Teaching Under the (Parental) Influence

I taught fifth grade in a California district where it was not uncommon for families to donate more than $1,000 a year to their children’s school. The cash transformed our small public school into an exceptionally flush campus, on a par with many of the local private schools.

Unlike other public schools, where state funds have been repeatedly slashed, my students had weekly art lessons, a library program, a drama coach who directed a play for the fourth- and fifth-grade students, and computer classes four days a week.

Parent donations even made it possible for me to have an aide in my classroom nine hours a week, which meant frequent opportunities for one-on-one tutoring. My classroom closets were crammed full of fancy art supplies, books and the newest educational software. When I was first hired to teach in this affluent district, I thought I had scored a pretty honey gig.

But after several years, I felt frustrated and stifled. The parents who made extraordinary donations to the school assumed that their generosity would be rewarded with power. They expected to have a commanding voice in administrative and classroom decisions, to have control over curriculum. I was expected to coddle this belief, preferably with a grateful smile on my face.

In the end, the parental pressure and hyper-involvement in the classroom became one of the main reasons I left teaching.

Here is a typical example of what drove me away: As homework, my students were expected to read silently for 30 minutes every night and to keep a log. At the beginning of the year, a father suggested I create a contest in which the student who read the most pages would win a prize.

Competitive reading is completely at odds with my teaching philosophy. I wanted my students to learn to love to read. I wanted them to think about content, not volume. In a detailed note, I explained this to the father.

The next morning, a group of my students rushed up to me on the playground and excitedly explained that the fifth-grade class (there were three) that read the most silent-reading pages was going to win a pizza party. The father told me he understood that I didn’t want a competitive climate among individuals, so he shifted the focus to classes.

Clearly, this parent had good intentions. But he also expected to have things his way. He overlooked my objections and sealed the deal by telling his child about the plan. She, naturally, spread it to her peers. This left me with the option of crushing the spirit of students prepared to speed read for a pile of pizzas.

So much for autonomy in the classroom, the teaching credential and professional expertise.

At a time when many affluent families are abandoning public schools for private ones, it’s tough to criticize parents willing to invest in America’s public classrooms.

Make a Donation in Exchange for Power

But many of these generous parents make dangerous assumptions. Too often, they believe that they are no different from the corporations and individuals who donate thousands of dollars to political candidates, expecting a quid pro quo. They want to have an impact at school, regardless of whether they know anything about sound educational philosophy.

And just as politicians should act solely on what they believe is best for their constituents, teachers and administrators should act solely on what they believe is best for students. Most important, if we allow parents to donate huge sums of money to public schools--with strings attached--we create an artificial solution to a very real problem. The urgency to increase public school funding is hobbled by these well-meaning attempts to make everything OK . . . for a handful of already privileged schools. The parents who cannot afford to pad a school’s budget rely on that sense of urgency to provide some impetus for improving the public education system now.

There was a different kind of urgency in my district: That of parents who wanted me to believe they had a right to interfere in my classroom. They even felt they had the right to dictate how my aide should spend her time! She happened to be a whiz at mathematics, so I frequently asked her to work one-on-one with students. But halfway through the year, the parents who oversaw donations to the school announced that classroom aides would be used in reading instruction. The way these parents saw it, they paid the aides’ salaries, they should be able to dictate how the aides spend their time.

Teachers Could Not Discuss Labor Dispute

The meddling peaked last year during a labor dispute between teachers and the district.

Parents “forbade” teachers to discuss the dispute with their students, even in general terms, and scrambled to end the dispute themselves by paying the teachers the raises they had requested during contract negotiations. When told their generous offer wouldn’t solve the issues under debate, the parents were shocked . . . and confused.

Since our school is public, we explained, teacher salaries had to be paid out of specific state funds. Moreover, since the dispute involved many issues, not just salaries, a chunk of money wasn’t going to make all the unpleasantness go away. The parents’ attempt to make our labor dispute disappear was a perfect example of how sure they were that money could fix anything, even a problem with a time-honored and democratic means of resolution.

While their offer was generous, it was also a strong-arm tactic designed to silence teachers and sweep uncomfortable issues under the proverbial rug, where their children would never see them.

As we consider solutions to the current crises in public education, we must examine what happens when parents are allowed to bankroll schools. When teachers are expected to act on the whims of the highest bidder, they can’t be free to do what they do best. Suddenly, the idea of high-quality public education in every school, not just the lucky ones, is gone.

Children deserve a rich educational setting, but the value must come from a teacher’s good work, not from the influence of parents’ dollars.