A PTA Convention Minus the Funny Hats : No-Nonsense Issues Fill Agenda as 1,400 Delegates Gather in the Nation’s Capital

“We Believe in Tomorrow”--that was the theme for the National PTA convention. It was emblazoned on the blue curtain in the convention hotel ballroom, printed on programs and buttons distributed to the 1,400 delegates, spoken from dozens of podiums.

And they do believe in tomorrow, at least most of the time. They rose to their feet to applaud a terrific rendition of “We Are the Children” by a choir of Washington schoolchildren. They cheered a high school cheering squad that passed out red, white and blue balloons. They smiled lovingly as 5-year-old Daisy Girl Scouts sang off-key. They saluted their own, too, PTA members who had found ways to get children to read more, or had built a bike path along a dangerous highway, or had identified “Safe Homes” for neighborhood children, or established programs to help prevent teen pregnancies.

But, paradoxically, when, at the close of a workshop session on “Teachers and Teaching in 1990,” Van D. Mueller of Minneapolis, a PTA national board member, asked, “How many of you are encouraging your sons and daughters, and grandsons and granddaughters, to enter teaching?” only eight of perhaps 60 people in the room raised their hands.

Still, if their belief is tempered by the reality of underpaid teachers, pre-teen drug addicts, violence in society and mediocrity in the classroom, they care. They cared enough to debate until midnight fine points of a resolution about aseat belts in school buses. Many cared enough to pay their own way here.

This was not the gold card expense account set; more than one family--and a number of delegates came with their families--was seen bundling supermarket bags up to rooms at the Washington Hilton. Five to a room was not unheard of. And 90-cent coffee at the Snackery in the convention complex was a topic of indignant discussion.

A PTA convention without the ridiculous hats, the Mickey Mouse ears and 10-gallons and the rest resting on the heads of home state boosters? Absolutely. Oh, the Oklahomans sprouted Indian headbands with feathers one night and Florida delegates were easy to spot--they were the ones carrying around inflatable alligators that wore sunglasses.

But for the most part the four-day meeting, which wound up Tuesday night with a festive banquet, was pretty much no-nonsense, not somber, but serious. A gathering dedicated to the proposition, expressed at Saturday’s opening general session by Floretta McKenzie, superintendent of the District of Columbia public schools, that this is a “moment of renaissance of public education” and the task before PTA is to keep alive “the notion that public education is part of the solution to what ails this country.”

In 1897, before anyone had ever heard of employer-supported child care or block parents or bilingual education or TV violence, there was a PTA. And one of the serendipitous moments of the convention was a workshop that brought together five of PTA’s “Feather Dusters,” former “peacocks” (national presidents) who are now, as they noted, “on the shelf.”

It was a time for more than nostalgia, however. Three of the Feather Dusters were black women, crusaders for children when America had dual school systems and the organization they headed was called the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers.

“It has been an uphill struggle,” said Mayme Williams, who was president of that group from 1953 to 1957, “but we made it.” Now, she said, all parents must work together for peace--”If we can’t do it with the children, God help us.”

Minnie Hatch Mebane of Kentucky, who was president of the black parents’ group in 1964-67, said Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society had arrived during her term and with it VISTA and the Job Corps and the Peace Corps but, in Kentucky, “They were still going to the wells with gourd dippers.” Her PTA, Mebane said, worked to get clean water and adequate sewage systems.

“There were no city funds, there were no federal funds,” no corporate sponsors to build playgrounds, she noted, so the PTAs did it, with money raised at bake sales and fish fries.

“We met in churches, we met in the schools,” she said. “We weren’t able to go into the hotel because Negroes weren’t permitted. You were fined $1,000 a day if you taught any mixed group” in church or in school.

Still, she said, they accepted “what was put on us” and worked on. She smiled and said, “Dedicated leadership leads to dedicated followship.” Then, before sitting down, she added, “It’s not where you’ve come from. It’s where you’re going.”

An Emotional Speech

Clara Gay of Georgia, who served as the black group’s last president, looked out at the largely white audience and said, “I did not join you joyfully. I joined you because I had to.” She spoke emotionally of the final years of the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, which in 1950 had reached its membership high of 400,000. She told of the group’s first meeting in a hotel, in 1965 at the Biscayne Bay in Miami--11 years after the Supreme Court struck down the concept of separate-but-equal. “For the first time,” said Gay, “I felt like an American citizen.”

Still, she was resisting unification, holding out for the idea of a Southern region of black parents. But, she said, “By 1967 it had become very evident that the schools were desegregated” and two PTAs could not coexist. An agreement was struck at a meeting in Atlanta in 1970.

