Why Empowering Parents May Often Fail

Last week, certain segments of the education policy community celebrated what was dubbed “National School Choice Week.”  The core underlying theory of the school choice movement is in theory quite noble and good: create more choices for parents as to where they send their children to use the power of the free market to eliminate bad schools and thus improve the entire education system.  To achieve this end, several policies that have limited effectiveness (and that I have lambasted in this blog) are employed:  increase teacher accountability through merit pay, measure school progress transparently using standardized test scores, allow private individuals to develop charter schools to compete with failing public schools, and fund vouchers to parents to choose where to send their children instead of wasting large per pupil expenditures in the public system.   The name of the game is to empower parents, which is good.

My problem with the push for parental choice is that the movement leaves its fundamental assumptions unquestioned:

1.     Parents need empowerment.

2.     Parents, once empowered, will act on their newfound ability to choose.

3.     Parents are able to make good choices about education.

4.     That a child has parents that actively make choices related to their education.

5.     That the locus of blame for poor educational outcomes is the school.

6.     That the locus of blame for poor educational outcomes is unrelated to the parent.

It is my personal belief (a belief supported by many facts) that all of these assumptions sometimes (or often) prove false.  The purpose of this post is not, as you may expect, to say that parent choice needs to be abolished (although I think compelling arguments could be made for this argument).  Rather, I will seek to show that you need to understand the role of parental and family factors to understand which segments of the population parental choice can benefit.  From there, I think it is easier to understand some of the qualms one might have about making parental choice the guiding framework of our education policy.

The Parental Rainbow

The fundamental issue I have with empowering parents is that not all parents are the same, not all need empowerment, and not all those who are empowered will react in the best interests of their children as students (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not).   To better illustrate what I mean, I identify various types of parents and organize them by whether parental choice might benefit their kids:

Students whose parents have the following characteristics will not do better than they do now as a result of parental choice:

·      Enough money to send their kids to a private school

·      Work too many hours to be involved in decisions related to their child’s education

·      Not involved in their child’s life (dead, incarcerated, abandoned their child, etc.)

·      Not aware or unsure how to become aware about the school choices available for their kids.

·      Do not see the value of education and do not support their children’s education

·      Unable to evaluate different options presented and choose the best option for their child.

·      Bad at parenting or simply do not care about their children

·      Afraid/Unwilling to send children outside of neighborhood school

Students whose parents have the following characteristics might do better as a result of parental choice: 

·      Cannot afford private school for their kids

·      Value education for their kids

·      Can on their own or with help make informed decisions about where to send their child

·      Have or make time to make decisions related to their child’s education

·      Are open to and able to provide a means for their child to transit to a new school, if necessary.

·      Are alive and involved in raising their children

Parental wealth, knowledge, and involvement are the three main factors that determine whether parental choice can potentially improve children’s outcomes.  Unfortunately, as you can see above, some of the children who are worst off are most likely to remain unaffected by parental choice: those who have one or fewer parents, those whose parents work too much to be involved (this is not bad parenting, as you need a child to have a home or to eat before they can be educated, right?), those whose parents don’t care or are not involved in their lives.  To put it in plain language, low- to middle-income parents who value education, can be involved in decisions related to their child’s education, and who are willing to send their child to a different school that may be far away are the only group that could potentially benefit from parental choice.

Outside factors that might further limit any benefits of parental choice

Because children spend some 70% of their waking hours outside of school, the parental choice movement’s willingness to discount or ignore factors outside of school that affect learning outcomes is perhaps the largest weakness of the movement.  [update: The Washington Examiner, DC's conservative paper, published an article on January 30, 2012, that there is an even distribution of "effective" or "highly effective" teachers across good and failing schools, which could show the failure of the rating system or could just as easily show that a teacher's ability to make a difference is severely limited by some of the outside factors I list below.]

·      Family Income – One of the strongest predictors of student achievement is their family’s income.  Poor kids tend to perform poorly in school (which makes sense for a variety of reasons: parent is likely to be working and less able to be involved, student may arrive malnourished, student may live in or travel through a violent or difficult neighborhood to get to school, etc.).

·      Parent’s Education Level  - Parents who have had more schooling tend to produce children who do better and are more educated.  This is usually related to a parent understanding the value of education, being better able to make decisions related to their child’s education or help their child make educational decisions, and their having higher incomes to support a child’s education outside of school.

·      Child’s Previous Track Record – A child’s previous educational success or failure is another huge factor in their future success.  Because “tracking,” or assigning kids to different levels (regular, honors, advanced placement/IB, etc.) based on their “intelligence,” is quite common place, many kids who are on a lower track will stay there regardless of their school.  That’s to say, children who were already shafted by the schooling they received have a much lower likelihood of being helped even if their parent is involved and values education.

·       Student motivation – It is hard to place a lot of blame on kids for not getting the right education and parents play a big role in this regard.  If a kid is not guided and supported in making sound choices to do well in school, they will likely do worse even in a great school with great teachers.

