I am always both delighted and mystified by schools and districts that subscribe to various programs and trainings within the field of family engagement. I applaud the efforts of any district willing to take this step. Certainly any attention to families is delightful to me! With that said though, there still is a part of me that is baffled by the idea that incorporating one strategy will bring about the needed change of culture so that all children can learn and that family engagement is a driving force in the support of learning outcomes.

Many schools have upgraded technology so that parents can view grades and other information on line. Further, teacher websites and blogs are becoming more and more popular. I also read recently that many schools are training their teachers to make home visits. I think that is fantastic. We have known for years that outreach is the key to engaging disengaged families. Our battle cry of “before they will come to you-you must go to them” should be familiar with anyone who has hung around an FFS workshop or Workshop. Two-way communication is paramount to lasting success with families.

My concern centers on the idea of systemic implementation. Web sites and home visits, like any other strategy in a comprehensive family engagement process, are beneficial if all teachers and staff participate and believe by doing so they can make an academic difference in the lives of the children who need it most. I often use the following scenario in workshops to illustrate my point.

You are a parent. Your child is placed in a classroom of a teacher who believes in the power of family engagement and as a result, works tirelessly to build strong relationships with families. This teacher makes home visits, sends weekly newsletters, keeps website information timely, and is in constant telephone communication about progress, balancing positive and negative information to parents and families. Parents and families quickly understand the passion this teacher exhibits and are extremely appreciative of the efforts. At the end of the school year, neither the child nor their family wants to leave this teacher.

The following year, your child is placed in another classroom with a teacher of equal academic skill and compassion for learning, but one who does not fully subscribe to the tenants of family engagement. Communication is sparse and the teacher chooses not to make home visits, chooses not to use the web as a communication tool, and only uses telephone communication to share negative news. Families equate this to a rug being pulled from under them. They now have negative feelings toward this teacher and soon those feelings are translated toward the school. The mere fact of the inconsistent use of strategies to engage families itself becomes a catalyst for disengagement.

In the midst of writing this article, I did a mini-study. I visited the websites of twenty school districts, randomly selected from various state departments of education websites. Within each of the districts, I visited one elementary site, one middle school site and one high school site. That means that I visited 60 individual school websites. Of the sixty websites, 36 of them featured teacher web pages. Of the 36 sites that use individual teacher website technology, none of them-not one-had all of the teachers using this technology. When parents and families visit the site, and see that their child’s teacher does not use the technology, the message they receive is that the school or the teachers don’t care enough to supply this information. The blank sites do more harm than good.

All or nothing. I have believed for years that the correct approach to family engagement is to understand that it is a process to which all must subscribe and one that has the ability to change the culture of an organization so that the efforts are sustained and produce lasting and measurable results. Strategies employed devoid of a process are sporadic and temporary at best. We have spent too many years wasting resources and the valuable time of teachers by parading endless programs of sure-fire strategies without connecting those strategies to a complete system of reform. Let’s watch and see how many schools that have employed these strategies are still doing them in a year; or two years; or five years.

I’m so excited, I could bust!

Finally, after years of NCLB and the Bush rhetoric about parent involvement centering on parental choice, a study has concluded that parental choice doesn’t necessarily reap academic achievement.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin has had a pioneering effort to give parents choices as to where their children would attend school. So no one thinks I am hyperbolizing or making stuff up, let me share some significant quotes from the article. You can read the entire article here.

“A new study shows that the Milwaukee, Wis., school system’s pioneering move toward parental choice isn’t reaping significant educational achievement….The option does not seem to inspire parents to choose schools based on academics.

Only 10 percent of Milwaukee public school parents exercise choice by considering at least two schools and basing their decision on academic criteria and school performance, the study says.

The Milwaukee study, however, suggests that allowing parents to choose a school does not necessarily inspire parental involvement.

Milwaukee has been the focus for some time on the parental choice/voucher option as a way to improve public education. So far the results there give little comfort to that view.”

The Federal Government, since this administration has taken control, has completely disregarded what family engagement is, that being the strong relationships that need to exist between home and school so that a child’s academic progress is positively affected. Of course, in true Republican style, the right-wing think tank that did the study indicated that parental involvement may not be the key to school success. Unfortunately, even when being beaten with their own bat, they still don’t get it.

I have said in every speech and workshop that I have ever done that parents want to know that their child’s school cares about their children and that they have some say and understanding with regard to the education of their children. Simply giving them a choice of schools, most of which shun real involvement and parental engagement, is like giving them a choice between cancer and polio. Most parents believe that it is better to stay with the “devil they know.”

Don’t get me wrong, I think parents should have a choice in where their children are educated, whether that be at home, in public, or private school. I just don’t think it is prudent to define parental involvement as “parents right to choose a school.” That definition barely makes it into the category of shortsighted and self-serving.

Hopefully, hundreds of studies will be done and everyone will start to see what we have known for a long time; parent involvement is not the only conduit to improved achievement, but without it, we most likely will never get to where we want to be with regard to all children learning.

I realize that I have been on a reform kick of late, but the topic seems to be dominating a lot of educational thinking of late. There has been much discussion about the national efforts to reform our nation’s high schools and an equal amount of discussion about how that reform is really not taking shape at all. Much of what is being bantered about is not new. To me it seems rather redundant to shout that our high schools are failing, argue about what needs to be done, and then propose the very same solutions that have been used for as long as I can remember.