“I was determined,” Gay said later, “that the 45 years of service the black people had done for their children in the South would be recognized.” One concession they asked for, and got, was that pictures of all 12 of their presidents be hung in PTA’s national headquarters in Chicago.

For the next 10 years, she said, there was something of a boycott of the establishment PTA by those who had belonged to the black group--”They backed out.” Today, the leadership of the combined PTA’s is largely white; an all-white slate of national officers was installed here.

“It bothers me,” Gay said, “but I understand. I couldn’t help but feel a little nostalgia the other night as I looked up and saw those people on stage. But we have a few who’ll start to work their way up. It doesn’t change overnight.”

Ann Kahn, newly installed as PTA national president, told the convention that she is enthusiastic about a new brochure, “Plain Talk About Tests,” which was prepared by the national PTA in cooperation with Educational Testing Service to distribute to 1 million parents. It explains the different types of tests, limitations of these tests, how to interpret tests and how to improve test scores.

These tests, which include the commonly used Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and the SRA (Science Research Associates) Achievement Series, are to most parents just “mumbo-jumbo,” Kahn added in an interview, saying that legislators “think by mandating testing they have mandated intelligence.”

Kahn wants parents to understand that “testing is just one way you measure a child’s ability” and that results may be based largely on “how they felt the particular morning they took that particular test.”

Until now, Kahn said, most parents hesitated to ask questions about standardized testing because they “didn’t want to go in there looking like fools who don’t know what the 86th percentile is.”

‘Too Much Testing’

Gregory Anrig, president of Educational Testing Services of Princeton, N.J., the organization that does much of the testing, agreed, telling the delegates, “We do too much testing . . . and we place too much importance on tests. They are imperfect instruments.”

Anrig said, “Tests do not measure important human qualities” such as motivation, caring, sensitivity, perseverance, integrity and

“they are not a measure of human worth.”

In addition, he said, they discriminate: “If you have unequal educational opportunities, you’re going to have unequal results.”

Frankly, Anrig said, “I can’t get very excited about one-time tests.” Coming soon, he said, would be computer-based technology that would enable students to sit at a simple terminal, determine how they are doing in a class according to their time goal and where they need additional effort.

Another convention speaker, Albert Shanker, president of the 610,000-member American Federation of Teachers, did not bring encouraging news. “We face the possibility of a major teacher shortage in this country,” he said. “Almost everyone who greets me as I walk down the street says he is an ex-teacher. If I were president of the American Federation of Ex-Teachers, I’d be a much bigger organization.”

Many in schools of education today, he said, “are not the best and the brightest” but “those at the very bottom, who themselves need . . . remediation.”

Mary Futrell, head of the 1.7-million member National Education Assn., which also represents teachers, told PTA delegates, “We at NEA take very seriously the involvement of parents” but, she acknowledged, it is not always easy to make involvement take place.

The NEA ‘Yellow Book’

She spoke of several NEA projects directed at parents. One is Kidsnet, in cooperation with the Corp. for Public Broadcasting and the Ford Foundation, in which television programs will be rated as good or bad for children at specified age levels.

Another is NEA’s “yellow book,” an evaluation of more than 300 computer software programs to assist those who succumb to those computer commercials that, Futrell said, “shame you, the parents, into going out and buying computers or (know) your kid’s going to fail,” but who are at sea about software.

Shanker, an outspoken advocate of strong educational reform and of testing to determine the competency of new teachers, said, “The job of the professional and the school is very different from the job of the parent and the home. The school is a bridge” between the protection of the home and the cold world.

He put down educational theories recently popular, including the “pernicious” theory that a child will not learn until he is ready to learn. “Many children today find it impossible to sit down and do something unpleasant,” he said. “Nobody ever loved to spell. I’ve never met anybody who opened up a book and said, ‘Aha! At last I’m going to read Shakespeare.’ ”

He cautioned, “Do not take the view that children will automatically someday be interested . . . you’re going to wait a long time before they’re interested in multiplication tables.”

He also dismissed the popularly repeated theory that it is quality of time, not quantity of time, spent with children that matters. Said Shanker, “You’ve got to be around almost all the time to find the time to be quality time.”

Reading Theory Debunked

Another theory debunked by the AFT head was the “let kids read anything, so long as they read” theory. He said, “A child who has spent all of his or her time reading about rock stars will be illiterate” by the time that child reaches junior high. “They have to know the names of deserts and mountains and rivers. They’ve got to know Adam and Eve and Daniel Boone.”

Those who have read only in the pop culture, he said, “won’t even be able to communicate with people (who grew up) 15 years ago who’ll have a different language (but) stuff that was good 100 years ago is still good today.”

For educators, Shanker said, the political issue of 1985 is President Reagan’s tax reform package. It would eliminate deductions for state and local taxes and, Shanker said, “If that passes we have basically gutted support of public schools.” He estimated a loss of $600 per child for education nationwide.

