President's Viewpoint
Can We Connect With Today's Parents?

Yes, but we'll have to be more creative. If parents won't come to us, we must go to them.

I have heard teachers say that some parents "just don't care about their kids' education." Likewise, some parents say that teachers "don't care."

But whenever NEA's Family-School-Community Partnership brings these mutually frustrated parents and teachers together in a room to talk with one another, we discover that both parents and teachers care deeply about "our kids" and only want what's best for them.

So I don't buy the "don't care" explanation. What I do buy, however, is the stubborn fact that there are real obstacles to parent-school cooperation.

Obstacle number one is diversity.

As student diversity grows, the teaching force remains overwhelmingly white, non-Hispanic, and middle class. Today, 35 percent of our students are minorities. By 2030, half will be minority. And throughout the 1990s, the number of students of immigrant parents surged. We now have schools where more than 60 languages are spoken.

Rightly, we celebrate America's diversity. But in doing so, we must never forget that we still have to work hard at making diversity work. Language, racial, cultural, or class barriers are a fact of life. Indeed, teachers and education support professionals have told me that they feel overwhelmed and need help connecting with students and families from very different backgrounds than their own.

Common sense tells us that school districts should take school employees at their word and, through mentoring and professional development, provide staff with partnership-building tools and skills.

In addition, we need to make our schools less intimidating and more user-friendly for every parent.

Obstacle number two is time. The 2000 Census shows that many American families no longer resemble Ward and June Cleaver's family in "Leave It to Beaver." More children are growing up in households in which both parents work outside the home, or in households headed by a single, working mother.

Parents are crunched for time. A 1999 report by the President's Council of Economic Advisers found that American parents have, on average, 22 fewer hours per week at home than they had in 1969.

Again, common sense dictates that families have changed, and so must we. We must challenge employers to give employees at least two hours per month extra paid leave so that they can meet with a teacher or volunteer at a school. We also need to challenge employers to provide employees with more home time through programs such as job sharing, flextime, and telecommuting.

What's more, we need to hold parent-teacher conferences outside the school and at times that parents can make. We need to visit students' homes and, if necessary, their parents' workplaces. Moreover, we will need to bargain the additional time we need to reach out to families in these new ways. Teachers, after all, are crunched for time, too.

When schools and families work together to aid learning, student achievement soars. The evidence is beyond dispute. Test scores, attendance, homework, and report cards all improve measurably.

It is not enough that we tout family values. We must also value families by involving them in their children's education.

Comments? E-mail Bob Chase at BobChase@nea.org.