By Bob Chase, Past President, National Education Association (NEA)
As I travel the country and visit schools, I have been struck by how almost everyone pays lip service to parent and family involvement, but few seriously apply themselves to making it happen. Why is this?
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o much progress has been made in recent years in other areas of school reform reductions in class size, establishment of challenging academic standards, increase in after-school reading and math programs - why not in parent and family involvement?
The research evidence is beyond dispute. When schools work together with families to support learning, very good things happen: student attitudes, attendance, homework, and report cards improve.
A study released by the U.S. Department of Education showed that the reading and math scores of low-achieving students rose 40 to 50 percent between third and fifth grade when teachers reached out to families and not just when the child was in trouble.
Parent involvement upgrades the essential bottom line your child's learning. It's that simple.
I have come to the conclusion that family participation at some level, at any level, at many levels, cannot be an afterthought. Schools must take a proactive approach. We must develop innovative ways to reach out and include parents in the mix. Schools should consider the creation of a new position of learning partnership specialist to explicitly help teachers and staff work with families.
I can't tell you how or when or to what extent to get involved. Such decisions are highly individual.
What I can point out is that schools are a classic demonstration of how individual interests invariably coincide with those of your neighbors and the community surrounding you. True, there are some sectors of our society where it's possible to fulfill personal ambitions with no appreciable improvement occurring to those around you (I think of the acclaimed home run champion whose team invariably loses). But schools are not such a place.
Nor do we want schools to be such a place. We want schools to showcase our national values as well as teach them. Contributing time and effort to a worthy common purpose happens to be one of those values. A pivotal one.
I truly believe there may be no social affiliation in contemporary America that offers more, and means more, than being a public school parent.
Being a public school parent is like joining a large club. All members are equal. What we want for our children is roughly the same, regardless of what jobs we hold, where we stand on the social ladder, or how well or poorly we performed in our own school days.
As with joining a club, you will be introduced to others in a similar situation, parents who are experiencing emotionally charged ups and downs that overlap with your own. Some will be your friends, others will not. But with all of them you will have something in common.
You will share information and anecdotes with people who previously had been strangers but now appear more like colleagues. You will pitch in and help out alongside neighbors as well as new faces from the far side of town. You will find yourself delighted by amusing gossip and embroiled in heated discussions, I might add, with some very important ramifications for our national well-being.
If you want to stay on the sideline, you are free to make that choice. If you want to plunge in headfirst, you'll be in good company.
I preach parent involvement because it is guaranteed as few things are to produce positive results. And I preach it with a special poignancy because I wish I had been more involved with my daughters schooling. Yes, I was one of those parents who was very, very busy. Because my job was in the field of education I could argue (to myself) that in some vague way my work constituted my involvement. I could argue (to myself) that my work would not get done if I diminished my commitment to it by spending more time with my children's school. I didn't dispute that my involvement was needed by my daughters or their school; I simply argued (to myself) that my time was more importantly spent at my job.
I would do it differently if I had it to do over again, and I hope you won't look back with the same regret.
Guilt, I have learned, is an unreliable way to motivate anyone to do anything. And if you're like most parents, you have plenty of that already. To be involved, you have to want to be involved. And the only way that will occur is if you have compelling, meaningful, personal incentives for doing so.
There are plenty of them out there.
Start with the most basic incentive of all: to show your child with action, not just words, that you really care about education. I cannot overstate the value to your child of seeing that your involvement with school extends beyond simply getting her to school on time.
There is also what I might call a preventive reason for you to be involved. The more familiar you are with the workings of the school and the more the school knows about you, the better off your child will be. As one mother puts it, Sooner or later you re going to need to deal with the school on your child's behalf. You re in a much better position if that's not the first time they've seen you.
In addition, schools depend on your support. There are numerous important tasks where parent volunteers are critical. In this case, the old adage applies: If you re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Bob Chase was the two-term president of the National Education Association and a 25-year teaching veteran. Excerpted from The New Public School Parent: How to Get the Best Education for Your Child by Bob Chase (with Bob Katz). His writing has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and the Washington Post.
