Overachieving School’s Parents at Head of Class

I got invited to an arts festival at the Accelerated School in South-Central Los Angeles last June, and one thing in particular jumped out at me. The place was mobbed with families.

I’m not talking about one parent here and there. In many cases, both parents had shown up, along with brothers, sisters, cousins, grandparents, neighbors. It was like an extended family picnic, and the live entertainment included a killer third-grade mariachi king.

I don’t know much about the science of education, and I can’t begin to explain how a country of unlimited wealth and resources is so astoundingly inept when it comes to teaching our children. But my experience, which includes raising two sons, tells me the best public schools always have at least two things going for them: inspired teachers and involved parents.

Accelerated, a public charter school with just 270 students, has both, along with test scores that soar above the average in the Los Angeles Unified School District. So how do they do it?

First of all, Accelerated has all the advantages that come with being cut loose from the bureaucratic morass and labor problems of the mother ship--LAUSD. It also has parents who care enough about their children’s education that they applied to Accelerated in the first place.

But the school’s founders believe much of what they’ve accomplished is transferable to other schools, including parent involvement.

“At my old school, parents were really not welcome at all,” says kindergarten teacher Steven Hicks, who moved to Accelerated from another campus this year and was named one of 12 L.A. County teachers of the year in September. “No one knew anyone by name, and if a parent showed up at school, the attitude was, ‘Why are you here?’”

At Accelerated, parents are in trouble if they don’t show up. In fact, they sign a contract that obligates them to spend three hours a month on campus and to attend at least five monthly parent meetings. The whole-family approach is so important to Accelerated that the school has a student and family services coordinator named Vinh X. Luong.

Brenda Hall has two daughters at Accelerated and a son at a nearby school with 2,300 students. At Accelerated, 100 parents or more crowd into every meeting. “At my son’s school, it’s usually about three people,” Hall says.

So where are all the others? I’d bet the bank that most of them are home watching some idiot show on television, and then carping and moaning about the lousy school their kids go to, if they give a hoot at all.

Accelerated uses another tool to keep parents engaged and children accountable. Let’s say sisters Crystal, Tiffany or Jazmine Griffin were to get home from school one day and tell Mom there’s no homework tonight. First of all, there’s always homework, and Marivia Torres-Griffin knows that better than anyone. Despite having a full-time job, she’s on campus almost as much as the students, doing everything from assisting teachers to helping administrators craft extracurricular programs. But if one of Marivia’s daughters has simply forgotten the assignment, it’s available by phone on a recorded message left by the teacher.

A student couldn’t take a slide if she wanted to. Her parents are on campus, they’re at meetings, they’re in classrooms learning algebra and whatnot so they can help with homework at night, and they’re in direct telephone and e-mail contact with the teachers. It’s the lazy student’s nightmare, and it gets even worse.

Accelerated teachers make house calls.

“It makes parents more well-informed about me, and it makes me more well-informed about the family,” says Hicks, who has visited the homes of 10 students and plans to complete the other 10 by year’s end. At one home, where Hicks had dinner, he discovered his student’s father is a professional pianist. The parent will soon be showing students a thing or two on the school piano.

Accelerated’s teachers are nonunion, which makes for another advantage over regular public schools. Hicks says most teachers were out the door at 3 at his old school, but 4:30 is quitting time at Accelerated.

LAUSD Supt. Roy Romer will be a member of the U.S. figure-skating team before the union considers a longer day or home visits. But Hicks, a union supporter, said his ex-colleagues would gladly log more hours under the right circumstances. “Most of us stay here until 6 or 6:30 because we’re so motivated.”

Accelerated has one more advantage, and it’s a critical one. If a parent doesn’t get involved like the contract requires, the student can be tossed out of school. Regular public schools can’t do that, Romer notes. But because all the research shows that parent involvement makes such a critical difference in student performance, he believes the district has to borrow as much as it can from the Accelerated model.

“All of it can be transferred to some degree and should be. We need all the parent involvement we can get,” Romer said.

One subdistrict within LAUSD just began what’s called a compact with parents, and local Supt. Richard Alonzo said it’s gotten many more parents involved in their children’s education. If that trend can be taken districtwide, Romer said, along with breaking huge schools into smaller and more manageable academies, there’s hope.

Many moons will pass before that happens. But until then the Accelerated School, founded eight years ago by two frustrated teachers who believed we should demand more of teachers, parents and students, stands as a model of the possibilities.

Steven Hicks, after 14 years in L.A. public schools, had this to say about his new job: “I feel like I’ve died and gone to teacher heaven.”

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Steve Lopez writes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes. com.