Grading Parents Likely To Backfire

Robert Kettle and Edwin C. Darden
Hartford Courant

A Manchester board of education member has proposed grading parents on whether they attend parent teacher conferences, send their students to school on time and ensure that homework is completed.

That is a bad idea.

Rather than offering a helping hand, the idea of developing a parent report card and grading system seems more likely to punish, embarrass and heap added scorn on the very parents who already struggle to stay connected to their public schools: low-income families and those whose first language is not English.

While holding parents to such basic expectations has a simple appeal, it is a flawed approach to the larger problem of how to engage parents constructively in their child's education. There is a better way. Forging a partnership, rather than a confrontation, holds the best promise of achieving long-term benefits for students.

The State Department of Education and Connecticut's local school districts each have a role to play in helping parents, principals and teachers improve the home-school relationship. Connecticut has the good fortune of being one of a handful of states that requires local school systems to submit annual parent involvement reports to the state. A law passed and signed in June 2006 obliges school superintendents to "report information about parental involvement" and asks school leaders to reveal "if the district has taken measures to improve parent involvement, including ... methods to increase support to parents working at home with their children on learning activities."

The law appears to be a terrific tool for driving home the value of parents as equal partners in improving student achievement and for assessing whether school districts are increasing parental involvement. Because the education department has not issued regulations that explain precisely how this law should work, however, school districts have proceeded cautiously. Their initial annual reports may have met the letter of the law's expectations, but certainly have not matched its spirit.

Beyond simply monitoring whether school districts pay lip service to parental involvement, the state should provide funding and technical support to help administrators make the new law work. At a minimum, the state should provide examples of systems in which there is a high rate of parental involvement.

Local school districts also bear some responsibility for educating parents. Take the example of Montgomery County Maryland Public Schools. There, Superintendent Jerry Weast recently said that his public school district spends a lot of money every year trying to teach low-income parents "how to kick my butt ... how to work the system just like affluent people."

For example, the district operates a call center to answer questions in Spanish and English and the system's "Parent Academy" offers more than 35 free workshops on the home-school connection. In addition, important parent information is translated and available on the Web in Chinese, French, Korean, Vietnamese and more.

In affluent neighborhoods, parents already know how to get what they want. Parents with money assume their children are entitled to the best and do not hesitate to activate the chain of command, marshal like-minded parents or advocate one-on-one for change when the system is not working for their families.

By contrast, few parents living in poverty believe they have the power to boost the quality of their children's education. For many, school was not a happy experience. As a result, they may feel intimidated about talking with teachers and administrators. What's more, inflexible work schedules, language barriers and child-care needs place formidable barriers between the school door and the reality of living paycheck to paycheck.

Sure, engaging some parents can be difficult. But giving them a letter grade is humiliating, not empowering. Let's not continue to point an accusatory finger at "no-show" moms and dads until we ensure that schools have made every effort to accommodate schedules, communicate in different languages, and assist parents in realizing that they have the power, the legal right and the responsibility to get involved as a way to help their children succeed.

Robert Kettle is executive director of Connecticut Appleseed (www.ctappleseed.org). Edwin C. Darden is director of education policy at Appleseed, a Washington-based network of public interest justice centers in the United States and Mexico. Appleseed's report, "It Takes a Parent: Transforming Education in the Wake of the No Child Left Behind Act," was recently released.