The Final Draft of the Historical Conversations project shows a great improvement from the first draft. Here, I successfully used multimodal elements through subheads above major portions of the essay, graphs involving elements surrounding parental involvement, and even a political cartoon that can be interpreted a number of ways. The political cartoon's multiple interpretations reveal a complexity to the parental involvement problem. Overall, the final draft provides a coherent transition from the past to the present of the problem, addressing how society got to where it is today and why the problems matter.

 

 

Haley Witzeman

Erik Kongshaug

Writing 39C

21 January 2016

 

Parental Involvement: The Timeline of a Crucial, Multifaceted Element of Public Schooling

 

On television, we often view the utopian family, with a young child receiving a brown-bag lunch from his mother, getting into his father’s car and starting another day towards his bright future by going to school. Yet, this is not the case for the majority of children attending traditional public schools around the country. We often see children run into trouble with their education, especially those of a lower socio-economic status or minority. This can be seen in the figure below, where the last column depicts that there are more fiscally and parentally dependent students enrolled in advanced STEM programs than independent:

         

   Figure 2.9b: Percentage of 1995–96 Beginning Postsecondary

     Students Who Studied and Earned Degrees in Science, Technology,

Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) Programs, by Citizenship

Status, Parents’ Education Level, and Dependency Status

 

Some are labeled as degenerates, refusing to listen to authoritative figures like teachers and principals. Peter McDermott and Julia Rothenberg, scholars and regular contributors to a research and inquiry-based journal titled The Qualitative Report, develop reasoning as to why students are described this way. Determined in their article titled “Why Urban Parents Resist Involvement in their Children’s Elementary Education”, school students are disadvantaged and misunderstood because “urban teachers often lack knowledge and respect of the ethnicities and cultures of the children they teach”, thus not having the same opportunities to succeed as other children (McDermott). The problem with these children lies not in the school, curriculum, or teachers; rather, it lies within the lack of parental involvement.

Most problems with a lack of parental involvement are prominent to those of a lower social class. According to an article titled “High School Dropouts Blame Lack of Parental Support, Teen Pregnancy”, a report from America’s Promise Alliance claims that roughly a quarter of high school dropouts stem from a lack of encouragement from parents(Sheehy).

America’s Promise Alliance is a foundation that collaborates with both government and non-government organizations in order to encourage children of all socioeconomic standings to gain an education. The foundation began in 1997 with a declaration aimed at making “children and youth a top national priority” and was signed by various presidents including Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and more recently president Obama(APA).

The result of students dropping out is a less intellectual work force and even what Tony Miller, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education claims to be “a trillion dollars” lost in school systems yearly, as schools typically receive funding based on ADA (average daily attendance). The economic difference of a family also determines the parent’s perception of what they are able to accomplish. Through their research, McDermott and Rothenberg find that “low-income families often perceive themselves as outside the school system and feel it is the school’s responsibility to do the teaching”, resulting in an unfair advantage for students of middle class standing, especially on a statewide or nationally evaluated scale. Ethan Biamonte, in a pressing case study titled “The SAT and Admission: Racial Bias and Economic Inequality”, gives reasoning as to why these parents of a ethnic and socioeconomic minority feel this way.

 

This fuel for a sense of exclusion can be found in standardized tests such as the SAT, where “minorities are not necessarily performing worse on the test because they grow up in poorer neighborhoods on average; rather, the questions are racially biased against them”(Biamonte). Biamonte does an extensive amount of research on the construction of SAT questions and comes to the conclusion that most questions are mainly beneficial for the white, or majority, population. A sense of segregation, as a result of these tests, will only make the problem of parental involvement worse.

