I spent much of last night searching various periodicals, reading bills passed by the Texas Legislature on Education and watching youtube videos on Education. I did this all to prepare for my blog about parental involvement. I came up with the following:
1. The State seems to understand that parents need to be educated in the need for their child to graduate, but not to the extent that if they don't graduate they really don't have much of a chance at living at or above the poverty line. I read HB 3 passed by a Rep. Eisseler, a Republican from the Woodlands and some other folks, that kids need to graduate, we need them out of our schools and schools need to get better at helping them graduate. Provisions for this help included being able to use stimulus money for extra tutoring, parenting classes etc. At least there is an awareness that kids ARE dropping out at alarming rates and nobody seems to know how to stop it. Naturally, districts now have to report how they are going to stem the tide and that becomes another part of their "accountability" or money received from the state for complience. Sounds very Soviet Russian to me brrrrrrr.
2. No one in any report besides one I read that specifically targeted ELL's (English Language Learners), and was written by people that are truly experts, such as Stephen Crashen, mention anything about how to keep non-anglo's in school, help with parental education and help teachers with this dilemma. Nothing I read from any school district in Texas or from the State mentioned the ethnicity of the dropouts the legislators wrote the bill to try and help. I wonder why? Is it a secret? Must be. I've written to Rep. Eissler and will post his response or the response I get from his office here.
3. School Districts are trying the best they can to march as fast as they can to the beat of the legislature's drum. That being said and in fairness to School Districts, I must add that not too many on the Texas Education Committee are full time or were full time educators in oh, the last 10 years. Some never taught a class in their lives, but see fit to tell your school district how to go about educating your kids. SCARRRRYYYYYY. There is a provision in HB 3 that says that if a 3,4,5, 6,7,8 grade student fails to meet the criteria set out by the District benchmarks or assessments, the district must come up with a plan for EVERY child that fails to meet the standards laid out in each Campus Improvement Plan for each subject area. Do you realize the man power it will take to actually comply with that ONE request? Let's say 30 kids in a school of 466 don't make the cut on one of the assessments. That means that each ONE of those 30 kids will have to have an individualized plan based again on that school's campus improvement plan that will "assure" the district and the State of his/her ability to pass the next assessment. I asked about that in my email as well. Man, if the Administrators and teachers were busy before, just think of the stack of stuff they have to take home, fill out, turn in and pray is filled out and filed correctly and on time
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SO, this brings me to parents. I can't say anything about parents without talking about personal responsibility. That means you take care of you and if you make a mistake you fix it, make it right and don't do it again. You have a baby YOU take care of it, not the state, not your grandma, not your uncle. YOU. Yikes, harsh but if we don't have natural consequences for behaviors good AND bad we will continue to have what we have. LOW STANDARDS for conduct, literature etc.
I must mention Ruby Payne at this juncture. She is a formidable authority on poverty. Wrote an excellent, excellent book I recommend everyone read just to UNDERSTAND poverty and how people living in it think. It's title is : A Framework for Understanding Poverty. In it she outlines the basic structure of people in poverty. Since I taught in a high poverty, low income, mostly free or reduced lunch school I will discuss Parental involvement from that point of view then come around to the more affluent schools.
