'P' Is For Politics, Not Parents:
National PTA Looks to Expand Federal Lobbying Efforts

Related Stories:
Break Away From the PTA
Alternatives to the PTA

National PTA leaders are urging delegates to its Chicago convention next month to approve a 100 percent dues increase. The change is only from $1 to $2. But if it is approved, National PTA revenues will increase by more than $6 million.

Why a dues increase? Lobbying.

"With this increase, PTA can be everywhere you would like to be," promise PTA's leaders, "whether it's mentoring in the classroom, keeping neighborhoods safe, influencing legislative decisions or helping to bring needed resources into our schools."

Already, four of National PTA's 68 full-time staff members work at its government relations office in Washington, D.C. lobbying for and against federal legislation on public schools. PTA sponsors a legislative conference at which state and local officers and members develop lobbying skills and then return home to train other members to lobby. Through its web site, National PTA provides members with sample messages and directions on how teachers, parents, students and others should lobby on issues of concern to the organization's leaders.

According to its treasurer's report, National PTA had revenues of $8.4 million in fiscal year 1998. That's insufficient, say PTA's leaders.

"That $2 is vital to support the immediate and long-term goals that have been identified as critical to National PTA's continued success as a leader on issues that affect our children and families," the group's leaders claim.

What they don't tell convention delegates in their call for increased dues is that the increase coincides with a major PTA push for new federal funding for public schools. The goal is good: to increase parental involvement in education. But PTA's concept of parental involvement would increase the power of teachers unions and strengthen the hand of the public school establishment. In fact, PTA leaders avoid mentioning that earlier PTA-backed legislation &emdash; the federal Goals 2000 program &emdash; failed to increase parental involvement.

Missed Goal

National PTA is less a resource for parents than a lobby for expanded government services and increased funding for public schools. But it also seeks increased parent involvement in education. For this, it turns to government's coercive powers and taxpayer funding.

In 1994, President Clinton signed into law a bill that established "Goals 2000." In part, this was the culmination of a National PTA effort to win government support for its objectives. For PTA, Goals 2000 was "the first formal acknowledgment by the federal government of the central importance of parent/family involvement and decision-making in the education of children."

But what does that mean? Goals 2000 requires each state to develop and adopt a school improvement plan in order to receive federal funds. The plan must aim at "increasing the access of all students to social services, health care, nutrition, related services, and child care services, and locating such services in schools, cooperating service agencies, community-based centers, or other convenient sites designed to provide 'one-stop shopping' for parents and students."

The law is not parent-friendly. For example, it includes this provision: "The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education shall ensure that all federally funded programs which provide for the distribution of contraceptive devices to unemancipated minors develop procedures to encourage, to the extent practical, family participation in such programs." Although the law seems to call for family participation, it actually undermines the authority of parents who oppose their children's participation in contraceptive programs.

The last of the eight Goals 2000 targets states: "By the year 2000, every school will promote partnerships that will increase parental involvement and participation in promoting the social, emotional and academic growth of children." This federal mandate for parent involvement in their children's education might strike many parents and PTA members as peculiar if not insulting. In any event,Goal 8 was never met.

In the National Education Goals Panel's most recent report, dated December 1999, 44 states and the District of Columbia reported no change in parent involvement. Six states reported less involvement than in the previous year. None of the targets set in Goals 2000 were met. Still, the panel claimed that its "bold venture" worked because the goals had "helped stimulate reforms" in some states that included "accountability for student learning, annual report cards on individual schools' performance, and identification of low-performing schools."

They're Back for More

Despite the failure of Goals 2000, National PTA has responded by seeking more federal programs to increase parent involvement in schools.

National PTA is now lobbying for federal funding for "parent advocacy centers." The Parent Accountability, Recruitment and Education National Training (PARENT) Act (S. 1556, H.R. 2801) would be incorporated in the $13 billion Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the omnibus federal law affecting K-12 schools. The PARENT Act would allow schools to use federal funds to increase parent involvement as outlined in PTA guidelines.

"This is a sensible outline for schools to develop stronger partnerships between parents and educators," said National PTA president Ginny Markell. "Research shows that parent involvement matters more to a child's academic performance than parent income or education."

Even without "research," most people will agree with Markell's statement. But that doesn't mean another federal mandate will have any effect upon parent involvement. Most parents don't need Goals 2000 or the PARENT Act to be involved in their children's education.

Indeed, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) already allows funds to be spent for parent involvement activities. Currently funded activities include family literacy programs, parent meetings and training activities, transportation and child care so that parents can visit schools, and even the purchase of materials for parents who help their children study at home.

PARENT is unlikely to affect parent involvement any more than Goals 2000 did, and it is unlikely to change teacher and administrator attitudes toward parent involvement. As for parents, research suggests that they would be more likely to become involved in their children's education if they were consulted on substantive issues, such as teacher evaluation procedures and criteria, teacher absences and curriculum basics.