Parental Involvement History

The origin of public education’s hands-off approach in the parent-child relationship is associated with the old latin phrase in loco parentis, which translates directly to “in the place of a parent”(Sweeton). The significance of the phrase was adopted from Britain and their universities (such as Oxford and Cambridge) and indicated that a great amount of responsibility was given to schools and universities to handle the affairs of students. Yet as elements of the culture shifted, so did the expectations of the American education system. According to Phillip Lee, scholar of higher education at Harvard University, in loco parentis began to lose significance with the civil rights movements of the 1960’s, where students began gaining more freedoms such as constitutional rights and suffrage (Lee). Lee, in his piece, discusses the demands of students for social justice and the end of racism, which is perhaps an independent step away from their parents.

At the same time, President Johnson saw a visible achievement gap between students of different socio-economic standings and passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The act was targeted towards students “who live with disability, mobility problems, learning difficulties, poverty, transience and the need to learn a second language.”(OSPI) The bill contained a section called Title I which dealt directly with low income families and their children in need of extra support. With a large nation home to many of poverty, Title I has become a crucial component of multiple reforms.

Title I was later carried over into the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind, named after a quote said by the Children Defense Fund’s Marian Wright Edelman: “Leave No Child Behind”. This move in education reform was essentially an attempt to revamp all of the successful qualities of ESEA. The United States Department of Education claims that the four principles to advance the education system were “accountability for results, local control and flexibility, expanded parental choice, and effective and successful programs that reflect scientifically based research.”(US DOE) Now, the government was claiming that schools would grant more access to parents in the education of their children, which was giving the parents some sense of accountability. In a document released by the US Department of Education titled “Parental Involvement: Title I, Part A”, regulations were set, stating that “each school must develop, jointly with parents of children participating in Title I, Part A services, a written school parental involvement policy”(US DOE). Revealing the true nature of NCLB, however, shows difficulties with this plan. Diane Ravitch, scholar of Education and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, discusses this millennial reform’s effects on school systems with great hesitance. She discusses one prominent aspect of the bill: school and test-based accountability. This system praises or punishes schools and teachers based on student results on a national scale but does not dwell in the specificities of each student’s (or their parents’) situation. Because of this, students are ranked in a system where “the law forgot that parents are primarily responsible for their children’s behavior and attitudes” and, because parents are not held accountable for their child’s failure, teachers are the culprits; they are then unable to control the loss of their job in an unsteady situation (Ravitch). Ultimately, the parental involvement policies created fell short of what they were expected to be. According to Ravitch, the ability for laws to be created by individual school systems were unspecific, as they were no longer regulated by the federal government. No Child Left Behind left a structural imbalance, or an excuse, for parents to not have to regulate their child’s educational progress.

 

Where We Stand Now

In a more recent movement, NCLB has been revamped into a new bipartisan law, the Every Student Succeeds Act. President Barack Obama signed the bill on December 10 of last year after passing a senate vote of 85-12. The bill, as President Obama states during the signing, will “provide every student with a well-rounded education”. Though the bill proposes great reformations on the state level, it does not fill the gaps of parental involvement. In terms of funding, according to “Summary of the Every Student Succeeds Act, Legislation Reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act”, issues regarding child involvement are minor, as “Parent and family engagement (formerly parental engagement) efforts receive an allotment of one percent of Title I grants.” Funding, in theory, is good when given to a specific part of a reformation law. However, the ESSA allows schools to work on a more local level. For this reason, as stated in the New York Times article “President Obama Signs Into Law a Rewrite of No Child Left Behind”, the districts will receive funds and “schools will also be required to take steps to close gaps in achievement and in graduation rates between poor and minority students and other groups. But the federal government will not dictate how they must do so.” Schools will be forced to come up with solutions for these students instead of the families themselves, cycling back to the old idea of in loco parentis that the power to improve the students is the responsibility of the schools instead of the parents

The Other Side of the Argument

The trends of parental involvement can become obsessive with excessive child interference. One case is within the governance of the school system where the PTA, or Parent Teacher Association, is a healthy outlet for many parents to play a role in determining structural factors of their child’s school system. However, “most parents would like to play a more active role in this type of involvement, whereas most school administrators and teachers exhibit great reluctance to encourage parents to become partners in governance”(Cotton). In this case, the parent desires to get a grasp on a situation, yet they do not have the extensive knowledge of an administrator to carry through correctly. This sense of entitlement is more often seen in families of affluence rather than poverty.

