School Is the Place for Parents

A parent is a child’s first teacher. The best parents continue their roles as instructors when their children go to school, reinforcing what teachers do in the classroom. They stimulate young intellects with specific questions and enriching experiences. They value education over work, college over a job immediately after high school. That is the ideal; most parents say they care about their children’s education, but many don’t know how to get involved.

Parents as Learning Partners, an ambitious new effort funded by a $4.8-million grant from the Weingart Foundation, intends to increase parental involvement at 29 elementary, middle and high schools near downtown Los Angeles, in the northeast San Fernando Valley and in Long Beach. The lessons learned will later be spread to other campuses.

Parents of many children in targeted schools speak Spanish, Armenian, Cambodian or Cantonese. They indicated on surveys that language barriers discourage their involvement with their children’s education. They asked for and will get English-language classes. In parent training classes, they will also learn they don’t need to speak English or understand geometry to insist that their children attend school, do homework and turn off the TV.

Parents and staff at the schools in the Weingart program have also proposed projects such as a parent lending library of children’s books, training parents as classroom volunteers and seminars to teach parents how to prepare their children for college entrance.

The Weingart grant will be matched by more than $10 million from the L.A. and Long Beach school districts and from two education reform groups, the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN) and the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project, which is coordinating the program.

Unfortunately, nearly one-third of parents surveyed on behalf of the Weingart effort say they would leave the teaching up to teachers. They need guidance on how to provide sincere, consistent and active interest in their children’s studies.

Children who come from homes where parents are involved in school do better academically than other children. The Parents as Learning Partners project can make a difference if more parents, in concert with teachers, help their children and the public schools to succeed.