Schools in poor neighborhoods get overlooked by everyone but the police. You drive by as fast as you can and you don't linger. You listen to the crime reports and if you live there you leave...fast. Robberies, murders, assaults are all part of the daily grind. Most of the parents whose children I had the pleasure of teaching where from Mexico or other parts of Central America. Most parents never finished the 3rd grade in Mexico and some can't even read in Spanish. Their experience in the Mexican school system, which averages 50-60 kids in a class, was not very good for the most part, so because they either couldn't afford to buy the supplies, uniforms and /or books to go to school or just needed to work, they dropped out in 3rd grade. Some never even went at ALL, to school that is. These people came here looking for a better life. I'm not touching the subject of should they or shouldn't they be here. Other blogs deal with that, I'm just focused on their kids who for the most part were born right here in the U.S.A., thus making them U.S. citizens. As a citizen you really need to know how to read, write do math and contribute to the GNP so that we can continue to expand our economy and do all the things the economists talk about in their very important meetings with our President. FACT #1: These parents are just getting by economically. They live in the shadows, operate everyday in fear of Immigration Services, and hope they don't get killed going to their home after work. FACT #2: They don't speak English or read it and the truth is they can't hardly read Spanish so how can they learn English with nothing to transfer from? (That's the reading teacher in me talking.) In order to be able to learn a language, any language you first have to know how to speak, read and write your own native tongue. Naturally, there are ways around it, but they are long and difficult to overcome. FACT #3: Education in their families may just not be important. Having a job and paying the bills may be MORE important so parents indirectly make their children feel like getting a job is about helping the family. The more you work the more you earn.... education didn't get them anywhere, what will a college degree do for their kid? After all he/she can start earning money NOW. Naturally, this is NOT the case in every family. This is a generalization based on MY experiences. So, even though parents SAY they care about their kid staying in school the truth is that after 6th grade, they can't or won't do much to encourage them. THAT IS NOT ALL PARENTS. Naturally, there a wonderful parents that would walk through glaciers barefoot to make sure their child is well educated and we should offer them and others the assistance to be able to help their child with school and school work.
FACT #4: Parents often cannot communicate with their child's teacher. In many buildings, because we do have wonderful people that operate as translators, they do at least feel like they have a voice. However, parents aren't often sure that what they say is being correctly conveyed to the teacher or vice versa. Hence, an element of mistrust develops in pre-k and continues to grow a little by little, both between parent and teacher and teacher and parent.
If you have all these FOUR obstacles in your way, how are you going to reach the parents? Some suggest offering ESL classes at night. GREAT, but how many parents can realistically come? Some suggest not allowing kids in school that don't speak English. Wow, I can't believe we have people in this country from the stone age, but we do. The real truth is NO ONE has an answer because the variables keep changing. Most of my former kids will be in 5-6 schools before they get to Junior High, if not more. To keep parents involved means students and parents need to stay in the school, the area or the neighborhood for AT LEAST SIX YEARS. If they don't, you just have a revolving door of kids and parents all needing to be retrained. Parents on the poverty line are afraid of or angry at their child's school. Scared because they don't understand the language and don't understand what is or isn't going on in their child's school and angry because the school did something to make their son/daughter behave badly.
How many of the high risk, Title 1 , low income schools have a very active PTA? VERY FEW, if ANY. My former school had the beginning of one because of a highly dedicated teacher who saw the need, but even she couldn't get the teachers to join. That's right they wouldn't put up $5 to join the PTA, much less serve on the committee to lead it. So, if teachers aren't involved and parents aren't involved you don't have a PTA. Am I right?
What's the answer? I DO NOT KNOW. I have tried educating parents, sending "kits" home, calling, meeting and even showing parents how they can help. In the end, in my humble opinion they are too tired, too stressed and just too confused by what the child brings home in English, the language they can't read to help them or encourage them. Homework clubs don't spring up by themselves, kids can't go next door for help. Daddy doesn't always know the answer or Mommy because maybe they don't live with their parents. It's a HUGE problem. Way bigger than little 'ole me. I AM going to do something about it though. I'm starting a homework club so kids can come and get help, parents can seek and receive answers and maybe just maybe I'll make a dent. It's going to be called Out of The Box Tutoring. Anyone can be a regular box, but something out of the box, now you're talking someone really special. Let's see what happens. I don't know if anyone reads this or not, but I'm still going to write because it makes me feel like I'm helping others understand the stakes we are up against.
Now, the affluent schools. None of the above apply. Most parents join the PTA and show up for meetings. Lots of volunteers for events. Lots of events due to the high involvement of parents. Some schools have many stay-at-home moms, some don't but they seem to still have an active PTA. Teachers notice the parental involvement in the students grades and behavior and life is good. To quote a former collegue who left my former district for another one: Adrienne, this has been the best six weeks I have ever had." He left my former high risk school for an affluent school in the suburbs. He wanted to see what the difference was and now he knows. Parental involvement.
Good night and I hope you'll comment.
Adrienne
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