By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com
Discussion leader Bill Fulton asked participants at the governor’s school dropout prevention summit to “imagine a
At this point, a solution to the state’s scandalously low high school graduation rate remains just that – a dream.
The two-day dropout summit that concluded Thursday at
“Begin with pre-natal care through higher education or vocational training,â€
Imagine, imagine, imagine.
The goal outlined by Gov. Bill Ritter is to halve the state’s dropout rate by 2017. Yet for all the good intentions a huge wrench remains wedged in the teeth of the gear box.
Republican State Sen. Mike Kopp and Democratic State Sen. Ron Tupa both alluded to it in the summit’s final meeting between practitioners and policy makers.
“Nothing we do,†Kopp said, “is going to replace good strong families. If we had that, we wouldn’t be having the conversation we’ve had the last two days.â€
Too many parents of drop outs “aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing,†added Tupa, acknowledging the need to increase spending on dropout prevention, but putting it in perspective. “A lot of these kids (who drop out) don’t have parents. (Public institutions) become the de facto parents. That costs money.â€
Tupa told the summit that some money for dropout prevention exists because of Referendum C, which bailed out a starving state economy by temporarily suspending tax refunds required by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. State Sen. Sue Windels said freezing tax rates in most of the state’s school systems will produce enough money to pay for expansion of kindergarten programs.
It was all good news for fixing the dropout problem. But it still dodged the nagging question of parental accountability without which so many dreams will continue to be figments of imagination.
Ken Turner, the state’s deputy commissioner of education, hit on it partly when he offered this choice: “Are children a public asset or private property?â€
In fact, they are both and neither. The health and education of kids determine the future of society, but children are no more indistinguishable stitches in the social fabric than they are common chattel penned in households. The village it takes to raise them has to include the kind of nurturing that only parents – biological or surrogate – provide.
The priority list that summit participants developed to cut the dropout rate never quite got to that.
The list asks for full funding of pre-school and kindergarten. It asks for achievement rather than social promotion. It calls for “marketing the value of education,†“home-school partnerships,†“business-school partnerships and “decision-making bodies†that “reflect the communities they serve.â€
If the parents in those communities are not educated, if they are too busy trying to grind out a living to pay attention to their kids, if they are too young and inexperienced to have made many decisions or if the choices they have made are not healthy for their sons and daughters, you’re right back where you started.
Turner was right when he said, “There are no heroic interventions in ninth grade.â€
But so was Sonja Chapman, a “prevention specialist†in the Mapleton Public Schools. “As an educator,†she said, “I spend time on a daily basis with children from single-parent families, unhealthy families, parents who work more than one job.â€
Across the auditorium another educator chimed in: “The young people we’re talking about (dropping out) live incredibly complicated and unfair lives.â€
Sadly, without nurturing parents there is only so much the most well-intentioned public institutions can do for them.
Copyright 2007 by Jim Spencer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
8 users commented in " Parents Are the Missing Ingredient in Dropout Prevention "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback“Somebody” needs to bring some focus to the correlation between poverty and poor parenting. Even if you know better, too many working hours and too little money equals not enough energy left for helping with homework, no time off for PTA and Parent/Teacher conferences and neither time nor energy to become aware of either the need for or the availability of help.
Great column and right on the money. Finally the missing ingredient in education is recognized, parental involvement.
You have to study and practice and pay money to get a driver’s license,you have to pass an emission test, get insurance, and pay money to get a license plate for your car, you have to get blood tests and pay money to get a marriage license.
But there is no instruction required, no fee, no application to be filled out, no license required to be a parent. Maybe there shoud be.
Wildflower,
Finally the missing ingredient in education is recognized, parental involvement? what???????? this is not exactly revolutionary thought.
Also, are you actually advocating that the government chooses who should be allowed to become a parent? or is this a tongue in cheek comment on the fact that the poor who work two jobs, have societal difficulties etc. don’t deserve to become parents?
noidea, I believe it was a tongue-in-cheek comment that perhaps there should be some aforethought before bringing a child into the world. You can’t just give birth, pow and that’s all there is to it, it’s 18 years of hard work and follow-through (and more if you want to give your child a chance to succeed in life with higher education). I was certainly not dissing the working poor.
