Promise for schools
Published November 24, 2013
Editorial by Greenville Daily Reflector, November 24, 2013.
An Education Summit here last Tuesday brought forth a critical discussion about ideas for making public schools more successful. The most encouraging idea presented — one recently put into action in Pitt County — places more focus and responsibility upon parental involvement.
Debate about such things as curriculum standards, test scores and teacher accountability too often ignores or barely acknowledges the elephant in the room. If parents are not engaged in the education of their children, everyone else’s best efforts are going to fall short with the vast majority of those unfortunate students.
The problem is complex yet easy to pinpoint. The breakdown of parental involvement is directly tied to a meltdown of the two-parent family structure. In single-parent homes where finances are adequate, it is acutely challenging for the parent to keep up with assignments. For low-income, single parents who did not receive parental support themselves in school, the cycle of total reliance upon the public schools becomes especially difficult to break.
That cycle of total reliance, more than anything else, is to blame for achievement gaps that for decades have fostered the growth of private schools and home schooling — and more recently charter schools and vouchers. There now is a Pitt County chapter of Parents for Public Schools working to break the cycle.
“Public education is a community enterprise,” PPS National Director Anne Foster said during Tuesday’s panelist discussion about parental engagement. “It’s the foundation of our democracy, it’s the basis of a free people, and it’s well worth the effort it takes to preserve it for our kids, our communities, our states and our nations.”
Parents for Public Schools started more than 20 years ago in Jackson, Miss., after racial and economic divisions there led to the negative impact on public schools commonly referred to as “white flight.” The organization now has chapters nationwide and promotes a “new brand of parental involvement” that includes various initiatives under a “community-based, not school-based” structure.
PPS is seeing success because it builds alliances not just with schools and parents, but also with the business community, which understands the economic benefit of empowering parents through professional training and other programs. The Pitt-Greenville Chamber of Commerce was a co-sponsor of Tuesday’s summit.
That kind of broad approach appears to be what is needed for this problem. Because if PPS is to achieve its mission in Pitt County, it will need the entire community’s help in reaching out to those parents who are in the unique position of both needing the most help and holding the most promise for helping everyone.
November 24, 2013 at 12:04 pm
Norm Kelly says:
For decades Liberals have supported the idea that promoting single-mother-led families was a good idea, provided of course that the government helped to financially support these moms. For decades Liberals have been paying moms to kick some dads out of the house so they could qualify for government subsistence payments. For decades Liberals have been encouraging some fathers to abandon their kids (and the mom) so the government could step in and provide for the family. We were told this would be an acceptable substitute for a father in the family.
Now those same Liberals are coming around to the idea that conservatives were right all along? Don't believe it for an instant. This is an idea to spread Hillary's notion of 'it takes a village to raise a child'. Is there anything wrong with this idea? Actually, no. The only part of this that's going to be wrong is that somehow these do-gooders will find a way to take more money out of our back pockets in order to support ANOTHER of their feel-good plans. We've known for a long time that encouraging two parent families, allowing families to be involved on a daily basis in their kids lives was a good thing. IF this program gets parents involved without costing me extra tax dollars, it's great.
Now to the flip-side of this initiative. Let's look at Wake County. Look at how the school board decides where kids attend school. The easiest way to explain it is that if you live reasonably close to a school, expect your kids not to go there. If you are a single parent, if you are considered 'poor' by big education, your kid will NOT attend the school closest to your home. So, first nail in the coffin is having a single parent household encouraged by government/liberals. Second nail in the coffin is busing away from community-based schools. The Republican majority on the Wake County school board tried implementing a neighborhood based enrollment program. With insufficient time to see if it might solve some problems, as soon as the Demoncrats took control of the school board again, the first step they took was to eliminate the neighborhood-based system. Once again, the Liberal idea of what was best for the kid took priority. This editorial/post indicates that the Liberals on the Wake County school board were 100% wrong in their decision to return to forced-busing across the county to achieve some sort of racial balance. What Liberals need to decide is what is more important: doing what best for the kids by allowing them to attend a school that's close to the parent/s so they can be involved in their kids education OR busing to achieve the Liberal goal of 'racial balance' across the system. (funny how it's the liberals that claim they want to be race-neutral, but skin color is the first and primary thing that most liberals look at to make any sort of decision. it's liberals that believe blacks can't work their way through life without support/assistance from liberals. and liberals claim it's conservatives that are racist. funny isn't it?)
November 24, 2013 at 3:34 pm
Tom Hauck says:
Excellent commentary by Norm Kelly. Thank you.
If the professional educators insist that every child attends a public school then they have the obligation to teach every child -- no matter what. If they do not want that responsibility then they should let the parent choose the school.
Obviously they neither want to teach each and every child (the difference between Blacks (49.4%) and Whites (79.4%) is 30% in passing the 2011-12 ABC's End-of-Grade Tests) nor do they want to allow a parent or parents to choose the school that would teach their child. Witness the fuss they make about charter schools, scholarships (aka vouchers) and forced busing.
They seem to want the control and money without the responsibility.
