In response to a D.C. survey that blamed apathetic parents for failing schools, Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews argues bad schools are made by bad teaching, not bad parents.
Most of our worst schools are full of low-income children in our biggest cities. No one has yet found a way to revive those schools in any significant way by training the students’ parents to be more engaged with their children’s educations. It is too hard to do and too unlikely to have much impact on the chaotic school district leadership.
What has worked, again and again, is the opposite: Bring an energetic and focused leader into the school, let that person recruit and train good teachers and find ways to get rid of those who resist making the necessary changes. Great teaching makes great schools, and once you have a good school, parents become engaged and active.
However, without strong leadership — and good principals are in short supply — even smart, well-trained teachers will have trouble teaching effectively. It takes a lot of work to turn around a floundering school.
Friends of Dave has more thoughts.
As a parent, I never really cared that much who the principal of a school was. I only cared about the teacher of my child or children. The administration could consist of potted plants and dim bulbs could teach every other class, but if my children’s teachers were okay then the school was okay. I know a bad principal can mess things up, but I haven’t seen much evidence that a good principal can make a bad teacher into a good one. At least, I’m not willing to let my children be taught by someone who shows great potential just because the principal promises to get all the teachers to follow some brilliant plan or another. I’ll pick a good teacher with a bad principal over a bad or even so so teacher with a good principal every day of the week.
Support teachers who demand discipline in the classroom even if that discipline falls disproportionally on one ethnic group, and education will work. When you have crap like the Frisco super who ordered administrators to cut disciplinary actions against minorities in half or get fired, violence predictably increased and performance predictably fell.
If the union really supported teachers, they would demand administrative support of discipline. Perhaps if the unions lost their right to compel membership they would find more interest in support of discipline.
Apparently Mr. Mathews has some trouble distinguishing between policy and a pretty good idea.
“Bring an energetic and focused leader into the school” isn’t a policy it’s a good idea. Until Mr. Mathews, or anyone else, can figure out how to turn an obviously good idea into a policy an obviously good idea it will remain.
Energetic and focused leaders will continue to show up only as chance dictates.
Somebody somewhat official (and hopefully with standing) finally seems to understand that the horse goes before the cart. Yea!! Sound management principles apply to school systems as well as corporations. Principals (and ISDs) are management, and bad management becomes prevasive. The reason there ARE bad teachers in a school is because management tolerates them. In well run schools and systems bad teachers are identified and eliminated, and good ones rewarded and kept. If you have a school with a bunch of good teachers, and an ISD with a lot of good schools that is NOT an accident or random chance.
Leaders create climate, whether it be one of productivity and positivity or one of dissension and destruction. Principals can inspire or cause despair.
While teachers have a major impact on students, so do families. Teachers only control so many variables, and principals can only help teachers so far. Education is a community issue as well.
Jon: the role of a principal isn’t necessarily to *create* good teachers (though there are certainly things they can do to help) — they’re much more central in *finding* and *retaining* good teachers. Who wants to work for a bad boss? Good teachers, the ones who have other options, will flee from badly-managed places. So, yes, bad management translates very directly into bad teaching.
I think that Mr. Matthews and other commentators have missed the point of the “bad parents” meme. It’s not, I think, that bad schools are caused by a lack of parental involvement. However, bad parenting leads to children with little discipline, anger problems, lack of preparedness, etc. Having a classroom full of children who are unusually difficult to teach and discipline has a way of making good teachers head for the hills. Add in the fact that our worst schools have also been subjected to some of the worst ideas coming out of education school ivory towers. (Whole language, everyday math, crayola curriculum to name a few). Part of why these ridiculous ideas have been able to take hold in poor school districts and have had less influence in more successful schools is that the same parents who don’t need much encouragement to volunteer to be class mom/dad are educated and aware enough to recognize a bad idea when they see it and protest vigorously. “Bad parents” are more likely to see educating the kids as the school’s job and be willing to go along with whatever the educrats throw at them.
So, I would argue that many of the causes of bad schools really can be traced back to bad parenting, just not in a way that can be addressed by getting these parents “involved” in the school. Intensive parenting classes starting pre-natally and more incentives for parents to stay together are the only things I can think of which would really do much to change the problem. But that’s way beyond the public school’s mandate.
I don’t get it. Jay Mathews says we should do “What has worked again and again . . .” I have no experience in in urban schools, or bad schools (unless you consider a rather depressing provencialism as “bad”), so all I know is what I read here and there. My impression is that nothing has ever “. . . worked again and again . . .”. Every now and then a school is turned around in a way that makes the news, but my impression is that it’s probably not permanent, mostly a matter of concentrated effort and enthusiam making a temporary difference.
But I hope I’m wrong.
I do relate to Jon’s comment. Teacher quality, once a basic minimum of structure and support are provided by the school and society at large, is very much a thing of the individual teacher. A good principal can’t do much about a poor teacher, and most good principals, from what I read, are very much constrained in replacing them. Again, I hope I’m wrong.