W. Norton Grubb and Jeannie Oakes, two professors from California, argue that the “push to enhance rigor and standards behind the high school diploma is seriously flawed.” (See Education Week, October 10, 2007 for the full story). Their arguments suggest that these gains come at the expense of other goals in high school reform such as equity, curricular relevance, and student interest. I guess, as do the professors, that one needs to define rigor in order to determine whether or not the pursuit of it is worthwhile. Unfortunately, the barely one-dimensional pundits quickly define rigor as test scores. The monotony of these types of arguments is deafening. Unfortunately, the two professors are taking somewhat of a flogging with regard to their thinking.

One of my favorite studies is “Answers in the Toolbox.” Written in 1999, it finds an important and perhaps the most salient point, that being this: the best predictor of a student finishing a bachelors degree in the allotted four years has more to do with the degree to which the student challenged themselves while in high school and less to do with the student’s grade point average.

As a former high school principal in charge of insuring that all children learn, I remember being constantly faced with a dilemma. We as a staff would work tirelessly to promote rigorous courses to our students, only to find them dropping back to less rigorous courses the minute the course was perceived by the student to be too difficult (loosely translated: more effort than they wanted to put forth or the point at which they needed to exert more effort than usual). Inevitably, the student would convince their parent(s) of the problem and a note would appear approving the change in course level. The essential question for us then, became this: How do we promote rigor and keep our students in the courses?

The answer, as we found out, was quite simple: Help their parents and families understand why rigor and challenge are important. I will be the first one to admit that this is a rather Herculean task, given the emphasis on grade point averages and the desires of many parents to see their children become successful professional athletes. However, when we educate parents and families as to what is truly important, they begin to understand the motives for placing their children in courses that are more rigorous. Building relationships with parents that foster good communication, will help us when the issue is critical, that being, the day a child comes home and asks for “a note” to get out of a class.

I do agree however, that we must get our colleges and Universities to understand this concept. Their reliance on test scores and grade point averages do not serve them well. I would hope at some point, universities will look to the percentage of students who actually graduate in four years, and those who never graduate. Universities don’t give degrees; students get them…or not.

I believe that those at the forefront of high school reform seem to be myopic with regard to what rigor really is. Challenging the thought processes of students in the classroom and using higher order thinking skills are a few examples of rigor. Of course, having a high expectation of students is the first step to promoting challenging classroom environments.

With all of the rhetoric being flung around from Bill Gates to Oprah Winfrey, no one is discussing the important role that parents and families must take if our high school students are to be successful. Who do you think can best influence student interest? Curricular relevance? I am somewhat astonished that after all of the attempts to reform high schools, we still swim around and around in the same shallow pool of test scores, test scores, and more test scores.

Longitudinal knowledge has never been one of education’s strong points. Did we forget that after Ronald Regan’s “A Nation at Risk” report, we ran to add graduation credits? More math! More science! That was 1983. Here we are in 2007, talking about the same issues and trying to apply the same thinking as we did almost a quarter century ago.

Promoting rigor, relevance, and relationships are key issues to high school reform. Parents and families must play a significant role in promoting high expectations and rigor in the classroom. Educators must build successful relationships with parents and families to build their educational capital. The future of education depends on it.

Victorville California is a town on the outskirts of Los Angeles; at least that’s what Mapquest says. I’ve never been there.

The Victorville Daily Press published a story on Sunday October 28th about how much trouble schools were in. Having a thimble-full of understanding of the media industry I would guess that publishing this article on a Sunday was not an accident, but a calculated decision to get the story in front of as many people as possible. It took a nice swipe at just about everyone connected with education and used a “poll” to justify the story.

The VV Daily Press did a poll, like thousands of other newspapers in the country. We don’t know if the poll was scientific or not, nor do we know who responded. We, the reader, only know that the VV Daily Press asked this question:

Do you believe that public schools are doing a good job of preparing students for the future?

I don’t have enough space to write down all the things that are wrong with the VV Daily Press poll. It would overwhelm me. According to them, 344 people said “no” and 106 people said “yes.” The paper concluded that the responses were “overwhelming.” They might be right on that one, as long as you define overwhelming. If there are only 561 people in Victorville, then, I would agree, the response is overwhelming. Unfortunately the question is so bad that the barely 2 to 1 response rate is meaningless. Perhaps the fires are causing their judgment to be clouded.

Was the question asked on their web page? If so, then the same person could respond more than once. That, my friends, takes all the science right out of it. Was the question asked by telephone? If so, how did the Daily Press decide who to call? Perhaps it was one of those automated phone calls where you press “1 for yes” and “2 for no” provided you understood the question, or understood English. Did the people who responded to the poll actually have children in the schools or live in the community? What schools were they referring to when asking the question? I could go on and on.

And what about that question? The problem lies in the question itself. For example, the paper quotes a parent as saying: “Schools are a joke. Thugs run the campus, creating an unsafe environment, and principals cower to the pressure of parents instead of doing the right thing for the students who are there to learn,” said parent Kasey Ruiz. “No wonder drop-out rates keep climbing. Kids are saying, ‘What’s the point?’ ”

As a former principal, I take offense to that quote. I never cowered. I might have hid in the bathroom once or twice, but that was to avoid reporters, crazy people, or lunch duty.

This quote is typical of a phenomenon in society. The Gallup Poll people (they actually know how to conduct a poll) found that schools to which people assign low grades do not exist. Many people make generalizations about schools that they do not have children attending or assign low grades to schools in communities in which they do not live. Many people’s perceptions of schools are derived directly from information gleaned from the media.

I have some advice for the Victorville Daily Press. Ask the question again, only this time, re-word the question without the implied bias. Perhaps this might work:

Do you think that your child’s school is doing a good job preparing your child for the future?

Oh, that’s right. Getting the correct outcome, whatever that might be, won’t be…well…overwhelming.