It all begins with EARLY stimulus, you can do that if you have NO money, you can sing the ABC’s, read books, play “pretend” school, etc.and prepare your child to be a student.
If parents work and have their kids in a coompetent day care center the kids are better off than those whose parents don’t work and just sit around and ignore their kids all day.
If all kids got early stimulus, there would be no need for the hours of homework, in the early grades, that busy working moms have to help with each day. As I said you don’t need a cent to provide stimulus to your children.
I don’t think the government should choose who can be a parent, but I darn sure think the potential parents should understand what they’re doing and what they’re responsible for, before they do it. Don’t have the kids, darn it, if they don’t intend to do anything for them or can’t afford them. It’s not fair to the taxpayers who pick up the tab, the rest of us who parent responsibly by having only the amount of children we can afford and meet the needs of.
noidea, when my little grandson was 18 mo. old his mother had a hard time diapering the wiggly little boy. I started singing the ABC song and he held still and listened. The next week when she brought him over, I noticed she was singing the ABC song to him and he wasn’t wiggling during the diaper change. He learned his ABC’s very young.
In his first grade class now there is a boy who didn’t know the ABC’s, and had never sung the ABC song. A parent reading volunteer found this out and started working with him. He had been memorizing the reading book from listening to the others. Plenty bright enough, just had received no intellectual stimulation the first 6 years of his life.
I think parents owe more to their kids than that.
Wildflower,
We’re not talking about ‘your’ little boy or girl, or grandson or grandaughter for that matter… The problems lay in the children of the poor. Your comments regarding an application for parenthood, although recognized by me as tongue in cheek, is directed squarely at the people about whom Jim is writing. They have no less right to have children than we do.. Jim’s point was that children are being left behind because of the strain that poverty has on the family. An admittance that parents are important is a good step forward by government forums, because parents are THE MOST important piece of the puzzle. An important move to how the family, or lack thereof, plays a role in a childs development. Outside of any amount of money that we can spend on education, parents must be involved. If not the child will struggle to succeed. Which is tough in these times even for the educated adult.
Parental involvement in a child’s education is without question an important variable in that child’s success. HOWEVER, as has already been pointed out, some very poor parents are working long hours or two jobs to make sure that child has food, school fees and a roof over their head. Sometimes they must use public transportation or wait for rides; there is precious little time left at the end of the day for homework or special help on projects. Some parents are alcoholics or drug addicts or mentally ill and honestly would like to do better, but can’t seems to find their way out of the quagmire. If education is truly valued by our society, schools and government need to take some responsibility to educate ALL children . . . not just the motivated, upper middle class kids whose Mommy doesn’t work or who has the ability to tutor and monitor homework. Our students are NOT “Kentucky Fried Children”, many are alternative learners who can’t help that there’s no one at home to help them and administrators and teachers and parents and ALL of us better pay attention to the fact that the canaries are fainting and falling over and all we want to do is blame the parents for not helping out? Some schools have established homework lines and after school tutor clubs. Some schools have dinners for their parents at parent teacher conference. Some have 1/2 day programs and exciting electives and art and music programs. Some have therapists on site. Some have health clinics and nutritious food. What passion can we as educators help this kid develop? No, these kinds of innovations won’t save every kid but it will make a difference to some. We should ask ourselves: Why isn’t school a sanctuary for this kid, why don’t they want to come to school. Encourage and empower the parents. Maybe that’s the best we will do, but it sure beats blaming them.
No idea, my grandson’s parents ARE among the working poor, as are most parents I know of now. I was merely trying to point out that you don’t have to have money to provide stimulus to your kids, becasue I think early stimulus is the key to a successful student. Some kids are doomed to failure by the time they get to school age, they lag behind all the way through until they finally drop out.
They are doomed to the same lifestyle of poverty their parents have.
America’s children deserve better.
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