I’ve posted in the past about how Education Secretary Duncan has spoken condescendingly about parents in relation to schools.
Today on Meet The Press he sounded a bit better:
“We all have to take responsibility: parents, teachers, principals, school board members, students themselves, most importantly. We all have to step up. Parents matter tremendously. Parents are always going to be our students’ first teachers, and they’re always going to be our students most important teachers. That’s never going to change. Parents have to be full and equal partners with teachers. When that happens, great things happen with children. When that doesn’t happen, when the adults fight, when there’s adult dysfunction, guess what, children lose.”
It would be nice, though, if he encouraged and supported schools taking a more active role in encouraging those kinds of reciprocal partnerships…
Larry,
So glad to find you on Educationworld.com (I’m a monthly columnist in the area of professional development/reading for them). It’s great to see the acknowledgement from the federal government too (I hope its more than lip service).
I am so on the same channel and am glad to know that others are raising the family engagement issue. My world of reading often stretches over into family engagement as I believe that literacy is a natural doorway to involve families in their child’s education. Keep up the good work!