Parents and teachers

The Task Force to Study the Implementation of Alternative Programs and Interventions for Violent and Chronically Disruptive Students has a job as daunting as its name. Still, with just one meeting — its first, last Thursday — the panel’s nine legislators, educators and public members already have identified one of the most troubling issues in public education.

It’s the rift between schools and communities. Or, more specifically, the rift between parents and teachers. And it, like the larger problem of disruptive students, is one that can only be solved in small steps.

Most of the first meeting was devoted to setting the table, planning for the gathering of information on the prevalence of disruptive behavior, the types of behavior that create disruption, hard numbers on expulsions and suspensions, an analysis of intervention programs that already exist and an assessment of their effectiveness.

Sen. Mary Cathcart, sponsor of the legislation that created the task force, said the preliminary discussion ran headlong into this persistent obstacle: “The schools say they can’t get parents involved, the parents say the schools don’t want them involved. It’s a common problem that we need to solve. We can’t just keep worrying about what’s wrong with society.”

Companion legislation to the bill that created the task force calls upon the Department of Education to develop a model code of conduct and a standard, clear proceedure for handling infractions so students, teachers, administrators and parents all know what to expect. Some school, impatient with a timetable that won’t move this to the local level for another year, already have started the process and already there are complaints from the public about the lack of opportunity to participate.

Some districts are trying to create the opportunity. They’re holding parent-teacher conferences in the evening when parents can attend, establishing parent-teacher school board subcommittees and appointing parent liaisons to faculty committees. The Maine Legislature last spring extended the family-leave law to cover — unpaid and with 30 day’s notice — parent-teacher conferences, but that was vetoed as a result of concerns (unspecific, anecdotal conjecture, actually) by Gov. King about its impact upon business.

What is missing, however, is the day-to-day connection. So it was especially timely that CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday reported on KIP (Knowledge is Powerful), a new reform measure being tried in some public schools in New York City and Houston. This voluntary program is based upon contracts: students agree to rigorous academic and conduct standards; teachers agree to uphold those standards and to be available to students and their parents after school hours and on weekends; and parents agree to be partners in their childrens’ educations, an agreement that requires a half-hour of daily involvement in such things as signing study logs, reviewing homework, initialing returned tests.

Critics of KIP say its success, though remarkable in both improved conduct and grades, is merely a function of its having self-selecting, motivated participants; results won’t be so stellar once the principles of KIP are extended to the entire student/teacher/parent population.

It’s a tiresome and obvious criticism — the results of just about anything become diluted as participation expands. That vague argument, and the vague argument that Maine’s economy would be destroyed by parents missing work for a few hours a few times times a year to meet their childrens’ teachers, are obstacles without substance. It’s time to smash them down, and the task force with the big name may be just the right tool for the job.