NEA: NEA Today: Interview -- November 2002

The question of how to inspire parents to become energetic partners in their children's education has never rendered easy answers. Hugh B. Price, president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League, has given the subject a lot of thought. Father of three children, Yale Law School graduate, journalist, and a former vice-president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Price has written a book that is as much a parent guide as a call to community activism. Marilyn Milloy of NEA Today recently talked to Price about the book, Achievement Matters: Getting Your Child the Best Education (Dafina), and about the collaborative role of parents, educators, and community leaders in helping children--particularly the urban poor--succeed.

The Urban League reaches into every area of African-American life. Why this special focus on education?
My interest in education is longstanding. It started when I mentored kids who had been referred from the Juvenile Court when I was in law school. I wrote a lot about education while on the editorial board at the New York Times, and I was very involved with the topic at the Rockefeller Foundation. So I was determined to get the League to focus heavily on education. We're the oldest and largest community-based movement empowering African-Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream. That journey to the mainstream starts with education.

Your message is directed first to parents. Why?
We can't afford to have our children be ambivalent about academic achievement. The world places a premium on academic preparation, and if we don't understand the value of it, we're in deep trouble, and our young people will be in deep trouble. The more we help parents understand what they should do--what they're quite capable of doing--the more that lightens the load on teachers, enabling them to do what they should do and are capable of doing.

What are you saying to parents?
A lot of it is as simple as all the obvious stuff: Read to your kids, let them see reading material around, talk to them about what they see, be mindful of your tone and about television--a very pernicious influence if children overdose on it. I also talk about navigating the system at school--sitting down and talking with the teachers about what's likely to happen during the course of a school year, what their children are supposed to know, what they can do to help.

In many cases this interaction never happens. What can educators do?
I think a lot of it starts with the teachers emitting a signal that they really want it and welcome it--and not being judgmental about the parents who do come in for information. If we want genuine partnership, the tone has got to be right. A school has to send off vibes that it really believes in the children and in their possibilities.

What if the vibes are welcoming, but to no positive end?
It's a struggle, and I don't have any illusions about that. But we have to think outside the box. I think it would be very good for schools to call in the pastors and heads of groups like the Eastern Star, the Elks, the Masons, and the fraternities, and say, "Our parents belong to your organizations, your institutions. Could we sit down and talk about some of these things, and what you can do in your monthly meetings? We need you in this." If the ministers, for example, would proclaim from the pulpit that they're going to make sure that every child in church becomes a good reader, it would happen. I think you've got to keep looking for creative ways to get the engagement--going to where parents are.

What happens when the parents respond, but their children don't because of the 'stigma of achievement' you talk about?
The entire community has to send a message. The Urban League launched the Campaign for African-American Achievement to try to counteract that stigma, and we decided to fly right into the eye of the storm. We've discovered that you really can turn children's attitudes around if you organize communities to recognize kids for doing the right thing. So every year for the last five years, during the month of September, we've staged block parties, street festivals, and parades in cities across the country to recognize kids who are striving to do well. We've had close to 300,000 youngsters come to our events.

We also launched a National Achiever's Society and have inducted over 23,000 children into it. I call it our National Achievement Gang, because we have rituals, we have regalia, we have a credo, and we have colors. I've even designed a jacket. And if you ever go to one of those induction ceremonies, it's powerful what happens.

So community boosterism is key?
I think that in addition to everything that the schools have got to do, and in addition to everything I believe parents can do--and should--communities really should have these kinds of blow-out celebrations of kids. I told New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that I would love to see an Achievement Day parade down 5th Avenue for all the kids who've gotten B averages or better, and for their teachers and their parents. I'd love to see a parade down Constitution Avenue in Washington, down Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Because the signal that would send to the kids about what's important would be very, very powerful. And it would not just be an event that lasts for three hours. There would be all the build-up, all the coverage. And the more exciting and affirming we make it, the more kids are likely to say, "I want to be in that parade. This is cool."

Are you optimistic parents will get on board in ways like this?
If there were no examples of parents who are put upon, exhausted, and raising children on their own, but who nonetheless are succeeding in paying attention to education, I'd say it was hopeless. But there are plenty of examples. And it starts with will. Truth is, we all have to muster the will. Parents and caregivers. Community leaders and organizations. School boards, which often aren't focused on this issue at all. Politicians, who set policy and are responsible for appropriations.

The kids are waiting for us.