Parent Anger Runs High at Schools in Poverty Areas

She is a part-time cafeteria worker in Los Angeles who baby-sits to help make ends meet. She has four girls. Until recently, when she got married, she was on her own, though she had help from her parents and her church.

Despite the demands on her time, she has managed to stay involved in her daughters’ education. She volunteers at the public schools they attend, helps with their homework, meets with teachers to discuss their progress. She even enrolled three of her daughters in a Crenshaw-area academic tutoring program called Mindpower Unlimited. In other words, she does exactly those things that educators constantly exhort parents to do.

This mother was among about 15 African American parents and students who shared their experiences with the public schools last Friday night at a meeting at the cozy offices of the tutoring program, which is trying to empower parents and students as advocates for higher quality education.

As she spoke, her voice rose in pitch and volume. She talked faster, emotions rising, as she described the disorganized teacher who couldn’t control the children in her youngest daughter’s fourth-grade class and whose room smelled like cigarette smoke.

Nearing rage, she recounted a confrontation she had with a middle school music teacher. And her voice caught when she recalled asking a third-grade teacher to help another daughter learn to read.

“I kept saying my child is behind in reading,” recalled this mother, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Her daughters are still in Los Angeles public schools and she is concerned about retaliation. But the teacher told her not to worry.

“I cried in her class, I begged her for help, asking her what kind of resources she had for my daughter,” the mother recounted. “She would say, ‘Her grades are getting better. You wait, you’re going to be surprised at how far she’s come by the end of the semester.’ But at the end of the semester she was at the same place. She hadn’t made any progress at all.”

Several of the parents shared similar stories. They said their children were given lessons they had mastered years earlier. Yet, when they complained to administrators, they said, they were told they were spoiled and were being too harsh.

Running through the conversation was a profound sense of dismay, even betrayal. They acknowledged that the students were often boisterous and disrespectful. But they also were painfully aware that schools in Los Angeles have a far higher proportion of new and untrained teachers who are ill-equipped to maintain discipline.

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Their stories help explain the startling response, announced last week, to the offer made by two wealthy businessmen to help low-income parents pay tuition at private schools. Leveraged-buyout specialist Ted Forstmann and WalMart’s John Walton donated and raised $170 million to provide individual scholarships of up to $1,600 to 40,000 students. More than 1.25 million families nationwide applied, reflecting what Forstmann said was “an amazing demonstration of dissatisfaction with the present system.”

In Baltimore, 44% of the eligible parents applied. In Los Angeles, the figure was 18%.

A Times poll of Los Angeles residents conducted at the end of March also found a deep dissatisfaction with the public schools. About 63% of respondents rated their schools fair to poor, and nearly half of those with children in public schools said they would prefer to send them to private or parochial schools. African Americans were more likely than other ethnic groups to hold those opinions.

The mother of four daughters said that, given the chance, she would flee to private schools in a second. “It’s true that a child can learn in a public school, but it depends on the public school,” she said. “I’m sure that in Brentwood or in the Hollywood Hills or in Culver City or Santa Monica, it’s better.”

Supporters of privately funded scholarships or publicly supported vouchers contend that competition would force educators to deal with the kinds of problems these parents described. However, studies of existing voucher programs in Cleveland and Milwaukee have yet to produce undisputed evidence that merely giving parents a ticket out of the public schools guarantees them a better education.

Nonetheless, many parents are eager to take a chance on change.

The mother of four is fortunate. She’s been given the opportunity to enroll her children in the Santa Monica school district. She doesn’t want to because Santa Monica is far from her home. But she feels she doesn’t have a choice. That’s what it will take, she said, to get them a better education.