One thought on “Transcript of Secretary’s Duncan Speech On Family Involvement

  1. My suggestion: if you want parents to become involved in their kids’ schools, give them some real say over what goes on in those schools. I don’t just mean a say over who gets which teacher or what field trips the kids take. I mean a say over the school’s underlying educational principles, the content of the curriculum, the assumptions about how kids learn, and the decisions about what the goal of a good education should be.

    Right now, those decisions are being made primarily at the state and federal levels, and there is little that any parent can do to affect them. I disagree with the prevailing emphasis on performance on standardized tests, which now drives almost all the decisions at my kids’ school. But I know that I’m powerless to do anything about it, short of running for President. When parents feel that disenfranchised, it’s not surprising that it’s hard to get them involved.

    Why not let each school’s community decide its own approach to education? What is gained by this attempt at nationwide uniformity? Are we sure that the prevailing approach at any given time is the best one? So sure that we won’t allow other approaches even to be tried?

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