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Major problems in public education are being talked about these days like no other time in recent history.  Some of it justified and some of it is the response of the growing trend in America to pass off parental responsibilities on teachers and the school system due to the breakdown of the family.  I would like to focus on the parenting part.

How do major problems in public education get handled?  I would like to start with a situation I found myself in a few weeks ago.  In my city we have neighborhood associations.  At our last meeting, we had a school board supervisor come in to discuss problems.  Immediately, the parents were going off on how lousy the teachers are and how bad the supervisors are performing.  I couldn’t speak to the supervisors, because I couldn’t clearly understand what they were doing, but one thing I did know was that the teachers were young and fresh and ready to teach.  What I wasn’t hearing from the pareents was anyone asking what they as parents could do to help.  I got up and mentioned how I had 4 teenagers and all of them were doing well and asked the supervisor how many parents come for parent teacher conferences or to the parent teacher nights.  The room immediately went silent.  The supervisor thanked me for the question.  He said only 10% of the parents show up.  You see actually I knew this statistic. That’s why I sent my kids to the next town high school where parent participation was 90%.  The 2 schools are literally 5 miles apart.  My kids school has a 80% graduation rate and 60 % college attendance rate.  The school where these parents live has a 50 % drop out rate.

Major problems in public education quite often are directly related to lack of participation of the parents in their children’s education.  Oh, I heard some parents say well we both work, “how can we go to these meetings”?  I mentioned both my wife and myself work and we always go to the meetings.  Again, there was silence.  This pattern went on and on and each time I had to mention about the sacrifices my wife and I made to make sure my kids were in the top 10 % of their class.

I am not here to make myself sound like the worlds greatest parent.  But I do want to say your kids are your kids.  No one does care or should care about them as much as you do or should.  Major problems in public education stem primarily from parents forgetting that the family is the most important element in public education not the school.  Schools across the country have similar curriculum.  Often we see towns that are right next to each other where one town has 70 % going to college and the other has a 49% graduation rate from high school as is the case where I live.  In almost all the cases the difference is the parent participation level.

The bitter pill if you have kids, be a leader.  Raise the bar, go to meetings at school, not to complain but to get involved and watch the results skyrocket.

Dr. Robert Bocknek is a problem solving expert for parents and families.  See him at take back the home project, or keyboardculture.com or contact him directly at bocknek@takebackthehom.com.