Haley Witzeman

Erik Kongshaug

Writing 39C

9 February 2016

Advocacy Project, Advocacy Essay: Prewriting/Prospectus/Research Proposal

Statement of Prospective Claims

A lack of parental involvement in the American public schooling system is a pressing issue. The issue stems from a number of causes. Lacking parental involvement can be found in the latin phrase “in loco parentis”, or “in the place of a parent”. As the significance of the phrase faded over time, Title I was implemented both in Johnson’s ESEA and Bush’s No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind attempted to implement programs for students and even give parents more information about children, especially when they are in need of improvement. However, NCLB also relies on a system of test based accountability and relies highly on the efficacy of the teachers’ grip on students. The creators of NCLB, according to Diane Ravitch, “forgot that parents are primarily responsible for their children’s behavior and attitudes”. For this reason, parents could get away with knowing their children’s educational standing but not necessarily being required to act upon this. Especially in settings with students of different socioeconomic status or race, “urban teachers often lack knowledge and respect of the ethnicities and cultures of the children they teach”, which can lead to parents not having a strong belief in the efficacy of the school system and stepping away from the educational nurturing of their children. In this way, a lack of parental involvement negatively affects disadvantaged students. This also causes a gap in the community, where those who are positively affected by parent involvement will have parents going to PTA meetings and those who don’t usually perform worse in school.

Attempts at reformation have been made, but it is still a work in progress. The reformation attempts currently in action are implemented are put in place to target parents, teachers, and the school administration. In order to target these groups, organizations, articles, and school systems have been attempting to work around the roots of the problem. One solution proposed is the implementation of “one-stop community centers”, or places in schools where parents could receive counseling and even be provided with access to dental clinics and courses on parental involvement. In this way, parents with a busy schedule will be able to become involved in their student’s affairs more in a timely manner. Yet, this could take time and money from the parents. Another idea to prompt more parental involvement would be to allow parents to advocate on community school teams. Parents have not felt included in these teams, especially among those parents of a lower socioeconomic status. This would prompt the parents to be more involved in the school system and in turn their children and other children.

difficult to evaluate and make policies for parental involvement directed towards disadvantaged students. One attempt includes teachers directly intervening in student affairs regarding those of a lower socioeconomic status. According to a poll from the foundation Communities in Schools, 91 percent of teachers have used money out of their own pockets or time out of their class to tend to students in need, whether that involve buying items, providing social services, or even providing health care. The foundation advocated for a focus on “parental involvement… as well as community partnerships and outside professionals who can come into schools and work with students”. Yet, this has been seen in many past documents: organizations and politicians have been pressing for these improvements in parental involvement for years. A document in 2006, “How Strong Communication Contributes to Student and School Success: Parent and Family Involvement”, states that NCLB has to fund family activities. But the problem with these activities being offered to parents that aren’t involved in their child’s activities is that, usually, they don’t reach the root of the problem. On one side, scholars often argue that parents aren’t engaged because they need to provide for their child with a job. The time deficit causes the parents to have no time for the activities like  “home visits, family nights, and well-planned parent-teacher conferences and open houses” that organizations like the NEA (National Education Association) advocate for. No parental involvement laws can resolve a parent's time deficit, and for that matter no reforms can help a child who doesn’t want their parent involved because of a bad parent-child relationship. These foundations want to keep throwing these reforms at the public, hoping that enforcing them will improve school conditions for  disadvantaged students. Yet, these are mainly for adult interests, as districts also like putting responsibilities of accountability onto parents and try to create this intervention of sorts, which actually does not do anything for the roots of the problem occurring in the home environment. Yet, that is the case in a public sector like the public school environment.

Annotated Bibliography

“Changing the Conversation About Homework from Quantity and Achievement To Quality and

Engagement”. challengesuccess.org. Challenge Success, 2012. Web. 11 January 2016.

-This white paper provides information on the relationship between the efficiency of student homework completion and parental engagement in the student’s homework. In this white paper, the idea of parental involvement is challenged, as parents tend to try to assist their students in multiple ways by hiring outside help, yet this is not always beneficial for the student. At the same time, the piece clearly states the significance of parents as support units in their child’s homework process as “cheerleaders”. Challenging Success, the publisher of the white paper, is an organization dedicated to gathering information and providing strategies to schools and families in order to enhance the learning experience for children. Their research assists families and helps children grow and gain self-esteem.

jeffdowd. “The Problem with ‘Failing Schools’”. The Society Pages. 10 March 2011. Web. 10

February 2016.

-The article in this source is written and submitted on “The Sociology Lens”, which is a small subsection of the website “The Society Pages”. The website provides information specifically to scholars and graduate students via journal entries in order to discuss pressing issues in sociology. The article outlines the fact that new studies are revealing that parents are the ones to blame for their children’s behavioral and educational problems, but that this approach is overly simplistic. In the case of this advocacy project, the political cartoon is a great way to debate the true causation of a lack of parental involvement. Did the pillar get knocked down by itself? Did another pillar contribute to the fall of the “parental pillar”? The political cartoon provides a great multimodal element along with the debate in the online article.

