Oct. 8, 1997
Man, it sure could've gotten crowded around the Sheraton Astrodome
this weekend. That's where the second annual statewide conference on "Parental
Involvement: Making a Difference in Texas Public Schools" is taking place.
Can you imagine the traffic jam that would be taking place at
the corner of Loop 610 and Kirby if even a quarter of the Houston area's
hundreds of thousands of parents were to show up at this conference?
I dunno, maybe that's why the conference's sponsors, headed by
the Texas Education Agency, didn't bother to invite parents to a conference
about parents.
Doink!
In the event you're a parent scratching her head — no, they didn't
bother to tell us about the FIRST conference, either.
"The goal of the Statewide Parent Involvement Conference is to
provide a forum to enhance, support, and encourage parent involvement by
creating opportunities for parents, educators, community leaders, and other
friends of education to share interests, experiences, and information in
an environment of mutual respect and cooperation," notes the conference's
web site, located at:http://www.tea.state.tx.us/parent_inv/init.html.
Gosh, that sounds really neat. But shouldn't that phrase read:
"...other friends of (the) education (establishment) ...?"
It's very evident this conference is not about how to "empower"
parents — that's something which is mandated (quite vaguely, unfortunately)
in both state and federal law. This conference is about how to empower
the education establishment to regulate, restrict and channel parental
involvement into activities which give the education establishment even
more power.
To borrow a phrase from Fort Worth parental activist Jean Donovan,
when Texas took federal money, it had to alter the education code to comply
with a federal regulation requiring parent inclusion. This was done via
Bill Ratliff's Senate Bill 1 in 1995. However, the bureaucracy's definition
of this objective significanty differs from the definition dreamed up in
Congress. It is, in fact, an attempt to increase the reach and power of
the education establishment.
So what are the objectives of this meeting of bureaucractic minds?
Again, quoting from the TEA's web site for the conference, with translations
in plain English:
• Parent Education and Enrichment: To support parents as they
cope with the daily challenges and growth opportunities that are part of
their commitment to nurture their children's social and academic development.
(Translation: parents will be taught the "correct" way to perform their
parental duties.)
• Parent Rights and Responsibilities: To expand awareness of
the rights and opportunities which are provided to parents by state and
federal laws. (Translation: to make administrators aware of the legal hurdles
they have to watch out for when challenged.)
• Reading and Literacy: To highlight the connection between reading
skills and academic success and to promote reading as a life long, enjoyable
leisure activity for both children and adults. (Translation: to make lack
of home guidance a prime cause for the failure of "look-say" reading methods
and reading failure.)
• Creating Successful Programs: To provide inspiration and guidance
by sharing stories of successful programs, strategies, and practices which
foster parent involvement and student achievement. (Translation: how to
use your school's PTA/PTO to raise money for all kinds of things the school
board won't buy for you.)
• Sharing Successes in Site-Based Decision Making. To encourage
persons to become involved in SBDM by explaining the process and illustrating
its successes both at the level of the school district and at the level
of the local school. (Translation: how to use decentralization to shift
the blame for failures from upper-level administrators to lower-level,
on-site administrators and classroom teachers).
• Networking and Collaboration: To create opportunities for parents,
educators, and other friends of education to exchange ideas, build relationships,
and open lines of communication. (Translation: information on how to publicly
respond to critics of the public educational bureaucracy by portraying
them as "social conservatives," influenced by the "religious right," or
simply "wackos" who seek to impede progress.)
Now, let's not forget the primary purpose of the conference:
to get parents "involved" in ways which don't annoy the bureacracy. As
such, the TEA is promoting its "Parental Involvement Pledge" during the
conference — a benignly-worded document which pretty much qualifies as
a one-way contract, making parents accountable for childrens' failure but
neglecting to "share" that responsibility with educators.
"Don't you just wonder what might happen if dissatisfied parents
across America found a clever lawyer and filed a class action suit for
educational malpractice?" Donovan asked members of her education loop on
the Web.