Parents

"Love, cherish, and esteem the children of other people."—Isaac  D’Israeli

Let’s compare two schools in poverty areas.

One school has a strong parent outreach program that includes:

• mandatory parent orientation meeting with classroom teachers in which parent / teacher roles for the school year are made explicit
• monthly report to parents
• teachers calling parents when students are achieving
• home/school contracts with clear rewards and consequences at the first sign of a problem
• scheduled parent-teacher meetings that include students

The other school has a haphazard, ad-hoc relationship with parents, and communication is generally attempted only when students have deep problems.

Which school best demonstrates its concern for students’ well-being and motivation? Which school has higher student achievement?

Schools are based on relationships, on interactions between students, staff and parents. Good schools have positive outcomes when interactions include parents. Great teachers have amazing outcomes when they communicate regularly with parents. During the years I served as a principal, I observed that certain teachers contacted parents about good news and were lavish in their praise when students persevered. The parents in turn were extremely cooperative when these teachers said there was a problem and they needed the parents’ help. I asked myself, could this type of outreach be replicated? Could teachers be trained to communicate and engage parents? The program that evolved at my school, P.S. 171, was one of the factors responsible for the marked difference in achievement highlighted in this table:

Percentage of Pupils below Academic Standard, FY 1998
CSD	School	Pupils Tested	Pupils Below	Percentage Below
4	7	408	261	64.0%
4	13	344	165	48.0%
4	45	855	502	58.7%
4	50	235	98	41.7%
4	57	345	200	58.0%
4	72	319	178	55.8%
4	83	492	113	23.0%
4	96	264	132	50.0%
4	99	1367	480	35.1%
4	101	218	130	59.6%
4	102	394	209	53.0%
4	108	478	222	46.4%
4	109	339	163	48.1%
4	117	776	326	42.0%
4	121	270	149	55.2%
4	146	357	184	51.5%
4	155	413	229	55.4%
4	171	309	24	7.8%
4	206	653	238	36.4%
Total:  District 4		8836	4003	45.3%
Source:  New York State Department of Education.  CSD 4 refers to the East Harlem Community School District, one of 32 districts composing the New York City public school system at the time.

To recap, the purpose of Empty Playgrounds is to create a body of knowledge about what works in schools: in effect, a mega theory about what is needed for students to thrive. American education suffers today from a lack of coherence and from a lack of high-quality research. The school that I led for twenty years became a sociological laboratory for experimentation. It was a process motivated by one overarching question: “What has impact on student achievement?”

By contrast, what we have today is a cacophony of school reforms that results in constant change without progress. In some area, reforms even have a negative effect on student learning. (More to come on this topic in future installments of Empty Playgrounds.) The methods that I discuss were used in a real school, and they worked in a real school—unlike many of today’s reforms that focus on one small variable, such as a change in student grouping or a new approach to problem-solving in math.

In this installment we focus on the critical role of parents in a poverty-area school. Everyone seems to agree that (1) parents play an important role in student success, and (2) poverty and achievement are inversely correlated. Therefore you would think that it makes sense to create a program that helps parents in poverty areas replicate the behavior of parents whose children strive. And yet nothing in my graduate studies or in my training ever proposed a systematic outreach to help parents to partner with schools. There was no research on the impact of parent behaviors on high achievement. Poverty and lack of school resources were the go-to excuse for failure.

At P.S. 171, where we took into account all of the critical variables that have an impact in the classroom, we recognized that parents are one of the greatest tools available to a teacher who is trying to motivate students. Moreover, systematic outreach to parents by teachers supports academic success and psychological well-being. Not to use this tool is to deny students a support that is essential, one that allows them to function on their highest level.

Without existing models, it was my responsibility to support my staff in developing workable strategies to engage parents. We asked, what do the parents of striving children do? Can other parents learn the behaviors that encourage persistence and hard work? The approach we developed is not difficult to replicate and creates a much more positive learning environment. It also dispels the negative stereotypes sometimes projected onto parents in poverty areas. We believed in their capacity to play a constructive and supportive role, and in turn we earned their trust. Teachers developed customized relationships with each parent that, individually, helped parents help their children. Different parents required different levels of outreach, but no one was allowed to fall between the cracks.

What kinds of parental involvement and behaviors are related to student success? For one thing, participation in general school-wide activities is not the kind of parent involvement that is critical to success. Rather, what makes the difference is the parent’s involvement in the individual child’s schoolwork. And this kind of involvement doesn’t have to be complicated—and it can certainly be learned. The least educated parent is capable of this, and the school can provide the necessary tools. Attitudes and behavior and values can change; all parents can be meaningfully involved in their own child’s achievement.