Actually I don’t even have much of an idea what different people mean by a “bad school”. Obviously it’s a bad school if few or none of the teachers can keep a quiet and orderly classroom, or if students are regularly bullied by other students. And I suppose it’s a bad school if test scores are low, or lower than they should be. But I’m not sure how that should be judged. My youthful idealism that I could teach anything to anybody faded long, long ago. Surely to say that a school is good or bad would have to involve a consideration of what that school is up against.
I do have a theory about bad schools, and I’m sure this theory is shared by many others, perhaps worded in different ways. A culture of bad parents (of course we’re not supposed to say that), produces a local government of poor quality, if not actual corruption, which produces a school system with a lot of frustrations to teachers who are competent and caring, which produces a strong selective force against such teachers, and on and on and on. (I see Rebeccat just said much the same thing in a comment.) Jay Mathews makes it plain in his article that he rejects this perspective. But I find his perspective unconvincing.
I have another theory. Okay, it’s not a theory, just a general idea. The idea is localities get the schools they want, not in every detail obviously, but in general. The values and culture of a community set into play powerful forces that are hard to control or counter. A community that values football and cheerleading gets football and cheerleading. A community that does not value knowledge gets schools that reflect that. Now what does this do to NCLB? NCLB, unless I missed something, definitely is not concerned with finding out what different communities want. Should it be? I’m not sure.
Suppose the powerful forces set into play by cultural values of a locality are considerably stronger than the corrective provisions put in place by NCLB? I’m not saying they are, of course, but I certainly am posing that question. If NCLB is essentially powerless to really accomplish anything, then what?
I don’t know, but I am inclined to think Jay Mathews is not helping things much. Maybe it is not a hundred per cent true that bad parents make bad schools, but if we give careful thought to it, I’m guessing it still comes out at least 60% true, and perhaps more like 80% or 90% true. And there may be some truth to the idea that poor schools make poor parents, but I’m guessing that careful reflection will lead one to the conclusion that it’s no more than 20% true.
So, it’s a nice article, Jay, but it doesn’t move me off square one.
Bring in good principals. Sure, sounds good. If only we had more acres for our Good Principal Orchard on the back forty.
Thing is, there’s a shortage of good principals in the poorest places that need it most, just as there tend to be a shortage of people expecting those kids to perform well academically.
Teachers need to be backed up by the administration, and by the parents. Those aren’t mutually exclusive, either.
http://awaitingtenure.wordpress.com/
Wasn’t Joe Clark a good principal? Didn’t he do what was necessary to turn that failing school around? Look what happened to him …
Before anyone dumps anymore on us bad parents, perhaps we should ask some key questions such as why parenting skill is so intrinsically linked to income and geography (ie: the wealthier suburbs). And doesn’t it seem curious that the balance seems to tip more heavily towards whites than minorities?
Personally I can share that my parenting ability has been stretched and developed far more with my second child than my first– but that has not been recognized by their teachers. My oldest child is quiet, accomplished, socially adept. My younger uses creativity in finding lots of ways to self entertain and subvert the school rules–and requires far more educational “services.” Due to age and classification differences, they have not spent time in the same schools. Not only has one had far superior school resources (and it is not the one with the categorical entitlement), but the response to me (and others) as a parent is like night and day.
I cannot tell you how many parent nights have begun by bad mouthing the parents who didn’t make it–in the less desireable schools. Not only are there few opportunities for parents to be involved, but when it is clear that a parent is interested they are either driven away, or handed the challenge–why don’t you start a PTA? People who believe that the parents of their students are inferior can do unbelievably rude things to parents who show an interest.
What bothers me about this comment, quoted below, my emphasis added:
“Part of why these ridiculous ideas have been able to take hold in poor school districts and have had less influence in more successful schools is that the same ***parents who don’t need much encouragement to volunteer to be class mom/dad*** are educated and aware enough to recognize a bad idea when they see it and protest vigorously.”
Not that it is entirely untrue, but that it glosses over a fundamental economic fact: It entirely discounts a subset of parents that CANNOT “volunteer to be class mom/dad.”
In my previous employment, I enjoyed a liberal benefit package that included flexible scheduling, personal days, etc. I could afford and had the opportunity to be heavily involved in my children’s school — and identified and effected (what I hope were positive and worthwhile) improvements. With a change in employment, I have nearly NO opportunity to volunteer during the school day, and feel totally cut off from school activities. PTA meetings are scheduled during the work day for my Jr. High child’s school.
It’s not that I’m not interested or smart enough to monitor my children’s school environment. But I *have* found that a change in my economic situation GREATLY affected my ability to be involved, let alone to know what was going on (and thus what I might need to challenge).
It’s not always ignorance. Often, it is opportunity.