Hardly a week goes by without another article encouraging parental involvement in education accompanied by a poll showing the benefits of having parents active in their child's education.
Busy parents have long been engaged in volunteer work within classrooms, extra-curricular activities, on school playgrounds, and at home. Today, however, parents who are contributing more time and money feel like they are resources to be tapped rather than major stakeholders in the system. Parents are turning to traditional parent-teacher groups for help. The question is: What kind of help can they expect?
The century old National Congress of Parents and Teachers (PTA), has been a long-time proponent of parental involvement. The PTA has local affiliates in slightly over one-fifth of the K-12 schools in the United States. In Florida, about 26 percent of the schools have PTAs.
However, all is not well with the PTA. At the PTA's national convention in Kansas City, Missouri, last June, most states reported no membership increases, while many states reported membership losses. Some states, like Indiana, have seen significant dropout rates. In 1994, the Indiana PTA lost 3,384 members and at least 9,000 members quit in 1996.
In my opinion, there are several reasons for this decline.
First, the PTA is closely affiliated with the teachers' unions. By their own admission, the teachers unions and the PTA are in almost complete agreement on their legislative issues. Like the teachers' unions, the PTA hires lobbyists to promote a legislative agenda that often has little to do with student performance in the classroom. For example, one PTA official in Texas recently defended the national organization by writing, "What other group ... prevents drug and alcohol abuse among children, controls television violence and increases HIV/AIDS awareness?"
Second, the PTA opposes vouchers and tuition-tax credits that would empower parents to choose non-government schools. When the California PTA celebrated its victory over the defeat of Proposition 174, a 1993 voucher initiative, a PTA executive reminded delegates: "We will pull the PTA Charter if any unit goes beyond the PTA agenda - as we would have with any PTA that supported vouchers!" This is in keeping with the PTA's statement entitled, "Opposing Vouchers, Tuition Tax Credits and Deductions as Systems of Education Aid," which it adopted in 1979.
Third, the PTA opposes contracting out school services. Both the teachers' unions and the PTA have sabotaged efforts to allow school boards the option to contract out school services -- even when costs could be saved and the quality of service improved. Protecting union jobs, hence union membership, is first and foremost. Finally, PTA programs are designed to diminish parent dissatisfaction with poor school performance. Instead of conducting hearings to address the causes of academic deficiencies, the PTAs invariably sponsor events presenting students' work in the most favorable light. Much time and effort goes into women's auxiliary or support services: trip chaperoning, bake sales and other fundraising activities that have little to do with improving or getting parents involved in their child's education. Clearly, good PTA parents are expected to be supporters of schools, teachers and teachers' unions. Consequently, parents find they cannot turn to the PTA when they want to challenge the status quo.
Contrary to popular belief, the national PTA does not speak for most parents. The majority of all schools -- public and private - throughout the United States have independent parent-teacher organizations (PTOs). These PTOs strongly encourage parents to become active participants in educational decision-making. While there are some similarities between PTOs and the PTA, the differences are significant.
A PTO is organized locally, with no allegiance or dues paid to support a state or national hierarchy. Local parents, teachers and administrators direct their activities. Governance is usually through simple bylaws, determined by all parents who attend the meetings -- not just by those who have paid dues, as in the PTA. And it is true, as PTA literature points out, that PTOs do not emphasize lobbying efforts, which is precisely why school districts such as the Cherry Creek School District in Denver, Colorado, have opted for the alternative parent-teacher organizations.
Within a PTO, parents find they can work through the local education maze more easily without the national policy prohibitions and teachers' union allegiances of the PTA. Dr. Al Narvaez, principal at the award-winning Gardendale Magnet School on Merritt Island, Florida, said, "PTA at this school? Not during my 18 years here. Parents here do not want to pay any dues to the national PTA," Activist PTO parents at Gardendale and other schools direct their energy toward improving their own schools and their own children's educational opportunities.
In Florida and Texas, school improvement councils (sometimes called school advisory councils) are providing unique opportunities for parents to be part of the decision-making team. Thanks to recent legislation passed in Florida, the majority of the school improvement council members must now be non-employees of the school. While this presents a stunning victory for meaningful parental involvement, it is also a great challenge. To be prepared, many parents unfamiliar with the intricacies of school finance, politics and administration require training and accurate data. In a number of states, taxpayer watchdog groups are providing very useful documentation for parents, the media and the public.
One such group in Florida is Independent Voices for Better Education, Inc. (IVBE). Exasperated by the limits and internal politics of the PTA, Charlotte Greenbarg created IVBE with the intention to educate, engage, and inform parents and other taxpayers about ways to promote effective education for students.
Another group dedicated to supporting parents and providing them with the resources they need to make responsible decisions in improving schools is Parents for Public Schools (PPS), a nonprofit organization headquartered in Jackson, Mississippi. Its 53 chapters in 24 states are "dedicated to recruiting students, involving parents, and improving public schools." National board president Charlie Olson says, "Parents are an extension of the resources and political power of the community into the school; the bridge between school and community." To ensure that parents were prepared to serve on the Waco, Texas, site base council, the Waco chapter of PPS conducted information-sharing workshops, acquainting parents with district operations. PPS sees these opportunities as a primary "route to parent involvement leading to school improvements."
From these brief descriptions, we know that organizational help varies considerably, but is available to parents who want to do more than attend monthly fundraising meetings or just talk about parental control. No group of citizens has a closer view of the problems or a more immediate stake in addressing them than the parents of our country's 50 million schoolchildren. The frustration of long-ignored parents is now evident in the profusion of charter schools, which have neither school boards, negotiators, nor teachers' unions, but do have effective, engaged parents. Parent organizations: Are you listening?
