student with very … busy parents who seemed to work around the clock. I cannot tell how many time my friend was left behind at school without a ride home, how rarely the parents showed up at school for the programmed events, and how often other parents brought him to their homes when his parents were working or too busy. None of this stopped him from doing really well and be accepted to one of the HYPS Shangri-La.</p>
<p>I could also share some stories from my extended family, but would probably be derided for such Cobrat-like contribution. /insert smile. However, I’d like to mention one such account as the student was the son of foreign parents who never learned a word of English, grew up with enough siblings to start a circus (not really) and where getting enough food was not evident. None of this stopped him to graduate from Harvard Medical School. </p>
<p>I would not be surprised that Finland, before embarking on a retooling of their education system, looked abroad at many systems for good ideas, and that the US provided a number of elements. </p>
<p>However, in its current stage, the concept deep parental involvement (or large amount of homework) is a rather foreign concept in Finland. Part of the successful revamping has come from a strong focus on the professional preparation of the teachers and a very selective process for the aspiring teachers. To put is simply, it is very difficult to become a teacher, and the profession is one of the most sought-after ones. </p>
<p>Of course, as always, there is not one single reason why things work or fail.</p>
<p>It is very difficult to get kids to buy into the educational process when their is violence and chaos at home and the child comes to school tired, hungry, dirty and sometimes in physical pain from ailments that are easily treatable. I teach in a classroom that has kids from varied socio-econmic backgrounds. The one thing in that all the kids that are thriving have in common is someone at home that gives a crap. The kids that have no stability outside the walls of the school tend to have a tough road. What to do about it? I think one thing to do is to require all parents recieving federal/state assistance be required to attend parenting classes. It might help level the playing field for the kids.</p>
<p>Skimmed through all the comments - what might be useful to know is that the Chicago report card pick-up day is also teacher/parent conference day. It is also only done at the “progress report”, half semester interval when there is still time for students to improve their grades.</p>
<p>The idea is that parents pickup the report card, see the bad grade and meet with the teacher. In addition, the possibility of the argument from (often aggressive) parents who tell teachers/administrators, at end of the semester, that they were unaware of the bad grade is eliminated.</p>
<p>The cards were donated and it is a pilot program for 70 out of 600 Chicago public schools.</p>
One of my ds, a former elementary school teacher, is studying education law in law school and mentioned the differences between the US and Finland systems over Thanksgiving dinner (we’re a dull bunch :)). She mentioned that the number of US children living in poverty (21 percent) is about 4 times higher than the number of Finnish children who live in poverty (5 point something percent). The disparity would seem to explain to a significant degree the better outcomes in the Finnish system, wouldn’t it? Is there a way to separate out the impact of poverty itself from the impact of the educational system on student performance?</p>
<p>Okay, GladGradDad, I agree with you, but I don’t think we’re talking about parents like ourselves, who most likely receive report cards online or via email and who are interested enough to read them. I’m guessing this promotion is aimed at parents who are barely literate, don’t see the value of education because they’ve never been exposed to it, can hardly afford to pay rent or put food on the table and who lack the life skills to decide between paying the electric bill or buying an iPad. To people in this situation, money really is an incentive to show up and talk to the teacher.</p>
<p>Will it do any good? Perhaps for one or two parents who realize that the teacher actually cares about their child and can help him/her, but beyond that, not at all.</p>
<p>Being involved in your child’s education doesn’t always mean sitting through every program or game at school. It means that, at home, you have made getting an education important. There are plenty of people that have zero flexibility in their work schedules to take off for an hour to watch their child be the donkey in a school play but at home, they make sure they do their homework, read books to them, etc. There are always going to be exceptions where someone that came from a poor family where the parents didn’t care succeeds, etc. but for most people, if the push doesn’t start at home, the kids are not going to succeed. Same goes for the wealthy families that don’t have time for their children. Yes, most of them will do ok because they have had the opportunity and exposure to books, travel, etc. but even then, after working in an expensive boarding prep school for several years, there are plenty of these kids that do NOT do well either and often it’s the calls from home about “Do you know how much money I’m spending to get you a top education…” that motivates the kids more than anything.</p>