Want Accountability? Then Let Parents Help Govern Schools

Starting this week, Gov. Gray Davis will sign his education-reform package into law. One bill will create the Public School Performance and Accountability Program. Among other things, it calls for an outside evaluator to help underachieving schools boost their performance. Disturbingly, the bill only briefly mentions a preexisting, though historically underutilized, evaluation team: parents. That could turn out to be a painful oversight, because vigorous school accountability cannot be achieved unless urban parents are granted a larger and louder voice in school affairs.

Currently, parents, by law, cannot select principals or make budgetary decisions; they can, however, play a significant role in formulating school policies and programs. The Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN) offers one such avenue for greater parental involvement. To be sure, PTA support is essential and parent volunteers make valuable contributions in the classroom. But urban school boards and administrators should also let parents participate in governance decisions.

Why are parents mostly excluded from urban-school affairs? One answer is that the structure and size of big-city school districts muzzle parents’ voices. When one-room schoolhouses gave way to today’s hierarchical administrative system, a newly formed bureaucratic monolith severed parents’ traditional ties to the classroom. But this bureaucracy has done more than separate parents from schools. It also has distanced school board members, administrators and teachers from each other, resulting in a fractious environment in which self-preservation is too often the governing principle.

Racism, too, historically has impeded significant parental representation in schools. Administrative demographics have remained remarkably consistent over time, with school leadership positions predominantly held by middle-class white males. Although these posts are increasingly occupied by persons more reflective of urban populations, the scent of past injustices still leave parents questioning district motives.

Thirty years ago, parents in Oakland declared their suspicions of district motives. In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, the African American and Latino populations were increasing, yet the school board and district administration continued to be dominated by white men. Agitating for change, parents charged that the district was not organized to satisfy the needs of its new constituents. While a pancake breakfast might satisfy hunger, it did not satiate parents’ larger appetite for sharing in decision making.

In response, Marcus Foster, the city’s first black superintendent, shook off the Oakland school board’s and administrators’ stranglehold on governance. Acknowledging the parents’ cries for greater participation in running the schools, Foster and his cohorts instituted the Master Plan Citizens Committee (MPCC) to stimulate, strengthen and sustain parental decision-sharing powers in Oakland.

Through the committee, parents helped evaluate the district’s budget and select principals, two powers parents continue to enjoy in Oakland. Though the MPCC itself faltered when its founder was assassinated in 1973, it did momentarily connect Oakland’s administrators to district parents. Foster’s efforts to construct a districtwide system of communication led to the most significant union of schools and parents in the city’s history.

Foster’s work offers a telling counterexample to the professionals’ usual monopoly on managing the schools. During the MPCC years, urban school administrators welcomed parents into the fold. In doing so, they recognized the untapped potential of parents as articulators and evaluators of school governance.

More important, Foster’s tenure represented the rare convergence of administrative and popular concerns over the same issue: parents’ roles in their neighborhood schools. Yet, even under the most auspicious circumstances, making significant headway regarding parent involvement in school governance and accountability presented a formidable challenge. The short life of Oakland’s experiment teaches us that carving out meaningful roles for parents in schools can be done, but it requires more than gifted leadership supported by a dedicated school board. It demands an entirely new system.

A recent survey of parents and teachers, conducted by the Public Agenda, however, found “few parents eager” to shoulder the responsibilities of school governance, and few teachers welcoming greater parental power. Yet, these findings may be misleading. For example, 73% of the parents surveyed would feel “very comfortable” or “somewhat comfortable” helping to decide how to spend school funds, and, perhaps most striking, 71% wish they could be more involved in their child’s education. Providing parents with more substantial roles in school governance woulb be an inspired step in that direction.

There are many reasons why school board members and top administrators should seek parent input on governance.

First, laws creating school-improvement programs mandate parental involvement in education. Unfortunately, the reform legislation that Davis is expected to sign adds little to these statutes. This is somewhat ironic, since Davis at one time advocated “parental contracts,” which would have included a requirement to volunteer at a child’s school.

Second, the combined effects of a bloated bureaucracy and the sheer size of urban school districts constrain administrators’ capacity to enforce accountability at every school site. Increased parental management would add to a district’s capacity to monitor academic and administrative achievement.

Third, the public school system is a democratic institution. As such, it has the potential to be our largest functioning vehicle for citizen participation and voter accountability. Yet, in big cities especially, school boards have distanced themselves from the parents who elected them by restricting parental involvement in decision-making to token committee membership or limited public discourse at board meetings. True representation could be restored through greater parental participation in charting the schools’ direction.*