Parents - The Fourth Cornerstone

School districts constantly work with hundreds of external organizations, colleges, community groups, government offices, and political leaders.  These partnerships are formed to benefit both parties, but the primary beneficiary is, and must be, the students.  At all points of interaction, benefiting the students, as a whole, must be the single greatest reason for these partnerships.

In any business or organization there is always a need for decisions about which opportunities are the best.  Which ones are most urgent now, most promising long-term, and most profitable to the stakeholders.  School districts, within the context of their unique purpose, would be wise to evaluate their partnerships under the criteria of, "Which partnerships impact the students the most?"

When considering the direct impact on student learning, there are three important groups that must be considered above all others.  These groups form a “supremely important” foundation of influence – placing them well above other potential partners.  State education departments control the funding and mandated standards that school districts must operate by.  The teacher and principal unions create a supply of educational professionals vastly necessary to the process.   After these two groups, which group is next?  What group is the third most important partnership that school districts need to work with?

Parents.

Even though they aren’t even trained – more than any other group parents and guardians create the greatest influence on student lives, efforts, and lifelong outcomes.  What qualifications make them the most powerful determinants of student success, you may ask?

• The sheer size of their numbers – on average there are two to every student
• The number of hours they spend with students each week
• The perpetuity of their influence year after year for more than eighteen years
• The depth of their dedication – there is often no limit to what they will do for their students
• The strength of their influence on student thinking – personal identity, self-esteem, confidence, aspiration levels, work ethic, choice of reachable dreams, and career attractiveness
• They work for free

School districts who are truly committed to a mission of maximizing lifelong success for all students must not only engage parents, but must create very real, effective, and lasting partnerships with them.  They must work with them as groups and as individuals.  They must work with them as the volunteers they are, not as extensions of the teaching function, or as instructional aides.  They must create learning opportunities based on asynchronous and opt-in availability; following the adult learning model.  They must pay them with respect, attention, and appreciation.  They must listen to them and change in response to what works best for that partnership.

If we think of parents as the fourth cornerstone of education (school districts, state departments of education, and teacher/principal unions as the other three), we can gauge by comparison how well they are encouraged, invited, welcomed, involved, trained, enabled, empowered, and regarded.  Where there is a disparity between the level of importance, attention, respect, and involvement given to parents as compared to the other three cornerstones, there is much to be done to correct it.

Creating parity of importance is no easy task.  Drawing parents into strong functional roles, developing their leadership skills, listening to them when they never went to teacher college, and giving them their due respect for the enormous power they hold over each child’s development, is much more than what district leaders usually want to spend their time on, and there is no mandated force making them pay attention to this group, but it must be done for the sake of the students.  After all, partnership means giving your partner their due, right?