(Vol. 3, No. 2 - Fall 1999)

"The Parents Are Coming!"
"The Parents Are Coming!"

With support from the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership, a growing circle of well-trained parents are bringing a new brand of parent volunteerism to Louisville's middle schools.



by John Norton

Every session of the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership begins with a reminder about "The Law of Two Feet."

"Do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself," CIPL Louisville coordinator Carol Edelen told about 20 Institute "fellows" who gathered at the UL-Shelbyville campus early last May. "Get up, move around, help yourself to whatever you need."

Despite the group's serious purpose, the atmosphere is casual and collaborative. The parents, mostly women, are comfortably dressed in everything from t-shirts to stylish pantsuits. They range from young moms to grandmoms, black and white, sophisticated and plain-spoken. Snacks, coffee, and soft drinks are in good supply. In front of each participant is a jumbo-sized three-ring binder, stuffed to overflowing with the CIPL curriculum, handouts, and assorted sticky notes.

A big sheet of poster paper, headed "The Rest Stop," is taped to the back wall of the conference room. It's a place where participants can list specific questions or issues that are off-topic but can be processed at the end of each session. Edelen points to the poster as she offers her next reminder, which might be described as the Institute's "prime directive" -- Respect the Agenda. "Remember," she says, "we're not here to solve problems; we're here to learn skills so you can solve problems."

"Gripe sessions" are inevitable speed bumps on the road to organizing parents. In fact, some parents who have joined the Institute in the hope that they will find specific solutions to contentious issues within their schools complain privately that the Institute is overly directive.

"They want to talk about what they want to talk about," says one parent. "I don't feel like they're really taking the parents' side." Another parent says the Institute's program "is too idealistic -- they don't want to face up to the fact that most schools don't want parents involved and treat us like second-class citizens."

The Institute's organizers say they are sensitive to the parents' concerns. "We recognize that parent frustrations with schools are a fact of life," says Edelen. "But often times that frustration grows out of the disadvantage that parents have when they're dealing with education professionals. We want to remove as much of that disadvantage as possible. That's what our curriculum is designed to do."

"Beyond the Bake Sale"

The Commonwealth Institute -- established in 1997 by the Prichard Committee -- offers six days of training, spread over three two-day sessions. When professional curriculum writers said it might take as long as two years to write a comprehensive training program for parents, Bev Raimondo, the Committee's director of community support, was drafted to do the work. A former adult education specialist for IBM, Raimondo drew on the Committee's considerable experience working with Kentucky parents. She also involved experts like Anne Henderson, a national parent involvement researcher and author of several books, including Beyond the Bake Saleand The Family Is Critical to Student Achievement.

"Our focus has always been on school-parent partnerships that move 'beyond the bake sale' to supporting the implementation of reform," says Raimondo. The impetus for the Institute grew out of the Prichard Committee's realization that before parents could become full partners on the site-based decisionmaking (SBDM) councils established under KERA, "they had to have more knowledge and more understanding about the inner workings of schools."

The Committee's decision to train already-active parents who were ready "to take the next step" in parent involvement attracted funding from 10 national foundations and dozens of Kentucky corporations and non-profits. The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, which has invested millions in JCPS middle grades reform over the last decade, offered to support institutes in Louisville designed specifically for middle school parents.

Recruiting participants for the middle grades institutes has been a challenge. Across the United States, parent involvement typically falls off after elementary school. Experts cite several reasons for the decline. Teachers at the secondary level often have less training in working with parents, and adolescents are less likely to encourage their parents to come to school. "We've had to be very persistent about getting the word out," Edelen says.

In the beginning, JCPS officials were cautious about openly supporting the Institute (whose motto is "Where Parents Are Powerful"). But visits to Institute sessions raised the comfort level of school system leaders and led to direct participation in the training by members of the district's middle-grades reform team. In a recent report to the Clark Foundation, the district acknowledged that "without a doubt, the experiences provided through the CIPL training are some of the best available for a deep and meaningful understanding of standards-based reform."