Layton, Lyndsey. “Student poverty, lack of parental involvement cited as teacher concerns”.

Washington Post. 9 June 2015. Web. 11 February 2016.

-A reporter from Washington D.C., Layton focuses her writing on national education. However, she has made her way around the spectrum of journaling by writing about other topics such as congressional affairs and safety policies. She provides a credible experience through the Washington Post article, especially by utilizing the results of a public opinion survey from the Communities in Schools foundation, which provides great insight into what professionals in school districts are trying to do to combat the problems with a lack of fiscal parental engagement with children in need. The article could easily be used or expanded to discuss both the personal opinion of the author and the statistics of the study involved, making the credible article useful for anything from a hang quote (which I will use as a multimodal element in my paper) to a rich conversation between the author and the solutions proposed involving parents and students.

Lee, Phillip. “The Curious Life of In Loco Parentis at American Universities”. Higher Education

in Review. 2011. Web. 21 January 2016.

-Lee’s article mainly discusses the aspect of “in loco parentis”, which frames the original motivation behind a lack of parental engagement with their child. The author is an instructor in education from Harvard University and has written several other articles on issues regarding student ethnicity, activism, and diversity. His reputation and articles make him a credible source of information regarding students, demographics in universities, and even the relationship between the two. In loco parentis is a great tool to begin to introduce the concept of traditional public schools and universities taking on the responsibilities of parents, thus exercising accountability. Linked to accountability are many reform ideas and debates about holding parents accountable in a measureable way, which the advocacy project will discuss.

“No Child Left Behind and School Choice Opportunities in Special Education.” GreatKids. n.d. Web. 10 February 2016.

-The article is from a website called GreatKids, a compilation of various resources that encourage parental involvement, such as videos and worksheets. Additionally, the website features articles backed by research and are created by staff members that work in unison with other organizations doing research. The organization can be seen as credible because of its focus on research and discovery. The article’s significance lies in its connection between Title I and school choice provided to parents through No Child Left Behind, which can improve the historical conversations regarding parental involvement and No Child Left Behind.

Puccinelli, Michelle. “Holding Parents Accountable”. The Blue Review. 6 May 2015. Web. 11 February

2016.

-This article is published on a website called “The Blue Review” which acts as a journal from Boise State University. Puccinelli is a graduate student and high school history teacher with a focus in academia. Her article addresses the idea that schools have a consistent way to hold teachers, students, and staff members accountable, but not parents. Parental involvement is indefinitely seen as a crucial component to a student’s success, as shown in the article by a 2002 study from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. Even though lacks in parental engagement are addressed as pressing in the article, Puccinelli takes a unique approach to the problem and states that it is not the solution to all problems in American education. Similar to the nature of the Advocacy project’s third idea for a prompt, the article poses questions in the end regarding where we can go next, as previous attempts at parent accountability have not had great influence.

Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System. New York: Basic Books, 2011.

Print.

-Sharing her rich knowledge of the history of school reforms, Ravitch crafts a text that reflects upon various moments in history and concepts in the school reform system. She is a professor at New York University and has worked with Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander and Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush. Because of her experiences and knowledge, GASS provides a credible account of the history of school reform that can be used anywhere from a simple quoting to a complex analysis referencing Ravitch as an expert. The book speaks of several aspects that organizations, philanthropists, and public officials focus on when changing schools, including (but not limited to) corporate reform, standardized testing, accountability, Common Core, and No Child Left Behind. Practically any aspect of the school system can be covered by this novel; if not directly, topics in this book can be linked to other specific topics talked about by other scholars.

Reid, Ken. Truancy: Short and Long-term Solutions. Florence: Routledge, 2004. Print.

-This short novel discusses the affairs and occurrences in which students choose to be truant to school. Ken Reid is a secondary teacher at Berkshire and at Oxfordshire and even took teaching positions in Cardiff and Leicester for higher education purposes. His work revolves around issues regarding school attendance (and a lack of school attendance, or truancy) as well as constantly utilizing behavioral studies of students for his writing. Because of his rich knowledge in the field of student attendance rates, “Truancy: Short and Long-term Solutions” provides not only an account of the kids who are truant and behaving poorly but also the parents who nurture these students. This includes laissez-faire parents, a term he uses for the parents who allow their kids all of the freedoms they desire, and even anti-education parents, or those who advocate against the ongoings in the realm of education.

The Abstract

The educational growth of a child is not only affected by the school and the teacher but also the parent or guardian involved. This project will begin by exploring the historical contexts behind parental involvement. Several laws (i.e. the ESEA and NCLB) give reasoning to the excuses and occurrences of a lack of parental involvement in the public school system, which result in disadvantages for some students. Yet, society plays tug-o-war with the concept of holding either teachers or parents accountable, and policymakers and organizations are constantly making statements trying to reform parental engagement in ways that don’t address the root of the problem, one example regarding those of a lower socioeconomic status (SES).