'Great Public Schools: A Basic Right and Our Responsibility'

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The best social investment for ensuring success for America’s youth is support systems that can help them build a foundation for success in school and life. The theme for American Education Week, Nov. 15 - 21, is Great Public Schools: A Basic Right and Our Responsibility. This is the second part of a two-part series on American Education Week 2009.

Parents and students

A free public school education is a basic right guaranteed to all children.

Most professional experts agree that schools must increase the rigor of what is being taught so that students can advance through the school system and graduate ready to enter the workplace, go to a trade school or college, and be ready to compete in today’s global world.

One of the nation’s greatest natural resources is the American family. Parents play a key role in providing support and encouragement to their children, but they can’t do it alone. They need to work with educators to create an environment that welcomes meaningful parent involvement to foster student success. Educators need to engage parents so that they assume greater responsibility for the education of their children.

A student’s education and learning are the parents’ and student’s responsibility. One key to academic success is in the family; the family must be a team that dreams of academic success. Team players must know their roles. The players must have a common language to talk about learning success. A parent should understand their role as the academic leader. Their job is to keep the student focused on both short and long term goals and what s/he is learning.

The student is a player on the team. The parents can’t do the work for the student, because learning is the student’s responsibility. However, as academic role models and leaders they should challenge their children to work at their highest level and support their efforts. To help students overcome apprehensions and fears, parents are also coaches and motivational leaders.

At school, students receive the important support to help them learn how they learn. Parents and teachers need to work together. Parents should know when assignments are due. To bridge the gap between home and school, parents can now contact teachers online to check on assignments, test results, current grades, and assure teachers that they are working together to help their child succeed in school.

As academic leaders, parents can also help their children with goal setting. Helping them to set short and long term goals is very important to their success in school and life. In these discussions, parents should be supportive and talk about their children’s dreams for the future. Everyone needs to remember that achieving long-term goals requires meeting short-term goals.

Stakeholders

School systems need to continuously build and strengthen relationships among a wide range of stakeholders in the community. The success of any school is a shared responsibility that relies on everyone in the community. It is important to focus on people who are willing to provide meaningful input into the education process and practices in the school. A good way for school systems to gather information about what the community wants for their schools is to establish focus groups and study circles
that will:

• Provide a well-tested process for citizen involvement.

• Provide means and ways to evaluate school issues and reform.

• Provide a general consensus about ways to respond to challenges facing schools and the role of community stakeholders.

• Provide ways to unite people to move in the same general direction and serve as an anchor for change that buffers the school against conflicting pressure from public opinion.

School boards work closely with educators and those in the community to develop an educational vision for the school and students. They are responsible for communicating the needs of the school system to the public and the public’s expectations for the school enterprise. They are also accountable to the public and responsible for assuring the stakeholders that the money allocated for the schools provides a good return on the public’s investment.

For schools to really be successful, they need to garner the necessary resources to ensure that all students will have maximum opportunities to develop optimal learning experiences. Great public schools are possible if only the stakeholders in the community are willing to form successful partnerships and coalitions that make education a top priority.

Ron Edmonds, founder of the effective schools movement of the ‘80s and ‘90s said it best. “We already know everything we need to know about how to educate all children well; the question is do we have the will to do so?”

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