·      Impractical or Bad Parental Choice Options – As many pro-charter/voucher movies have shown, there are not enough slots for most kids, so they are subject to a lottery to get into a great new charter.  Competition severely excludes kids with fewer parents with less motivation, so the worst off are still unlikely to be helped at all.  Further, as the Stanford CREDO study showed, many parents believe that charters are better than public schools when in 80% of the cases they are at the same level or worse in terms of student achievement.  That is to say, parents perceive bad options to be good (which belies the assumption that empowering parents leads to better outcomes because they make good choices).  Finally, many vouchers do not cover the full cost of enrollment for kids, so even the most involved and educated parents might not be able to afford the best choice.

·      Extracurricular Learning – The ability and willingness of parents to provide stimulating, educative activities after-school, on weekends, and during vacations is key.  Kids who reinforce learning during gaps in schooling are more likely to succeed.  You’ll recall that children without summer programs lose about 3 months worth of previous learning over the summer compared to those whose parents keep their kids engaged.  This has to do with both parental income and motivation in many instances.

·      Learning Disabilities – It is somewhat unrealistic to expect teachers with students that have learning disabilities and much greater needs to get all their students to the same level as students that lack such challenges and the need for support.

There are indeed some school factors that impact student achievement that parental choice could (but may not) improve, such as teacher quality.  There are other school factors that do not impact kid’s learning much like class size or materials that I don’t include for that very reason.  That said, the willingness to place ALL of the blame for student’s not doing well on teachers or schools without any consideration of the disadvantages children bring into the classroom is quite unfair.  It is also potentially dangerous and could deepen inequality in this country.

The Sinister Implications of Parental Choice

There is an unaddressed tension in the parental choice movement between the belief that teacher quality is the key to all students succeeding and punishing teachers/schools that have low performing students:  poorer students tend to be clustered in undesirable schools.  As the best students from these schools with the most motivated parents are siphoned off by charters, the worst students are left ghettoized in these schools.  This makes the school more of a failure (I mean, come on: take the good students from a bad school and it will “get worse” even if the quality level hasn’t changed).  Further, it makes the school less desirable to teach at, which means that the worst students are not getting access to the best teachers (which is probably necessary, and hence the tension).  These children then get shuffled around and ignored.   Worse, these students are losing the potential peer pressure effect to do well because their peers are doing well, as their successful peers will have gone.

Additionally, it could have sinister implications on teaching quality.  Parental choice policies hinge on standardized tests to measure and rank students.  Students in these environments, however, have no real connection to the facts on these exams.  Further, these students most need the ability to think critically and make tough decisions (as they have much more inertia impeding their success), which they don’t get as teachers are forced by legislation like No Child Left Behind to teach to a test or be potentially fired and see their school closed.  Many states have lowered their standards to comply with the provision that all students be at level on reading and math by 2013: where student achievement has seemed to go up, it actually was the result of state’s lowering the standards they held children to.  That is not progress.

Worst of all, this policy shifts the blame from policy makers and parents to teachers.  It is no longer society’s fault that we have such great social inequality perpetuated by our school system.  It is all in the hands of parents and students whether they sink or swim, even if they start off drowning without a raft.  Further, it makes teachers the scapegoats for social inequality: suddenly teachers are at fault if their students are too poor and hungry to focus or if they come in from the summer 3 months behind their wealthier peers.  LET ME BE CLEAR, there is no excuse for poor children to be written off (I was one!).  That said, the blame lies sometimes with their parents, sometimes with their government, sometimes with society, sometimes with themselves, and sometimes with their teacher and/or school.  To misdirect all blame to one of those is not just and will not empower the vast majority of those kids who could benefit from a great educational experience. 

In short, policies should not center around making kids successful at taking tests, ghettoizing the lowest performers, and punishing teachers for a child’s background.  Improving teaching quality is key, but unless these policy makers will do something that also addresses socioeconomic disadvantages, they will never improve the system. 

Act on it!

So long as parental choice is ascendant, we need to make sure that the poorest parents can make the right choices.  We also need to support those kids whose parents don’t care, are too busy to be involved, or who simply aren’t present. Here’s how:

1.     Serve as a local school council liaison for overwhelmed parents in your community and fight for their kids (their success may save you taxpayer dollars, so you even have an incentive beyond altruism).  Particularly, fight the temptation to segregate students by “intelligence” or test scores, as a child put on a low track is likely one to end up there.  Support school feeding programs three times a day so that kids are fully nourished and ready to learn.

2.     Provide guidance to a working parent you know to help them truly understand the choices they have to advance their child and encourage them to do as well as possible in school.

3.     Serve as a mentor to the poorest or least supported kids in your community so that they don’t get lost in the parental choice struggle for lack of a parent.

4.     Help afterschool or on weekends or in the summer at a school to provide all kids a chance to continue learning during those large hours when they are not receiving instruction in a classroom.

5.     Help register low-income parents and get them to the polls so that they can vote for politicians that support policies that improve public schools rather than letting them atrophy.

6.     Create or support third spaces (libraries, tutoring centers, safe parks, etc.) that allow kids to remain engaged outside of the classroom.

Speak out!

What other categories do you think impact a parent’s ability to be empowered by choice programs and improve their child’s educational achievement?

What policies or volunteer opportunities might help students to succeed if they are not able to benefit from policies like those promoted by the parental choice movement?