Signing On Mom and Dad to Improve Student Performance

Ventura County is a funny place in the fall. Although there are rarely enough gold and red falling leaves to warrant dragging out one’s trusty rake, we do find ourselves each September inundated by a flurry of yellow. I’m talking about piles of credit card slips tumbling out of back-to-school shopping bags along with spanking-new Trappers, fresh-smelling footgear and unsharpened No. 2 pencils.

A recent Consumer Credit Counseling Service survey predicts that half of us will expend more than $300 in preparing each of our progeny for the new school year. Too bad the legendary money tree is decidedly nondeciduous, even in these plentiful parts.

So Mom or Dad resignedly signs on the dotted line, right under where it says, “I agree to pay above total according to card issuer agreement,” a sum that, according to federal estimates, could exceed $145,000 by the time the offspring of a middle-income couple reaches 18--excluding the costs of childbirth and college, of course.

Parents, however, will not be required to affix their signatures to what was once a pivotal component of Gov. Gray Davis’ education reform package, namely, parental contracts. Even though Davis warned a Ventura County audience two years ago that “the hard truth is that the battle to improve our public schools will be won as much in the home as in the classroom,” parental contracts have blown away like so many autumn leaves and so many campaign promises.

That’s too bad. It seems that Davis’ education officials balked at a rule compelling every parent to take on nightly homework supervision, weekly volunteer work on campus and monthly attendance at PTA meetings. Off-the-record responses by the Sacramento schooling gurus ranged from summary dismissal to outright hostility.

Davis’ proposal was based on the notion that parental involvement remains the No. 1 indicator of how well a student will do in school. Academics will tell you that the actual variable in student performance is income level. Perhaps this is true--take the bounty of hours lavished on East County schools.

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At the annual teas in the Oak Park District, there are so many volunteers present, according to Superintendent Marilyn Lippiatt, that you simply can’t move. She boasts that every parent pitches in because education perches at the pinnacle of their priorities.

Superintendent Jerry Gross of Conejo Valley Unified School District brags that 120 parents toil away at Westlake Hills Elementary every day. Although finding jobs for volunteers can prove challenging at times, his schools relish the payoff (which arrives once it dawns on the students that their folks really care about their schooling.)

Why should affluence determine involvement? It doesn’t have to. The Rio Elementary School District, certainly one of the least wealthy in the county, mandates contracts not just for those schools receiving low-income federal funding (Title 1), but for all 3,100 kids in the district. Superintendent Yolanda Benitez was so taken with the effectiveness of the Title I-decreed documents, she wanted all of her children to benefit. The Rio contract lists separate expectations for parents, teachers and students. All on a single sheet of paper. Everybody signs.

Simi Valley Unified School District consolidated fundamental school and Title I agreements into a litany of mutually beneficial promises that includes students attending school regularly and respecting adults as well as parents providing adequate study space and ensuring that children complete all assignments on time. Becky Wetzel, the district’s director of elementary education, maintains that, although not binding, these contracts do make a difference. Assistant Superintendent Kathryn Scroggins insists that when expectations and commitments are clearly articulated on paper, all parties work harder to improve student performance.

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Critics have argued that parental contracts, except in the case of magnet or private schools, are basically unenforceable. Although that may be true, so what? Nancy Barker, principal at Blanche Reynolds Elementary in Ventura, has an unusual take on compliance. Instead of kicking out students whose parents don’t put in their fair share, she looks at such contract violations as strictly temporary. Sometimes, she contends, each of us runs out of time. More significantly, she has no difficulty recruiting others to fill in, for the greater good. Did you hear that Sacramento?

A recent survey indicates that 71% of parents wish they could be more involved in their children’s education. Most, whatever their background, would contribute if they only knew how. In fact, the majority are merely waiting to be asked. A parental contract would do that.

To the hyperbusy Ventura County superintendent of schools, Chuck Weis, the parental contract is just what is needed “to remind us of our job as a parent.” Nancy Friday, the author of “My Mother / My Self,” wrote that the debt of gratitude we owe our parents goes forward, not backward.

By the way, it’s a debt you can’t pay off with a credit card.