Conference 2000USA
Encouraging Partnerships in
Education
Perspectives from Ohio
The issue of
active parent involvement in the education of their
children has been an on-going public policy debate in
America for generations. With the current majority of
homes being supported by two wage earners less time is
available for school activities for countless families.
Athletic teams seem to be a cause that registers with
families but doubtless the leisure hours when these are
played, coupled with the fellowship thus engaged, assist
in its support levels at the same time the single parent
phenomenon that affects today’s society is an
obstacle to parent participation to a great degree
because of time constraints.
Educators
want parents to better prepare their children for the
tasks of school, respectful of the order and discipline
that must take place in any learning centre, rather than
have them at the school, per se. There is a limit as to
how much educators really desire parents
"underfoot" as it were. Many parents feel
respectful of the teacher corps, suspect that teachers
are better educated than they and maybe are not
completely comfortable in their company. Countless
educators encourage and appear elitist to a measure, thus
keeping parents at a distance.
Though
government programmes often insist on open houses and
similar offerings for participants these events are often
sparsely attended. Former Ohio Governor George V
Voinovich - now a US Senator - launched the Ohio Families
and Children First Initiative in an effort to define
children and families as a major priority of his
administration. In keeping with his interest in
government reform and applying corporate management
techniques to state operations he envisioned the Ohio
Family and Children First Initiative as a method for
reforming entrenched state bureaucracies by devolving
responsibility for service co-ordination to the local
level. As a predominately county-administered state Ohio
has had a rich history of local government control. The
initiative has received little national publicity despite
its steady growth from a pilot project in a handful of
counties to a state-wide effort with strong bipartisan
support. In 1996, Voinovich re-energised the initiative
by expanding its staffing capacity six-fold (chiefly by
re-assigning existing agency employees) and successfully
sponsoring legislation for a Wellness Block Grant
Programme to the counties.
Parent
participation, per se, was only part of this initiative
but the process was valuable in identifying various means
of implementing change that impacted on families. The
21st century family has challenges to its stability that
earlier generations could never imagine. Who could have
written a script that resembled the Clinton scandal of
1998 - no one.
Two
programmes in Ohio are now being pursued: Family and
School Partnership Initiative and Voinovich’s Ohio
Family and Children First Initiative.
1.1
Family and School Partnership Initiative
When
John Goff was named superintendent of public
instruction in 1995 he announced that under his
leadership the Department of Education would engage
in an intensified effort to increase the involvement
of parents and families in the education of
Ohio’s children. Within this new initiative the
Department’s purpose is to provide leadership,
knowledge, skills, energy, and resources to a
statewide family, school and community partnership
initiative, ensuring that such partnerships become
integral to all of Ohio’s school communities and
the on-going work of the Department. Various
activities have been implemented since the initiative
began in August 1996.
The
State Superintendent’s Parent Advisory Council
is comprised of persons active in their
children’s education as well as representatives
of several parent organisations. The Council is
always available to review and comment on any
activity and publication planned by the Department of
Education. In order to support the work of the
initiative a steering committee including a
co-ordinator, one Department employee, two PTA
volunteers, one person from the Ohio Parent
Information and Resource Centre, and a regional
family co-ordinator with Family and Children First
meet regularly to plan and undertake activities
outlined in the initiative plan. Steering committee
members are organised to focus on one of three broad
purposes - programme support, public awareness and
professional preparation and in-service.
The most
visible activity in the initiative to date is the
creation of the Ohio Network of Partnership Schools.
The Department provides planning grants to schools
that join the network. As part of the network schools
establish teams of parents and educators to work on a
planning framework for setting goals and activities
that will strengthen school-family partnerships
designed to strengthen student achievement. These
schools are then encouraged to submit implementation
plans. Three hundred and seventy five schools have
joined the network. Twenty one school districts have
identified district co-ordinators who have now been
trained to provide orientation to parent/teacher
planning teams, thus expanding the pool of
partnership trainers.
Plans
are also underway to engage a professional public
relations agency to develop a public awareness
campaign. Preliminary thinking is that such a
campaign can be focused on informing parents how they
can use district and institutional information as a
stepping stone for a constructive dialogue with
educators.