The program that we used reflected many of the relational insights fundamental to Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People. For example, it was important to figure out how to change parental behavior without giving offense. Tools that we used included being both lavish and honest in giving praise and appreciation, while refraining from complaining and criticizing.

It should be noted, however, that  since we had no educational models and had to piece together our own program, we learned by trial and error. Sadly, for many years we did not have a systematic outreach to parents—something I later understood to be a flaw in my leadership. But leadership is also about being willing to reflect and change, when mistakes are made.

One day I noticed a mistake. At dismissal time, my habit was to stand outside my school (on 103rd Street near Madison Avenue) until the last child was picked up, to ensure the children’s safety. On this day, my fifth-grade teacher was talking to a student’s father about the child’s difficult behaviors that day, such as disrupting the class and not doing his work. As the father and child left and walked down the block, the father decreased his pace until the boy was ahead of him and then, forcefully and angrily, kicked him in the small of his back. It was a direct reaction to the teacher’s report, and it was devastating.  A report from a teacher who was wonderful in the classroom had resulted in physical abuse.

It happened right outside of the school that I led, and it happened too quickly for me to intervene.   It was so troubling that at first I wanted to absolve myself and say there was nothing I could do. But then I reflected. What could I do to avoid reports of poor behavior being followed by harsh parental retribution? Was there another way to report behavior to parents? I was the leader of this school. There had to be a better way.

I reviewed the research, which was sparse. However, I came to understand that parents attending meetings and being involved in parent associations was not vital. The key was involving parents in their individual child’s success, and finding ways to move parents to change. Again, as in other areas, we found little available research, but internally, through trial and error, we came up with positive approaches and combined them with an existing program based on the observed practices of master teachers. In my search for answers, I had come across Parents on Your Side by Lee Canter. We used this and also developed our own strategies, such as a  monthly report card to parents. The outcomes were extremely successful, were not difficult to attain, and exceeded all of our expectations.

I was grateful to have found an existing program with goals similar to what we wanted to achieve, with underlying premises that matched what we were observing. As Parents on Your Side puts it, “Parents are the most powerful resource available to teachers and are in an excellent position to guide their children to a successful future. Teachers need and should expect parents to support their academic, behavior management, and homework efforts. If a teacher is not actively seeking parent support, he or she is not offering maximum educational opportunities available to the student. . . . Consistent positive and problem solving communication with parents is imperative” (Teacher’s Planbook, 1).

Our program at P.S. 171 started with a mandatory parent meeting early in September where teachers explained their classroom management plan, homework expectations, and the message that parents must be their partners if the children were to succeed. Parents were also told that they would be contacted if a problem occurred. We did this regularly so that small, easy-to-solve problems did not become overwhelming. Teachers would tell a parent that he or she was the most important person in their child’s life and that they needed that parent’s help. Joining together, teacher and parent would work to solve the problem by means of agreed-upon rewards and consequences, with frequent communication. The child would attend the meeting and would witness the unity of purpose between parent and teacher. Sometimes, I would chair these meetings and together we would decide on rewards for change—letting a child stay up later on a weekend night, parent and child playing a board game, a monetary reward—or any positive occurrence that was within the parent’s means and was something the child wanted. Consequences were defined, should the appropriate change not occur. A consequence would be to deprive the child of something he or she liked: a Walkman, perhaps, or a toy, or a television show. What mattered was the consistency of rewards and consequences, not their severity.

Also crucial was the other part of the program: maintaining positive communication when things went well. Every teacher was expected to share news with parents about individual children and their efforts, in a systematized way. Every teacher was expected to make at least two parent calls nightly or send two notes to show appreciation of student strengths. The impact of these communications was to create a bond between the school and the home. Other strategies included shared reading time and reward coupons. When a parent received a positive message from school, he or she would fill in a coupon and doubly reward a child.

By striving to solve problems while they were still small, we engaged parents meaningfully instead of humiliating them with a list of their child’s misbehaviors. In turn, parental support was wonderful and had a great impact on student motivation. Parents learned how to be involved, and they learned how to encourage school goals. The bond that we created with parents allowed our school to have the lowest rate of failure of several hundred schools in poverty areas in New York City. We know that parent involvement made a difference in the data. These parents were so committed that if they moved out of the zone they did what they could to continue enrolling and transporting their children to our school.

Far from being a liability, parents became a great resource to us and enabled us to create many successful initiatives. In an anonymous parent survey required by the central board, responses showed that parents highly approved of the school and wanted it to continue as it was.

We loved, cherished, and esteemed other people’s children. And we proved that when you do so, you earn parents’ respect and cooperation. Nurturing the triangular relationship between child, teacher, and parent creates a community of common expectations and values. When this happens, a school is perceived as trustworthy, and the result is a high level of support for school goals.

The next installment of Empty Playgrounds will look at methods of training new teachers.