The Educated Society

With the spotlight starting to shift toward parent accountability in education, I have been asked to detail concrete ideas that would help establish good parenting foundations.

Like some educators, I have broadly advocated for a parenting education program that begins as soon as the mother is pregnant. Specifically, a universal opt-out program, meaning that any new mother is automatically enrolled in this program, as opposed to given an option up front. This prenatal period is a time fraught with both joy and anxiety as parents seek information about infant care, setting up the home, and preparing to nurture their child’s mental and physical development. Middle class parents, like teachers, can have the same insecurities as disadvantaged parents and would welcome practical information relating to child care and development. I also recommended the system of family support via parenting programs offered by David Kirp from his Kids First agenda. However, up front costs can be a huge factor in scaling up any system of programs, particularly since realized benefits are not so concrete in the short term and will be difficult to sell.

An alternative would be to reach parents through some mass communication approach that is easily accessible and requires less commitment: a national parenting network program (or Parent TV).

Think of the success of health-related shows as The Doctors, Dr. Oz, or even Dr. Phil (radio shows included Dr. Ruth, Dr. Laura, etc.), whose successes are largely driven by market demand. Health issues are extremely topical, given concerns about obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, along with the foods that contribute to them. Viewers can find out all kinds of practical information on weight management, allergies, chemicals in foods, arthritis, etc., all from a medical perspective.

Parenting TV will do the same for families. Imagine the possibilities of topics to explore:

How do we ensure kids go to school ready to learn?

All about caring for newborns

How do we get children to eat their vegetables?

10 ways to get your kids to read!

What are the best ways to discipline?

How to pick a high school for your child

Having the sex talk

How to deal with bullying

How to develop a child’s creativity

New parents (and even experienced ones) who need answers will have a dedicated forum to learn and interact in much the same way that Dr. Oz does with his audience — a virtual one-stop shop for all parenting information. This program can be funded through public-private partnerships similar to Obama’s Educate to Innovate 2010 initiative, along with an online component. Potentially, such a program could lead to a dedicated 24-hour network. Unlike the Family Channel, it would not be focused on entertainment; rather, on information and documentaries. Simple.

With education at the forefront of national needs, the timing is ripe for such an outlet. Right now the closest thing out there is the Parents Television Council, a non-profit watchdog organization that provides parents guidance on appropriate existing programming, but nothing that can provide essential parenting information. This idea is but one that can be used as support for parents, but must be in used in conjunction with a system of family support towards building social stability and a culture of education.

Recently, two articles (one by The New York Times and the other by Psychology Today) have brought to light the movement toward parent accountability – the notion that parents should to be liable (even punished) if students are chronically absent or if they rarely complete homework, for example. Alaska already fines parents for child truancy. This year, California law allows misdemeanor charges to be brought to parents as well as required attendance to parenting classes if necessary. Though teacher accountability has drawn the majority of public scrutiny in education reform, it was only a matter of time for teachers to point the finger at parents.

Chronically low-performing or behaviorally disruptive students reflect poor upbringing and apathetic parenting, say fed-up teachers. As a result, representatives of Indiana and Florida have introduced legislative bills that would require either parent participation in school or parent grades of some kind. The author of one of the articles, educator Dr. Jim Taylor, conceded that putting some of that responsibility back to parents would be a good idea. Is it?

On the surface, it does sound good; after all, I have strongly advocated for the inclusion of parent accountability as part of the public discussion on education reform. I frequently cite reports such as the 1966 Coleman Report that concluded family background and other non-school factors were much more important to student outcomes than any school-based factor such as teachers, classroom resources or size.

However, there is a difference between advocating for more focus on parents and families as I have done and advocating to legislate parenting. Policies that punish guardians are short term fixes that will neither improve parenting nor diminish the achievement gap. Instead they tend to breed resentment, just as negative reinforcement measures tend to have the opposite effect on children’s behavior.

It also leads to the same misguided slippery slope as the current teacher accountability movement. How far do we go to reward or punish? What percentage of school failure is attributable to parenting? The general public is merely passing the buck to teachers, and exasperated teachers are now passing the buck to parents. As Diane Ravitch criticized, “If we could just find the right person to punish. Punish the teachers. Punish the parents. It’s Dickensian.” Such punitive measures are reactive stop-gap measures rather than proactive long-term solutions.

