First, let us stipulate what everyone agrees: that parent involvement is a key factor in student achievement.
From there, though, it’s always seemed to me a dodge of monumental proportions to suggest that children can’t learn if their parents aren’t involved in their education. Yet studies have been cited to bolster that view, which at its extreme suggests that there’s little we can do for kids who lack the much-ballyhooed parental backing.
Thus a recent study of low-income public schools in California may have garnered far too little notice. The study found that several factors other than parents “had a far greater impact on school performance.” The survey of 5,500 elementary school teachers and 257 principals should bolster the notion that a school’s mission should be to educate whoever shows up. According to “Schools debate role of parents,” a Washington Post article that appeared in this paper on Nov. 26:
“The four practices most closely associated with high student performance, the survey found, were putting greater emphasis on student achievement, tightening the curriculum to fit the state academic standards, using student assessments to identify and remove weaknesses in instruction, and assembling certified and experienced teachers and principals with the best educational equipment.”
The study by independent, Mountain View, Calif.-based EdSource (www.edsource.org) bends over backward to note that, “In fact, parent involvement was found to be positively correlated” with achievement a no-brainer. Still, it found “the relationship between student achievement and what the school does to encourage parent involvement is not as pronounced as the relationship between higher student achievement and these other four practices.” Experts elsewhere, the Post reported, found the same.
I’m a product of inner-city schools whose teachers had no confusion about the fact that education was our gateway to a wider world. To me, the key anecdote in the article concerned a Fairfax County, Va., parent who called three Richmond elementary schools to find out how her low-income African-American students were doing better than similar students in her school system. “The bottom line,” she said one principal told her: “We don’t have an expectation of the home. We don’t blame the home. We can’t teach parents. We don’t worry about whose responsibility it should be. We just consider it ours.”
Involve the parents. But teach the kids. That’s still the perspective of countless principals and teachers. Yet our society’s sacrifice of generations of our children, through lack of investment and through indifference, is one of the continuing indictments of our time. Debra Robinson, the sole African-American on the Palm Beach County School Board, probably said it best: “We need to create a school system that educates orphans.”
While I’m on this education soapbox, let me try to debunk some of the assumptions in the oft-heard question, why do African-American students attend historically black colleges when they will have to live in a white world? No disrespect meant, but inherent in the question is what I call the arrogance of ignorance. This is not a white world, of course, which underscores the problem that too many folks have too little clue about the rest of the world. The question also serves as a reminder that even whites fell victim to the old lie that white by nature is superior.
More accurate is the sentiment of another noted educator that “if black colleges didn’t exist, we would need to invent them.” Talbert O. Shaw, president emeritus of Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., brought home that message as keynote speaker for the 28th Annual White Rose Luncheon, hosted Dec. 4 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center by the West Palm Beach Chapter of The Links.
The Boca Raton resident, who until 2002 led the private liberal-arts, Baptist church-affiliated, oldest historically black university in the South, said its white founders slept in cornfields to avoid lynching by the don’t-educate-them crowd. Dr. Shaw also rolled off such numbers as the 50 percent of all blacks who attain baccalaureate degrees coming from the 20 percent of undergrads enrolled in historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). He noted that due in part to the “territorial integrity” of those schools where students “don’t have anything to prove,” black students are less likely to drop out and more likely if they go on to graduate studies to complete them.
In fact, the schools that produced the Martin Luther Kings and Thurgood Marshalls “had a revolutionary effect, changing the fabric of America,” Dr. Shaw said. “The black middle class in America,” he added, “is indebted to the HBCUs for their socioeconomic status,” and his audience of mostly professional women pioneers readily voiced agreement. “Despite all the reasons they should not exist, they continue to be a beacon of hope for thousands of our youngsters,” he said. “Let’s support them, because education is the great equalizer.”