Another instance of parents engaging in an inappropriate manner can be characterized by the “helicopter parent”, which is a phrase coined in the 1990’s and refers to a mother and/or father that are too closely involved in their child’s affairs. The phrase was originally intended to and still does classify parents that physically hover over their children. Because of a shift in our culture, the phrase has extended to students constantly in communication with their parents via cell phone or email. Parental involvement has often been seen as a positive source of praise and guidance in a child’s life. Yet, when going overboard, according to Indiana University psychologist Chris Meno, “The fruits of parental over-involvement include higher levels of anxiety and depression among adult children”(Meno). In other words, young adults become afraid of their independent decision making and even fall into a trap of self-loathing.  

Parents are now able to use a new program called “snapgrades”, which allow them online access to their child’s grades. The website contains a feature that sends notifications regarding child absence, tardiness, and even poor test or assignment scores. While the program represents a successful communication between parent and teacher, the students involved face an unsettling lack of transparency. Two scholars of the Psychology department at the University of Örebro, Hakan Stattin and Margaret Kerr, clarify the difference between parental involvement and excessive surveillance. In their case study titled “Parental Monitoring: A Reinterpretation”, statistical reasoning illuminates the fact that, while communication between parent and child is positive, the over excessive alternative of “parental monitoring of school work predicted lower, not higher, grades and test scores”. In this way, “snapgrades” allows overprotective parents to be overprotective parents, where they can probe, panic, and disencourage their children in a system meant to strengthen student performance.

 

Conclusion and Clarification

The statements in this evaluation of parental involvement are not to be seen as tearing down the progressing reformations of our nation. Indeed, reforms like the ESEA, NCLB, and ESSA make great strides in terms of inclusion and state-wide power. Parental involvement has improved, and society values the intervention of a mother and father in a child’s education. Yet, with an unclear concept of the allocation of funds, much of the parental involvement, especially in urban districts, is being turned back over to in loco parentis.

 

 

Works Cited

Biamonte, Ethan. “The SAT and Admission: Racial Bias and Economic Inequality”. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 15 November 2013. Web. 25 January 2016.

Cotton, Kathleen and Wikelund, Karen Reed. “Parent Involvement in Education”. School Improvement Research Series. May 1989. Web. 21 January 2016.

Davis, Julie Hirschfield. “President Obama Signs Into Law a Rewrite of No Child Left Behind”. New York Times.10 December 2015. Web. 21 January 2016.

“‘Helicopter Parents’ Stir up Anxiety, Depression”. Indiana University News Room. 2013. Web. 21 January 2016.

Lee, Phillip. “The Curious Life of In Loco Parentis at American Universities”. Higher Education in Review. 2011. Web. 21 January 2016.

McDermott, Peter and Rothenberg, Julia. “Why Urban Parents Resist Involvement in their Children’s Elementary Education”. The Qualitative Report, Volume 5. October 2000. Web. 21 January 2016.

“Our History”. americaspromise.org. America’s Promise Alliance, n.d. Web. 27 January 2016.

“Parental Involvement: Title I, Part A”. No Child Left Behind. 23 April 2004.

Sheehy, Kelsey. “High School Dropouts Blame lack of Parental Support, Teen Pregnancy.” 14 November 2012. Web. 21 January 2016.

“Summary of the Every Student Succeeds Act, Legislation Reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.” National Conference of State Legislatures. 2015. Web 21 January 2016.

“Title I- Improving The Academic Achievement Of The Disadvantaged.” U.S. Department of Education. 15 September 2004. Web. 21 January 2016.