Blueprint for Parent Involvement

What can government do to increase parent involvement in public schools? According to the model proposed by Nation PTA, parents should be placed in the service of the schools but without real control over their children's learning.

National PTA's most recent and most detailed (243 pages) statement on parent involvement is titled Building Successful Partnerships, A Guide for Developing Parent and Family Involvement Programs. The Guide offers dozens of suggestions in keeping with PTA's limited concept of parental involvement. Intended as a blueprint for action, PTA asserts that the Guide also serves as an "assessment tool" to evaluate the effectiveness of parent involvement activities.

Some of the recommendations are sensible ideas that schools and parents have practiced for decades. But others are unrealistic. They suggest that National PTA is more concerned with the appearance of parent actions rather than the realities of school operations.

For example,there is a seemingly helpful suggestion to "publicize the hours when administrators and teachers are available for parent visits." But the employment hours of most public school teachers are regulated by collective bargaining contracts between the local teacher union and the school board. In negotiating these contracts, the unions -- the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers -- limit teachers' working hours as much as possible. How can parents visit when the contracts typically prohibit a school board from requiring teachers to work on weekends, allow teachers to leave 15 to 30 minutes after the pupil work day, limit or restrict interruptions to a teacher's preparation period, and severely limit the number of evening meetings teachers are required to attend without additional pay?

The National PTA recommendations say little about what parents can do to help their children learn. The Guide merely lists psycho-social objectives for children which are worded as if they were recommendations to parents. Parents are to "develop a home environment that supports learning, support children's growing need for independence; help their children develop healthy and safe [sexual] relationships, accept antagonistic behaviors that may challenge the parents' authority, help children establish an identity separate from their family and their peers, and establish their own set of values." The recommendation that parents should "accept children's... antagonistic behaviors that may challenge the parents' authority" is indefensible. Parents who question these recommendations are told not to worry; their public schools should provide "effective and meaningful parent education classes and programs."

The recommendations do little to address most parents' real concerns, and low-income parents will find them particularly unhelpful. Most low-income parents say the acquisition of basic skills and knowledge is the most important objective of schooling. In contrast, the PTA Guide emphasizes development of social harmony and social skills in the K-12 curriculum.

The Guide emphasizes the role of parents as teacher aides, not as persons primarily responsible for the education of their children. According to National PTA, "Volunteers can help in the office, on the bus, on the playground, in workshops, in the kitchen, or at home" to "prepare mailings, sew costumes or draperies for plays, create learning materials for the classroom, tape-record stories or music, or design forms, newsletters, and fliers on a home computer."

There is no question that these activities can be helpful. There is value in volunteering, just as when highly educated adults lick stamps and seal envelopes in political campaigns. Their willingness to do these things sends a message. Furthermore, some schools may lose valuable educational opportunities unless parents help in these ways.

But National PTA's emphasis on parents serving teachers illustrates how the teachers union agenda dominates PTA. Most of the activities recommended by PTA can be performed by unskilled labor with no stake in educational outcomes. Nonetheless, schools and teachers frequently regard parents as intruders and are not receptive to parent volunteers. Unionized school district employees, including teachers, sometimes even prefer that students go without services rather than have them performed by competent parent volunteers. They are concerned that parent volunteers pose a threat to union jobs.

When conflicts divide the rights of parents from the agenda of teachers unions, National PTA tows the union line. That's because in 1968, PTA adopted a resolution mandating "neutrality" in disagreements with union positions.

Not for Parents

National PTA is not the voice of parents. Instead, it seeks to increase government funding and programs to serve the interests of the public school establishment. Increased federal funding for welfare and education programs has been a prominent feature of PTA's lobbying for more than 100 years.

Like the teacher unions, National PTA feels threatened by policies that give parents a choice among schools, such as charter schools, vouchers and tax credits. The group even opposes home schooling -- the ultimate in parent involvement in education!

Many schools that have a local PTA affiliate -- only about 20 percent of the schools in the U.S. -- have encountered PTA's lobbying efforts. For instance, a controversy erupted recently in two Fairfax County, Virginia, schools after students were sent home with fliers listing a PTA official and the Virginia field coordinator for People for the American Way as contacts for more information.

The fliers said a proposed bill in the legislature would provide tuition tax credits to private and parochial school parents, diverting "funding away from public schools." The fliers encouraged parents to sign a petition, attend a rally in Richmond and contact PTA for more information.

"It's not right for our schools to jump in and take positions on these kinds of issues, and we shouldn't use schoolchildren as -- for lack of a better word -- carrier pigeons," complained school board member Mychele B. Brickner.

But Rosemary Lynch, president of the Fairfax County Council of PTAs, retorted: "Our school board members are supposed to be out there working for public education. I would hope that Mrs. Brickner's actions do not mean she is in favor of vouchers or tax credits; if she is, she should not be on the Fairfax School Board."

