The “parental engagement” trap

ONE OF the biggest policy goals for improving education today is mandating "parental engagement"--the idea that the key to successful kids is for parents to step up and do more.

The popularity of this idea is no surprise, since it fits well with the standard ethos of "personal responsibility"--one of the most commonly used sticks that the ruling class uses to explain why working-class people constantly seem to have so many difficulties.

This is most emphasized in African American communities, where civic, city and business leaders repeat 100 versions of "Stop complaining; it's not racism that keeps you down, but your own failure to take personal responsibility." Last year, Barack Obama used a similar line in a speech to chastise all of Africa.

In the sphere of education, the big thing is "re-inventing" with charter schools. The key issue for charter school providers is showing student improvement while spending less money than public schools.

There are some charter schools that are honestly focused around education. But by and large, the large charter companies and investors set the tone and ideologies that dominate the charter school movement.

The most profitable way for a charter school to deliver test scores that are higher than they were in the community where the school is based is to select only the top performing students. This is the number one play in the charter school playbook.

While they can't usually say no to English as a Second Language or language learner students, kids with disabilities, minority kids or poor kids--at least not openly--charter schools can say that they require parental engagement. This can be in-school involvement, Saturday activities and lots of requirements that parents help with the homework.

It's hard to imagine parents' involvement in their kids' lives as a bad thing. There are, of course, useful ways for parents to play a role in their children's education. But the question that isn't being asked is why many parents aren't involved in the first place.

The answer from proponents of charter schools seems to be that parents who don't work with their kids are lazy. Thus, the answer is the parental engagement policy of conscription. Racism allows this logic to be widely spread in minority communities.

One result of this philosophy of personal responsibility is that only children with engaged parents--and specifically, the available time to be engaged--will enroll in charter schools. One example among many is a parental contract available online. The contract starts by describing parents helping with homework and communicating with teachers, which seems reasonable.

The problem comes in how the school evaluates parents' adherence to these rules. The rules become ways to purge unwanted kids out of the charter school. The contract goes on to "encourage" parents to "Enroll their child in academic intervention/enrichment programs (After School Institutes, Saturday classes, etc.), if the school deems it necessary" and "Volunteer at the school a minimum of 15 hours."

This translates into a direct barrier to families who don't have the money for these programs or the time to volunteer. All together, a system veiled in educational excellence and parental involvement becomes a tool for limiting the student body to kids with more affluent, more highly educated parents and other advantages. These are the top-performing students in the public schools that the charter schools are striving to siphon off.

A cornerstone of a just society is that people shouldn't be held responsible for others' decisions. Relying on parental responsibility is opposed to this concept. Building social programs around parental engagement is a program to keep the poor poor and the rich rich.

A just education system would actually do the reverse--and seek out disadvantaged children and supply them with resources. For example, children in minority and low-income communities should have lower student-to-teacher ratios. That's the policy that would actually improve education for all of our students.