Unfortunately, there’s a pretty low bar to becoming a parent. Expectations on parental accountability seem to be based on that.
Last spring, just 30 percent of parents at South Cobb High School attended the Road to Graduation session, where ninth- and 11th-graders and their parents meet with counselors to plot out a map for achievement. Attendance figures for Pebblebrook High were incomplete but similar.
Cobb school board member David Morgan brought up these facts last week to show the sad state of parental engagement in these schools. That both are low-achieving is no surprise.
So Morgan had a plan: If parents of Pebblebrook students don’t show interest and engagement in their children’s academic work, then the kids can’t participate in sports or other extracurricular activities.
Morgan’s proposal was to make the once-a-year Road to Graduation seminars mandatory, as well as parent-teacher conferences. If a parent doesn’t attend, then no band, no basketball, no debate for Junior.
The reaction, you might figure, was fierce. Several teacher advocates and parents approached the school board last week to decry “punishing the kids for the sins of their parents.”
It was the classic, “I like your passion, but …”
Social media was worse, calling the idea — and Morgan — outrageous, stupid, contemptible. It was as if Morgan was demanding that parents come in each weekend to paint the auditorium or their kids would get spanked.
The school board, not surprisingly, turned down the measure 5-2.
I talked with Morgan after Thursday’s meeting. He seemed dejected and a little surprised by the lopsided vote.
“When I was making certain points, it was like crickets in the room,” he said. “Too often in education, it’s complacency. We give lip service to parental involvement.”
Morgan was not asking much from the parents. They didn’t even have to darken the school’s doorway. They could knock out their requirements by phone or on the Internet. Talk about a low bar.
“How hard is it? Parents, can you do 90 minutes in a 180-day school year?” he said. “Do you know what I think this is? Low expectations! I think that people think poor people can do no better. It reminds me of welfare reform under Clinton. People were like, ‘How dare you?’”
Morgan’s idea sounds a bit harsh, a bit out there, possibly even desperate. But these are desperate times. Who wants to lose another generation of underachieving students?
Our society has tried it all: Head Start, pre-K, No Child Left Behind, uniforms, corporal punishment, even Mozart in the womb. Why not try making kids shame their deadbeat parents?
My guess is teens with a chance of missing the team will be pretty motivated to getting their parents to act.
“Kids are going to be on their parents,” Morgan said. “’Hey, mom, hey, dad, did you go out to that meeting? Did you make the phone call?’ Remember, these are high school kids. They aren’t first-graders.”
You might expect that Morgan is Republican with his “draconian” calls for accountability. The divorced father and two-term board member (he’s running for a third) is a Democrat and a former teacher. The Cobb board’s only black member and only Democrat now lobbies for the American Federation for Children, a conservative school choice outfit that pushes for charter schools, vouchers and school tax credits.
I get it — parents who consistently ignore teacher meetings are generally not likely to offer much help with Johnny’s algebra. But having talks with educators, making the effort, knowing what’s going on in their kids’ school — even a little — might light a spark that could spur further action.
I can almost read the emails now: “These people are poor and working three jobs.” “They don’t know how to engage teachers.” “You’re just as stupid as Morgan!”
But, like Morgan said, it was few minutes every now and again. And they could have done it by phone!
“Why do we demand parent accountability in other areas?” he said. “Why is it to be eligible to have a child in sports they have to take a physical? Because there’s accountability. If you don’t take the physical, then you can’t play. It doesn’t matter if you’re poor or don’t have time or work two jobs. We put a higher level of accountability on sports for parental engagement than we do academic engagement.”
Free and reduced lunch? “The parent has to fill out the paperwork or (the student) doesn’t eat. Or why do we demand immunization shots?What if the parents are too poor or too lazy to go to the doctors? Their accountability is their kids can’t go to school.”
He knows there’s a societal good to immunize students. It’s important to feed hungry kids. And you want to make sure a future running back doesn’t have a heart murmur.
It’s all for the greater good. As is having parents who have a clue.
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