PARENTAL INCLUSION:  SOMEONE ON THE LEFT GETS IT RIGHT    BY DAVE MUNDY:

Parental inclusion: someone on the left gets it right

That view is challenged, however, in an interesting paper, The "Hard-to-Reach" Parent, Old Challenges, New Insights, by Renee White-Clark and Larry E. Decker. The paper is available for Internet users at the ERIC website, http://eric-web.tc.columbia.edu/families/hard_to_reach/

For the record, I stumbled on the site while looking for more evidence of intrusive federal government policies. Reading this, though, gave me reassurance that at least some of those involved on the "other side" of the national education debate continue to regard parents and their children, not business, as the primary beneficiary of educational excellence.

Clark and Decker take issue with the stereotype of "at-risk" families as unemployed, on welfare, unmotivated and disinterested, and suggest that it's misunderstanding on the part of the educators, combined with hesitancy on the part of parents, which represent the true obstacles to better school-parent relations.

"Fewer parents might be labeled 'hard-to-reach' if educators took a more optimistic approach to them," Clark and Decker write.

Clark is an assistant professor at Pace University in New York, while Decker is a professor at Florida Atlantic University. Their paper spells out the basic problem of parent involvement for "at-risk" kids: false stereotyping, of a mutual nature.

The misconceptions run both directions: educators may feel these parents aren't interested in what's going on, while the parents may feel the schools don't want their intrusion. "Chances are these parents want very much to be part of their child's education but feel they cannot."

Clark and Decker suggest that "...schools neglect non-participating parents in favor of 'enthusiasts' — actively participating parents." They stress that teachers' attitudes help play a large role in determining the amount of parent involvement, and that, especially with economically-disadvantaged families, educators must take into account the different problems faced by these parents (such as two-job hours, child-care costs, both parents working, etc.)

The first step in increasing involvement among these parents, they say, is to dismiss those basic stereotypes. Poor parents, if anything, have greater hopes that a good education will improve their child's status in life. They want to help — they just don't know how.

The professors urge educators to actively try to encourage involvement by "making the call" themselves — a practice which has borne fruit here in Katy ISD, where the parent-involvement program at Katy Elementary, to name one, has earned national acclaim for doing exactly that.

Clark and Decker suggest that some parents would be only too happy to get involved, but fear they're not wanted. Those who are themselves lacking in education are especially fearful that they can't help their children in areas such as homework.

They also urge educators to rid themselves of the notion that parents shouldn't be part of the decision-making process. Among the "don'ts" they list are "Don't allow school staff to do all the talking at meetings," "Don't call a school council meeting on short notice or neglect to send an agenda in advance or provide background materials," and "don't establish groups which exclude parents."

The professors note that the No.1 concern of all parents, regardless of socioeconomic status, is curriculum, not job skills or career preparation.

(Tap-tap-tap!) Hello? Texas Education Agency? Are you listening?

[Add to this message the fact that Katy ISD has had a practice of removing children from their neighborhood schools when they want to make them attend a specialized program (like Special Education or a Bilingual program) in a distant school, or Katy ISD buses students from one (poor) neighborhood to (a wealthy) one so that the (wealthy) neighborhood can have a neighborhood school even though they do not have enough students to fill a neighborhood elementary school. MM]