Mandate Parental Involvement

I believe that I comprehend arguments both for and against adoption of the Common Core state standards.  Those in favor want to make sure that the quality of education that a child receives does not depend on where the child lives.  Those opposed fear federalized indoctrination of children and that local school boards will have responsibility without authority.  What surprises me is that most of the opposition to the adoption was not organized until most of the states had already adopted the standards.  Some educators predict that implementation of the standards next year will reveal how poorly we are educating our children.

The unspoken issue in debates about Common Core, No Child Left Behind and other education reform programs is lack of parental involvement.  This is the crisis in education.  There is plenty of work to be done to improve the teaching done by teachers in the United States, but there is much more work to be done to convince parents that the education of their children is their responsibility.  We hire teachers to help us with the time-consuming aspects of this responsibility, not to abandon this responsibility to them.

We can help teachers spend more time teaching reading and math by teaching our children to not bully each other, teaching them how to not be victims of bullying and teaching them to not disrupt their classes.  School systems throughout our nation are doing what they can to prevent bullying and provide character education programs, but this means that they are allocating resources for these programs that could be used for art, physical education or science.  In order to be a successful teacher, a teacher must know more about classroom management than any academic subject.

There are parents who do more than make sure their children do not make it more difficult for other children to learn.  They read to their children, have their children read aloud, do drills with flash cards and answer questions about homework.  Many of them are single parents.  We do not have enough such parents.  We have plenty of parents who are more interested in reality TV than reality.  Communicating with teachers can be inconvenient for parents, but it must be done.  A parent who cannot tutor a child can find resources for tutoring.

Perhaps the most important thing a parent can do is to show their children by example that education is important.  This means looking at report cards, making sure that homework assignments are completed and attending conferences with teachers whenever possible.  A child is much more likely to take education seriously if a parent takes education seriously.  American history is full of examples of poor children who grew up to be successful because they took advantage of a free education in the public schools.

But how do we mandate parental involvement?  Doing so might be more effective than all the reforms of the education system itself.  We need incentives for parents who educate their children and intervention for parents who fail to put in any effort.  We could start with letters, numbers, shapes and colors.  Children who cannot identify these things on the first day of Kindergarten should be classified as either neglected or learning disabled and appropriate plans made on their behalf.  Parents who teach these things to their children could attend subsidized college classes or given some other incentive.

We must do something.  Our present school system operates on the outdated premise that parents are eager and grateful for an opportunity for their children to receive an education.  The present reality is that many apathetic students have apathetic parents.  They are failing classes and dropping out in vast numbers.  We cannot expect teachers and administrators to provide motivation for these students.  That is the responsibility of parents.  Our world has become so complex that ignoring a child’s education amounts to child abuse.  An uneducated adult is unemployable and vulnerable to many kinds of exploitation.  Parents who do not attend to their children’s education should be just as answerable to charges of child abuse as parents who withhold food or beat their children.