The real answer is closer to her idea of giving a helping hand to parents and teachers, yet it’s MUCH more than that. We can’t just provide wraparound social services to these parents, though it’s a start. Not to mention, poor parenting is not the provenance of poverty-stricken families. Most teachers will agree that poor parenting exists in all social classes, leading to widespread student apathy and underperformance in the U.S.

We need to proactively change the current atomistic culture that promotes immediate fixes and piecemeal reform efforts. Large class size is not the culprit, nor are feeble public schools, nor even subpar teacher training, though they all do contribute. Most importantly is the culture of individualism that is our nation’s heritage and the subsequent accretion of values and beliefs that make up our heterogeneous culture. Though positive in many respects, this amalgamated culture hurts our ability to collectively prioritize education. Entertainment, sports, and other popular culture take up too much of our time. I traced the roots of our malaise in more detail in a previous post.

So how do we fix that? We need to concentrate on improving social stability – developing the family unit through pro-family policies such as better parental leave and sick time as Western European countries like France, Sweden, and Great Britain. This allows parents to focus on their children and not worry about being laid off. On top of that, we can develop sensible parenting techniques through a mass communication approach (as conservative scholar James Q. Wilson suggested in his essays On Character). How about prenatal parent education for expecting mothers (and fathers)? These suggestions are part of a long-term effort to prevent bad parental practices from developing in the first place.

Of course, improving social stability involves a collective community effort to make children’s well being and education the priority, which will be very difficult in our profit-oriented economy and culture. This means government agencies partnering with corporations (who influence and shape popular culture tremendously), small businesses, and schools to collectively commit to putting children first. Education is simply not a priority in the U.S., and a large part has to do with the plethora of attractive distractions that make up our popular culture.

Current pleas for community involvement typically advocate for disjointed and small-gain partnerships, like parent involvement in schools or corporate philanthropy. They are the islands of excellence, but remain unconnected to the whole community.This idea of making a cultural shift is much more. It requires changing corporations’ product and service offerings to push education and social responsibility. It means no more beer and cigarette advertising on high-visible billboards. It means developing more educational documentaries and affordable healthy foods. No doubt the government will be a large part of this, whether through subsidies towards all things educative or through FCC initiatives; in summary, a paradigm shift about what it means to be a community and to live in an American culture. These collective partnerships, some of which I’ve detailed in my post on the government’s role in creating a culture of education will lead to improved social stability (i.e., family stability), which in turn will lead to improved education.

Reporter and writer T.R. Reid expressed this collective mentality best after living in Japan with his family:

“In Western societies, the job of transmitting moral norms is left largely to churches, families, educational organizations, and the like. In Asia, moral values are considered too important to be left to the private sector. The whole community, public and private, takes part in teaching values, and the teaching never stops.” (Read his book, Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West).

This is why you will see encouraging signs in Japan or China, like “Please sit with your legs tightly together on the bus, to make more room on the seat for others,” or “Teach the schoolchildren by the example of your good manners.” To Americans, this sounds corny, but the result of this collective effort is social stability (i.e., low crime rates, rates of divorce, broken homes, drug use, vandalism, etc.). Even Adam Smith, perceived as the champion of free market economics, advocated for interest of the greater good in his other book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

I am not advocating to legislate parenting, which misses the point of parent accountability; rather on a cooperative effort by every sector of society. This can only happen through government incentives (such as subsidies), as opposed to legislation and regulations, which will be perceived as fascist and un-American. It’s about changing entrenched cultural attitudes. That is where we need to start.

Despite continued pessimism about the state of American public education, there is reason for hope. Why? Within the past year or so, there appears to be a small but noticeable shift in public discourse towards exploring non-school factors in reform. Generally, the past three decades have brought on a “no excuses” accountability movement, epitomized by NCLB, the expansion of charter schools, and teacher and school evaluations. It was (and still is) thought that schools needed to be tougher in order to overcome the effects of poverty and decrease the achievement gap. However, as scores and the achievement gap remain relatively unchanged, the backlash is starting to herald a holistic approach that involves more than just schools.

This approach is about enlarging the focus to consider non-school factors, such as family and culture, which by certain researchers, account anywhere from 60 percent to 86 percent of student outcomes.