The California delegation, about 50 strong representing more than 1 million members, came to Washington with two resolutions for consideration and, when debate had finished, they had won one and lost one.

There was little opposition to a resolution calling for the National PTA to inform its membership about nuclear age education and to develop materials and programs to help parents address children’s fears about nuclear dangers.

The resolution originated with the Kratt Elementary School PTA in Fresno and was introduced by delegate Mary Lou Diddy, who was here with her delegate husband Charles, a dentist. Mary Lou Diddy said it originated in a classroom where a teacher, discussing the issue with students, found “the majority said their parents ignored the issue, or were afraid to bring it up.”

There was spirited debate on the second California-proposed resolution, one that called for the National PTA to ask local stations and the television networks to refrain from broacasting election projections before all polls in the country have closed.

‘A Local Problem’

Bobette Bennett, explaining the intent, said, “We’ve had school board elections where people won’t go and vote because they know who the President (of the United States) is, and that’s it. People were standing in line last time and they just turned and walked away.” But the resolution drew significant support only from Alaska, which also is affected by the time zone difference.

“I personally feel it’s a local problem,” a Missouri delegate said.

A Virginia delegate said, “I think those people (who walk away) are not the type of people who are making informed choices but just flicking the switches because they wanted to vote for the President and vice president.”

Another delegate said, “We in the East might be sympathetic but when we go to bed we like to know who we’ve elected.” The resolution lost resoundingly.

Resolutions that passed included those:

--Encouraging state and local education agencies to work for improvement in migrant students’ access to secondary schools services.

--Urging support for amending the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act to prohibit advertising of any tobacco product (include snuff and chewing tobacco) in the electronic media.

--Supporting legislation that would require full disclosure of all ingredients and additives in water, food, drug and cosmetic labels.

--Urging distribution of literature to motivate the public to donate human organs for transplantation.

--Supporting state and federal legislation aimed at limiting sale of martial arts weapons, including shooting stars, to persons over 21 and only through licensed martial arts schools and to require the labeling of these weapons as potentially lethal.

--Urging continuing funding for missing children’s programs. This specifies that school districts be asked to develop registration procedures that would include special checks on students whose records are missing. It also calls for tougher laws for those who murder or sexually molest children.

--Opposing corporal punishment.

--Setting up a parent notification program to alert parents whose children have not arrived at school.

--Requesting the federal government to develop installation standards for seat belts on large school buses and encouraging local PTA units to ask their boards of education to equip new buses with seat belts.

Throughout the past year PTA has spoken out about juvenile justice, child abuse, child care, teacher education, child nutrition and asbestos abatement.

‘Wish List’ Not Fully Achieved

The “wish list” was not fully achieved, said Manya Ungar of New Jersey, who served as vice president for legislative activity--PTA is still trying to get supplemental funding for legislation such as the family violence act, latch key children and child abuse challenge grants.

PTA, said Ungar, has also supported reauthorization of vocational education and Headstart and restoration of funds for bilingual education. And, Ungar added, PTA remains “geared up” in the fight against vouchers and tuition tax credits.

Arthur E. Wise, director of the Rand Corp.’s Center for the Study of the Teaching Profession in Washington, denounced the public school system as a “highly bureaucratic” monolith that is “uncongenial” to professionally oriented and skilled teachers.

And then he added, “But I can guarantee you this--if you don’t like the one we have now you’ll like less the one we have in a decade” unless steps are taken to upgrade teacher salaries and standards and to institute certification.

He was highly critical of a system that “re-gears” the curriculum “to be sure children perform well” and “teaches them to read so

they can acquire the kind of reading skills that show up on tests,” rather than teaching them to read for enjoyment.

“You are asking,” Wise said, “to drive out of the schools analytical thinking, creative writing.”

In 10 years, if vast changes are not made, Wise said, there will be “two school systems” in this country, “one bureaucratic and for the poor” and “one pretty good, private and for the rich.”

For starters, Wise said, teaching must be rethought as serious, year-round work rather than “part-time women’s work.”

Although tenure is frequently blamed as the root of all educational evil, Wise said, “The problem is not with tenure. The problem is with our inability to get rid of incompetent teachers. But now, he said, both the NEA and the AFT are starting “reflection” on that problem.

Wise, who has been working as a consultant to a governor’s commission on education in Connecticut, has suggested a number of factors that may swell private school enrollments, among them the “yuppie” mentality with a great sense of guilt over depositing their children in nursery school and, at the same time, a compulsion to find the right one. By the time that child is ready for kindergarten, he has suggested, the parents are long past the trauma of the expense of private schooling and prepared to continue the outlay.