To further strengthen the relationship, Edelen met with JCPS middle grades principals over the summer to clarify the Institute's purpose and encourage them to help recruit Parent Fellows for the 1999-2000 training. A few -- most notably the principals at Conway, Noe and Carruthers -- have been proactive in getting their parents involved.

Raimondo points to Conway Middle School principal Steve St. Clair as an example of an administrator who understands how the Institute can be a benefit to schools. "He's been overt in getting his parents involved, and he's the first principal anywhere in the state to actually attend an Institute session himself," she says.

"It's great training and it doesn't cost us a thing," St. Clair says. "Parents come away with a much better ability to talk to educators at the level that educators are talking. They leave with a better understanding of the issues we face, and how the different work that's going on in schools fits together."

Raising Standards for Parents

It's an iron rule of parent organizing that you never do for people what they can do for themselves. This philosophy of parent self-reliance permeates the CIPL program. When Raimondo proposed that Institute participants be given homework assignments, some of the Prichard staff "thought this would be really scary for some parents, because a lot of them come in without a good relationship with the school or the district." But Raimondo and others insisted. "We're raising the standards for teachers; we're raising the standards for kids -- we have got to be raising the standards for parents in terms of their involvement and their level of knowledge and understanding," she says.

The "homework" includes data-gathering and interviews with school and district administrators. "It's been a very positive experience," Raimondo says. "Part of what we wanted was for them establish a relationship with educators. To have a conversation with educators they'd probably never had before. To learn something more about their district, and not just have knowledge about their school. And all of those things have happened."

At their May meeting, the Louisville parents reported on a homework assignment that required them to help other parents learn to ask "the right questions" in their schools. Questions like: "How do we motivate kids to make responsible decisions?" "How to we get more parents involved?" "How do we train staff to use the best teaching practices?"

"It almost got kind of rowdy," one parent said of the session at her school. "We had a lot of different opinions. You have to be able to read folks' personalities and respect where they're coming from." Another parent raised a familiar concern. "A lot of parents had bad school experiences themselves, and they're very reluctant to come into the school." When parents do come to a meeting, she said, "It's hard to stay on the agenda. We have trouble finding a common purpose."

CIPL organizers want to help the Louisville parents do just that. The Institute is asking each parent or school team to carry out an in-depth project that requires them to do research, establish goals, and implement a plan that can produce tangible improvement in their school. To help assure the projects are substantive and fact-based, CIPL provided data profiles of each middle school represented at the Institute, including detailed analyses of state testing results.

At the May meeting, Susan Weston, director of the Kentucky Association of School Councils, spent nearly four hours teaching the parents how to analyze the school profile information. "I believe we have to have parents involved in looking at this data if it is finally going to make a difference in our schools," Weston told the group. "When you look at the details of student performance, you can begin to ask the right questions about problem areas."

Weston's point was hammered home to Institute participants from Conway Middle School. "Our reading scores woke us up big time," PSTA president Marsha Kennison said after she and her teammates, including principal Steve St. Clair, combed through their data profile. "We can't make progress in too many other areas until we address our reading problem."

As a result of their training, the Louisville Institute fellows will pursue a wide variety of projects this year, including:
No Is Not an Answer

At the May graduation ceremony for CIPL's Louisville middle school fellows, a belly-dancing class next door occasionally interrupted the remarks of parent consultant Anne Henderson. After offering a few gyrations of her own, Henderson responded to concerns that some educators have been slow to welcome parents into the school improvement process.

"Even when they try to deny you your power, there are no sinister motives," she said. Determination, respect, and a willingness to sacrifice ego are key. "Principals and teachers want to be recognized for the effort they are making. Parents want their children to get a fair shake. We can find common ground. There's nothing we can't accomplish if we don't worry about who gets the credit."

"They work for you," Henderson reminded the parents. "You have the power to step forward and say, 'I want to know. I want to be involved. Remember that 'No' is not an answer. It's only a delaying tactic."

Parent Jacqueline Paschel was eager to get started. "I think I'm ready now," she told her fellow graduates. "If I hadn't had this training, I'd be a lost duck in the water."

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