When I talk to friends or suburban audiences about urban education, the conversation nearly always turns to the role of parents. ????The consensus is that disinterested, disengaged parents are to blame for the discouraging results of inner-city public schools. ????From this, they typically infer that these schools will never turn around until parents shape up. ????(Indeed, President Obama has cleverly tapped into this line of thinking--his most certain applause line in education speeches comes when he lectures parents about turning off the television and reading to their kids.)
I used to have sympathy for this argument, but more and more, I'm convinced that it needs to be flipped. That is, to get more engaged parents in tough neighborhoods, we need better schools. ????This is essentially the case made by Jay Mathews' very good piece in today's Washington Post. ????He argues that great school leaders (like KIPP's Dave Levin and Susan Schaeffler) and teachers (like Jaime Escalante) get great results prior to vast expansions of parental involvement.
This parallels David Whitman's findings about the nation's best urban schools in his excellent book????Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism. ????Rather than blaming parents or "presum(ing) that boosting parental participation is the key to narrowing the achievement gap," these schools lead with their achievements and let the families follow. ????(If your to-read pile is as tall as mine, you can get????a condensed version of his argument in????this Education Next article.)
Finally, there's some really intriguing empirical evidence supporting this change in thinking as well. ????Take a little time to page through this analysis of parental views of the DC voucher program. ????It provides a compelling explanation for low levels of engagement among urban parents and then, more importantly, shows how these parents become more engaged and more knowledgeable about school quality over time after being provided options.