A few days ago Diane Ravitch wrote an op-ed piece in the NYT, Waiting for a School Miracle, which concluded that miraculous school transformation stories like those of PS 33 in the Bronx or Bruce Randolph School in Denver should be met with skepticism. Their sudden high tests scores or graduation rate in the wake of revamped management appear to defy surrounding poverty. In the end, the gains were found to be more a triumph of public relations than actual improvements. I similarly noted that so-called stunning turnarounds were less impressive upon scrutiny in my post Can Schools Overcome Poverty? It takes more than upgrading school leadership, teachers and curricula. Ravitch concludes by asserting:

Families are children’s most important educators. Our society must invest in parental education, prenatal care and preschool. Of course, schools must improve; every one should have a stable, experienced staff, adequate resources and a balanced curriculum including the arts, foreign languages, history and science.

Education scholar David Kirp has embraced this holistic approach when he designed a visionary policy agenda based on his book Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children’s Lives and America’s Future. Similar to my perspective, his proposal starts with prenatal education and provides complete support for parents and children through:

1) A system of family support that links all new mothers via parenting programs like Nurse-Family Partnership, Parents as Teachers, and Triple P – Positive Parenting Program; they provide parent training and wraparound social and medical services;

2) High quality early education that transitions young parents and children from home to school, based on long-term successful programs as EduCare, the Abecedarian Project, and Perry Preschool;

3) Academically rigorous community schools — the crucial word being community — which would work collaboratively with schools to ensure robust medical care, social services, tutoring, after school services and summer camp on top of academics; i.e., real support for the whole child;

4) Access to caring and stable adult mentors for children, like those of Big Brothers Big Sisters or Experience Corps; and

5) Providing children with a nest egg to help pay for college or start a career.

The combination of all five initiatives would build social and human capital and form a system of support that allows children to collectively succeed. Of course, scaling up such programs will be the challenge.

(As an aside, the big question regarding Kirp’s comprehensive Kids First agenda, is: Should this be targeted to the disadvantaged only or made universal? There is debate within his book, as targeted services will have lower direct costs, but since voters effectively set the tax level, they will also be less willing to absorb the cost. As Kirp observed, “initiatives aimed at them are less popular with taxpayers and politicians than programs meant for us.” Medicare and Social Security are perfect examples of how universalizing a program has made it essential and therefore untouchable. Though universal systems tend to have higher upfront costs, they also result in long term gains through increased economic productivity for society at large. Despite that, America’s tradition of rugged individualism, deregulation, and local control of education will make it exceedingly difficult to legislate on a national level.)

Other organizations have adopted this holistic approach. According to its mission,  A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education not only recognizes the centrality of formal schooling, but also the importance of high-quality early childhood and pre-school programs, after-school and summer programs, and programs that develop parents’ capacity to support their children’s education. It seeks to build working relationships between schools and surrounding community institutions.

This broader, bolder approach “pays attention not only to basic academic skills and cognitive growth narrowly defined, but to development of the whole person, including physical health, character, social development, and non-academic skills, from birth through the end of formal schooling. It assigns value to the new knowledge and skills that young people need to become effective participants in a global environment, including citizenship, creativity, and the ability to respect and work with persons from different backgrounds.” This organization has garnered support from prominent voices in the education and social sciences field such as Julian Bond, Gerald Bracey, James Comer, Linda Darling-Hammond, John Goodlad, Christopher Jencks, Deborah Meier, Diane Ravitch, Janet Reno, Ted Sizer, William Julius Wilson, and surprisingly, Arne Duncan.

The Harvard Family Research Project similarly promotes a system of Family, School, and Community Engagement (FSCE) as an integral part of education reform to leverage student learning.

The Promise Neighborhoods Act, introduced by Senator Thomas Harkin in May 2011, authorizes grants for partnerships between schools and communities to provide cradle-to-career education, including prenatal education and support for existing parents, high-quality early care and education and meaningful family engagement and support.

Smaller initiatives, like the Parent University created by the Philadelphia School District, provide parents with vital skills to help their child succeed. As reported by CNN, parents have options of learning everything from math refresher courses to life skills like character development and financial literacy.

Despite the hawkish and narrow approach to education reform the past couple decades, comprehensive efforts have been slowly gaining media attention. More people realize that children success depends on family, the community, the culture, and even the government. This is what is meant by creating a culture of education — a collective priority on education as many Asian cultures have. We as educators have the responsibility to write about and promote this holistic approach to child rearing and learning in order to inform public policy more effectively than the dollars spent by venture philanthropists like Gates, Broad, and Walton. This approach in turns fuels programs like Head Start even more. Eventually, it will gain the critical mass needed for policy-makers to make sweeping national improvements. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and doing my part.