2.1
Primary Issue
Current
concerns include embedding the notion of family and
school partnerships in all Ohio Department of
Education (ODE) work that aims for improved student
performance; providing effective tools to districts
and schools that will assist them in including family
partnerships as a continuous improvement strategy;
deciding whether or not to limit the application
process to schools with greatest rather than to any
school that desires to apply (as is now the case) and
deciding how the initiative will continue at end of
the four year grant currently available.
3.1 Ohio
Family and Children First Initiative
The Ohio
Family and Children First Initiative marks a historic
first. Never before have the state’s education,
health and social service systems and Ohio families
concentrated on achieving the shared policy goal of
ensuring that all children enter school ready to
learn. This partnership is critical because no single
system has the resources or capacity to meet this
goal alone.
Oversight
of the initiative is provided by the Family and
Children First Cabinet Council. Members include the
state superintendent and the directors of the
departments of alcohol and drug addiction services,
budget and management health, human services, mental
health, mental retardation and development
disabilities and youth services. The governor chairs
this council. This cabinet council provides statewide
policy leadership, directs efforts to streamline
state government operations and prioritises funding
for prevention efforts.
All 88
Ohio counties have voluntarily created a Family and
Children First Council. Local council membership
includes family members (consumers), representatives
of public agencies, schools, courts, and private
providers. Each council determines a local course of
action to achieve school readiness for their
county’s children.
3.2 The
Future of the Ohio Family and Children First Initiative
Three
important constituencies have been identified and
their support will be necessary for the initiative to
succeed over the long term:
The
state associations of county commissioners,
juvenile judges, health boards, alcohol and
drug addictions boards and human services and
child welfare directors.
Advocacy
groups, including child care agencies, the
school nurses association, Ohio’s
Children’s Defence Fund, Parents for
Drug Free Schools and the United Way. Gaining
the support of left-leaning advocates will be
crucial to the success of a Republican-led
reform initiative.
The
challenges that the Ohio Family and Children First
Initiative faces are certainly formidable: fostering
the development of viable county councils, changing
the way entrenched state bureaucracies operate,
co-ordinating with welfare reform implementation and
avoiding political landmines, not to mention hitting
the ambitious outcome benchmarks the Governor has
set.
When the
US Supreme Court voted 8-1 (November 9, 1998) against
intervening to stop Milwaukee’s innovative
school-choice programme it was widely interpreted as
the latest sign that the battle for the parental
right to choose was fast gaining an almost
irresistible momentum. But could this latest tactical
victory for school choice signal something even
bigger: the opening phases of the latest American
taxpayer revolt?
Like
California’s Proposition 13 (which 20 years ago
brought sky-high state tax rates earthbound through
the ballot initiative) many courts and legislatures
are now ignoring the contempt of sneering
elite’s in order to empower parents to shop for
responsive schools with their feet.
Still,
even in light of the impressive string of heartening
developments for the school-choice movement all
across the country, we advocates of this newest
American civil rights struggle are taking nothing for
granted. The Luddite mentality, which equates any
change in the current funding system with blasphemous
assaults on children themselves, has traditionally
given sentinels of the status quo the ability to
block all forms of change. As National Education
Association President Bob Chase has said,
"Education is the modern world’s temporal
religion" and, through their traditional
domination of the political and media debates on
education, these elite’s have succeeded in
painting anyone who disagreed with them as somehow
unholy.
Nevertheless
the door has just opened enough to permit school
choice programmes such as those in Ohio and Wisconsin
take root even in the most hostile environments.
These states have been in the forefront of reform,
either because their school system situations were
worse or their governors more willing to take the
withering criticism or both. In any event their
trailblazing has not gone unnoticed: and counterparts
in other states are now emboldened and energised by
the Ohio and Wisconsin experiments.
Parental
educational choice is an historical movement destined
to succeed, powered by the same moral imperatives
which made the civil rights movement’s success
inevitable. School choice is an authentic 90’s
grassroots movement which neither the courts nor the
constitution can deny because school choice is an
affirmative action and a civil rights issue for the
new millennium.
Charles
A Byrne
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