Lynch's comment reveals the arrogant attitude of many PTA leaders. Both PTA and People for the American Way vehemently oppose tuition tax credits, vouchers and school choice.

After parents complained about PTA's use of school children to deliver political materials, the Virginia state legislature enacted a law to prohibit political propaganda in fliers carried home by pupils. In enacting the legislation, lawmakers cited other incidents in which PTA endorsed school board candidates in violation of its own bylaws, not to mention IRS regulations which prohibit "charitable, educational" organizations from engaging in partisan political activity.

National PTA characterizes its lobbying efforts as service to all children, but these efforts are highly divisive among parents and in our society. Political advocacy is objectionable to many parents, and it pits parents and teachers against other politicized groups. National PTA admits that there are more than 200 organizations that compete with its agenda.

An older generation may find it hard to believe that the vast majority of parents in the United States are not members of National PTA and its affiliates. Realistic estimates indicate that only 10 percent of the parents of K-12 students pay dues to the PTA -- and the majority of those are unaware of PTA's extensive lobbying activities and the positions it takes that are unfriendly to parents.

Nevertheless, National PTA has clout. If its leaders succeed in increasing member dues and expanding their lobbying efforts, PTA could do significant damage to parent's interests in education even while they increase taxpayer funds for the public school establishment.

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Affiliated with PTA?  Break Away!

Instead of implementing National PTA's agenda, many local PTA affiliates are opting to disaffiliate from the mandatory, unified hierarchy which requires payment of dues to its local, state and national branches. Independent parent/teacher organizations (PTOs) have significant advantages over PTA affiliates:

• Typically, PTOs do not engage in lobbying. If parents are interested in such efforts, they are usually encouraged to do so through other organizations and political parties.
• Because each PTO is independent, all funds raised and dues assessed remain with the local school. By contrast, National PTA requires local affiliates to collect dues for state and national operations that cannot be monitored at the local level.
• Member dues payments are mandatory in National PTA. Some parents cannot pay or object to paying dues to have an active voice in their children's school. Unlike PTA affiliates, a PTO is free to consider no dues or exceptions of one kind or another. A PTO can also seek voluntary contributions sufficient to eliminate the need for mandatory dues.
• Unlike PTA affiliates, no national or state policies are imposed on PTOs. Local parents determine all goals, activities and regulations.
• Membership and participation requirements are often flexible in PTOs. Some may restrict participation to parents or to parents and guardians of children in that school, excluding teachers unless they are parents of children in the school. This assures that PTO leadership remains with parents who have children in the school. PTA affiliates include teachers who usually owe their loyalty to a union, and it's very difficult for parents to raise certain issues when union members are present.

How to Get Out of the PTA

To successfully disaffiliate from the National PTA, it's advisable for parents to prepare well in advance. A local PTA officer is in the best position to gather the data necessary to convince others to support disaffiliation, but any member can begin the process.

• Read the bylaws carefully. One frequent provision provides that upon dissolution, the state PTA affiliate will claim all funds in the local affiliate's treasury. If this is the case with your bylaws, spend all funds prior to disaffiliation.
• Identify all the services that your local affiliate receives from the state branch as well as National PTA. Typically, local affiliates do not receive any direct services in return for state and national dues, unless one considers meetings that may benefit a handful of parents to be a direct service. In addition to raising funds to support school projects, some PTA affiliates raise funds so that local officers can attend regional, state and national meetings at no cost to the officers. Consider whether these activities benefit children at your school or National PTA's lobbying goals. The best way to do this is to compare the amount raised and spent on officer travel to alternative uses for the funds. For example, is the travel subsidy more useful than strengthening the school library, sponsoring a field trip, funding a visiting artist or conducting a reading challenge?
• National PTA claims "all children benefit from the lobbying efforts of the National PTA" (and state affiliates' lobbying efforts). Its assumption is that parents agree with its lobbying agenda. In fact, many informed parents do not agree either with the lobbying or the agenda -- if they are aware of it at all.
• National PTA allows members to subscribe to Our Children magazine. But so can anyone. You need not belong to PTA to subscribe to the magazine or to PTA's newsletter, "What's Happening in Washington," which is now included in the magazine. Anyone can sign onto the PTA web site.
• National PTA claims to educate parents and offers leadership opportunities for PTA members. Both are overrated, although some useful training sessions (particularly for treasurers and lobbyists) are held at state and national meetings.
• The only National PTA program specifically designed for the benefit of children is the PTA Reflections program, an arts competition for students. If this is a significant program in your school, perhaps a group of schools could get together and sponsor a similar program on a smaller scale.
• Identify a core group which can speak to the cost/benefit issue, or the time and expense of lobbying efforts not supported by parents, and discuss the pros and cons of affiliation with National PTA. For instance, most parents have no idea that PTA supports (with dues dollars) a very liberal social agenda. Recently National PTA approved the formation of a Gay and Lesbian PTA affiliate near Seattle, Washington. National PTA favors an expanded role for government in schools and family life, and vehemently opposes tuition tax credits, deductions for education expenses and school choice proposals. It is also excessively critical of charter schools and home schooling. Set a time to debate the affiliation issue, and be prepared to make your case for disaffiliation before the vote. Whether or not parents vote to remain affiliated with National PTA, the discussion will be highly informative to parents and teachers.

