The authors of the crappy research paper conclude their crappy opinion piece, “Parental Involvement is Overrated,” with the following thoughts:
When the federal government issues mandates on the implementation of programs that increase parental involvement, schools often encourage parents to spend more time volunteering, to attend school events, to help their children with homework and so forth. There is a strong sentiment in this country that parents matter in every respect relating to their children’s academic success, but we need to let go of this sentiment and begin to pay attention to what the evidence is telling us.
Conventional wisdom holds that since there is no harm in having an involved parent, why shouldn’t we suggest as many ways as possible for parents to participate in school? This conventional wisdom is flawed. Schools should move away from giving the blanket message to parents that they need to be more involved and begin to focus instead on helping parents find specific, creative ways to communicate the value of schooling, tailored to a child’s age. Future research should investigate how parental involvement can be made more effective, but until then, parents who have been less involved or who feel uncertain about how they should be involved should not be stigmatized.
What should parents do? They should set the stage and then leave it.
Yeah, no.
Parents should get more involved. They should attend PTA meetings, they should volunteer, they should attend board of education meetings, they should vote for their representatives on the school board, they should tell administrators about both the good and bad practices at the school. Kids who live in communities with a high percentage of involved parents have higher test scores than communities with low parental involvement. (This fact is extremely well documented. I can dredge up the studies at some point.)
Parents shouldn’t be assholes. They should assume that the teacher is overwhelmed, underpaid, and mismanaged. They shouldn’t complain and never compliment or contribute. They should try to restrain themselves to one complaint per year. Your kid will suffer, if you complain too much. And if there’s that much to complain about, it is really better to move or supplement at home. One person can’t change the system.
Parents have the right to have access to their kids and their schools. Parents and other community members pay for the schools with their local tax money and have the right to see the results.
There is a limit to what schools can do. Public education, even in the fanciest towns, is not the same as a private school education. Keep one’s expectations low and educate your kids in all sorts of way that have nothing to do with the Common Core or SAT scores. Talk to them. Take them on hikes. Play trains with them. Visit places. Tell them stories about growing up in the big city or the little town. Read outloud to them for as long as you can. As they get older, coax them out of their bedrooms and find common interests.
Apt. 11d 
… to focus instead on helping parents find specific, creative ways to communicate the value of schooling, tailored to a child’s age.
Maybe not. Perhaps parents need to _model_ interest in academics, rather than “communicating the value,” i.e., preaching. Another NYT op-ed expounds that children model their moral behavior after what adults do, not what they say. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/opinion/sunday/raising-a-moral-child.html?src=me&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Most%20Emailed&pgtype=Blogs
But I can already see whole reams of school newsletters and parent info sessions assuring parents that it’s their duty to talk up the importance of education.
LikeLike
You beat me to it! Parents show how they value school by being involved as much as they can. Just like there’s a myth that you hand your teenage kids off to their peers, you shouldn’t hand them off to the education system.
It’s a partnership – you know your kids as they are at home and their teachers know them as they are at school. Both together tell the whole story of your kid.
And any changes that need to be made can be reinforced in each place.
LikeLike
“Maybe not. Perhaps parents need to _model_ interest in academics, rather than “communicating the value,” i.e., preaching.”
Exactly.
LikeLike
Completely agree, particularly about the political engagement related to schools, although that’s not surprising given that I’m a political scientist too. I ran for our local school committee recently; one of the other candidates suggested at a parent meeting that she was upset by the fact that parents had to be so involved in the schools to get the policies they wanted. She suggested if everything would good, they would be able to live their lives and just let the teachers do what’s right. Sigh. Unfortunately, she won – she was a retired guidance counselor who had been in the schools for over 30 years, and I am not a local and had restrictions on my ability to fund-raise, due to my state employment. Then again, maybe everyone just wanted to hear that they wouldn’t need to continue to pay attention and everything would be okay.
LikeLike
“..one of the other candidates suggested at a parent meeting that she was upset by the fact that parents had to be so involved in the schools to get the policies they wanted. She suggested if everything would good, they would be able to live their lives and just let the teachers do what’s right. Sigh. Unfortunately, she won…”
She isn’t necessarily wrong. I would have much preferred that my kids’ algebra teacher have been competent (she frequently insisted the answer in the back of the book was wrong – it wasn’t). Hiring competent teachers is something the school should just do – it should just work. It would be much better if teachers followed the IEPs without a parent constantly riding them. Again, doing so is something that should just work. I think the key word here is “so”. They shouldn’t have to be so involved.
LikeLike
Heh. Heh. I tried hard not to only complain and to limit my complaints. Turns out, I found out after the fact, that my darling child in high school repeatedly used the threat of contacting me and bringing my involvement to a problem she thought needed to be resolved. I think I was only actually contacted once, but I do remember getting one casual remark from the principal, “You’re an attorney right?” (No I am not.) But honestly a lot of wrong things happened at my child’s high school and if the threat of parental involvement was what was needed to empower her, then so be it. Depsite the best intentions, the teachers regularly violated the 504 plan and took actions that adversely affected my child for the long term. But I let go of the anger and remember, that which does not kill us makes us stronger (which my child regularly refutes).
LikeLike
YES on the modelling–this is a small example, but my students who read for pleasure most often are also the students who tell me that their parents talk to them about the books they’re reading (both parent and kid), go on trips to the library together, share books on their Kindle, or remember reading our assigned text in high school themselves–all ways to communicate that reading matters, literacy and literature matter, that go beyond reading bedtime stories in the toddler years and reinforce that educating yourself is important and pleasurable.
LikeLike