Forming an Independent Parent Organization

• Liability issues must not be overlooked when establishing an independent parent organization. An active organization -- one that sponsors field trips, conducts fundraising activities and organizes events -- should be incorporated. Consult an attorney to prepare and file articles of incorporation and provide legal advice.
• Establish a mission for the organization, develop bylaws and elect officers.
• Submit an application to the Internal Revenue Service to obtain 501(c)(3), not-for-profit status, and obtain a federal identification tax number.
• If the organization generates more than $25,000 in any one year, file an information return (Form 990) with the IRS each fiscal year.
• Apply for a sales tax exemption, if appropriate.
• After organizational needs have been determined, contact insurance carriers. This can be a problem for some; insurance coverage obtained through the state PTA branch is sometimes the only reason for remaining affiliated with National PTA. School boards and local insurance agents may be helpful on insurance issues.

Until late 1999, independent parent or parent/teacher organizations had few opportunities to exchange information and get assistance from other independent organizations. But information and assistance are now available on the Internet. Tim Sullivan, the president and publisher of the PTO Today Company, provides a web site that is "dedicated to helping school parent groups help their schools." PTOToday.com includes participatory discussion groups. PTO Today is an online magazine that features articles for parents and teachers as well as product and service fundraising opportunities.

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Alternatives to National PTA

National PTA is perhaps the best-known organization advocating parental involvement in education. But there are other organizations working to help parents improve public schools. Here are a few examples:

National Network of Partnership Schools

In obvious contrast to National PTA's approach to increased parent involvement through federal funding and mandates, the National Network of Partnership Schools argues that successful programs "will not come from Washington." Instead, "parents at the local level must be motivated and activated," said Network coordinator Laurel A. Clark. The Network recognizes that low-income parents are generally not as involved in their children's schooling as parents with higher incomes.

Established by Dr. Joyce L. Epstein, Director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University, the Network emphasizes training for school personnel because leadership changes frequently at the local school level. Together with state education agencies and school districts, program goals for school, family and community partnerships are set and assessments determined. To track the success of parent involvement, the participating schools provide data to Johns Hopkins University for analysis.

"Even after getting parents involved, the challenge remains of convincing the school that parent involvement must help the school achieve its goals," Clark said.

Currently 13 state departments of education and 139 school districts -- with more than 1,136 schools in 33 states -- participate in the Network. Its programs are in private schools, charter schools and public schools. In some public schools, the local PTA affiliate works with the Network, but schools dominated by teachers unions refuse to cooperate.

Address:

3303 N. Charles St., Suite 200
Baltimore, MD 21218
Phone: (410) 516-8800

Parent University

Parent University in Savannah, Georgia is an interesting program that educates parents about the school district's goals. It offers weekend classes and free lunches including motivational speakers and parent testimonials.

On Saturday, February 19th, along with more than 150 parents in the Savannah/Chatham County School District, I attended three Parent University classes at the Garrison Elementary School in historic Savannah. Instructors showed parents how to access the Georgia Department of Education web site to learn the scope and sequence of requirements for students on the way to graduation, how to talk to kids about drugs, and how to set goals.

Parents responded enthusiastically to these and other classes. Parent University president Michael O'Neal, an electrical technician with International Paper, remarked that he could "feel the energy and enthusiasm of the parents, so willing to participate in helping their children succeed." Almost all hands were raised when the parents were asked if they intended to complete a second series of classes and attend wellness classes, board of education meetings, or PTO/PTA meetings to receive enough credits to graduate with honors at a ceremony in early April. Local companies and affiliates of national corporations such as International Paper and Pepsi-Cola funded the program.

National Coalition of Parent Involvement in Education

National PTA is a member of the National Coalition of Parent Involvement in Education, a coalition of 61 education associations and advocacy groups that support public education. Coalition representatives meet monthly at the National Education Association headquarters to share information, work together on projects and serve as an advisory group on parent involvement. The meetings frequently include guest speakers who have conducted research on parent involvement, directed a successful program or recently authored a relevant publication. At an NCPIE conference last February, coalition members met to review family involvement programs and assess ways the coalition might work together in the future.

Address:

3929 Old Lee Highway, Suite 91-A
Fairfax, VA 22030
Phone: (703) 359-8973