Opinion: When boosting learning, don't forget parents

The governor's initiative to mentor those children in danger of not being promoted to the fourth grade because of low reading scores directly targets the child but leaves out the parent. I teach the parents of the children who don't do well on the FCAT. Children with parents who do not have a high school diploma are at significantly greater risk of third-grade retention than those whose parents do have the educational level of at least a high school diploma. In Pinellas County we have nearly 135,000 people without a high school diploma (2001 Census). And 59 percent of our African-American youth who start the ninth grade don't graduate from high school. This is a direct result of parents not pressing children to read at an early age.

It is not surprising that 14- to 18-year-old mothers and fathers who have not finished high school are not able to see the importance of education. They are too busy working to support their children as single parents, or just trying to grow up enough to get by. We need to change the educational model from one of teaching only the children to one of teaching the entire family. As a companion project to the children, we must increase the verbal skills of those in the child's home. If mom or dad can't read well, or if they don't have a high school diploma, the children will not get the message either.

The governor's program makes good headlines and pretty fliers, but it leaves out the single most important part of the kindergarten to third-grade education. That is, home life and parents who are capable of giving the child the verbal skills necessary to understand fourth-grade words. Teachers only have the child six hours per day; the rest belongs to the caregiver/parent.

For those interested in what we are doing in this area, log onto www.GEDOnline.crosswinds.net and look at the partners of the Internet for Citizen's Access Network in Pinellas County. Education is now 24/7 in this county and there are few excuses left for parents not to get education. Given the proper attention, programs such as this can be brought to more families, with the economic uplift that will result.
-- Rex V. Phelps, instructor, GED Online, Pinellas Technical Education Center, St. Petersburg

Stop blaming the system

Re: Backlash may be looming on state school reforms, April 14.

If the state holds back a diploma or keeps a child from moving forward a grade, this will "create" a "permanent underclass of children heading for trouble and jail."

Horse hockey!

Many parents may not like hearing this.

What about parents who don't care a bit about how their children are doing in school classes, but worry about the social impact of their child being held back, instead of being pushed out of the system via graduation?

My three children were held back a total of five grades, each one held back one grade for an attention deficient disorder, and two held back at my request because they were not learning to their capacity. Each one performed at 3.0 grade point average or better in their final year of school.

If parents worried more about how their children are going to survive in the the real world instead of worrying about how it looks to their social clique, then we wouldn't have young adults who can't make change for a dollar.

Parents should stop blaming the system or class sizes and look at themselves. The average size of my high school classes in the '60s (Pittsburgh, Pa.) was 32 students, yet less than 1 percent failed to graduate.

It ain't da system, to those parents who think it is. I quote: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Get interested in your children's education, but don't do it for them.
-- John H. Edwards, Pinellas Park

Parents, redirect your energies

Re: Backlash may be looming on state's school reforms.

Is it just possible that if the concerned mothers of at-risk third-graders had spent as much time helping their children learn to read as they are spending collecting signatures on petitions, they might not have this "looming" problem?
Will O. Perry, Clearwater

Limit parents' project help

Re: Perfect project? Parents pitched in, April 13.

I complained back in 1989 when my daughter was a fourth-grade student at a Pinellas County grade school about the outrageous projects turned in for a "brochure" assignment. Hers, made from paper, crayon and cut-outs, was cute, accurate and clearly used imagination. She got a "C."

The competition (A grades) were done on computers, which by the way, we couldn't afford at the time, and were not the work of fourth-graders. The teacher looked at me with complete uninterest as I explained this was not fair. She did raise my daughter's grade a bit, but did not, as your article read, look beyond the parental help on the other projects.

The assignments should be divided as to which are to be done with parents' help (I agree it is great to have students learn from parents as well) and which should be "hands-off" to parents. "Hands-off" would help to note the individual talent level for all students, and when there is an assignment that allows parental interaction, the students would be able to experience learning from their parents' creativity.
-- Naomi Hesselgrave, Clearwater

Vouchers out of hand

Re: Schools, vouchers and Republican Darwinism, April 6.

I'd like to commend Bill Maxwell for this piece. Voucher programs have gotten out of hand. Regardless of whether or not you support religious schools, the government should not support them.

If states are allowed to shirk their responsibilities (and what more primary responsibility do they have than to educate young citizens?), they do nothing but discredit themselves. School vouchers are not just about a religious versus secular education system but rather about a functional education system, period. State legislators should not take the easy way out. They should do the job for which they were elected and reform the education system, no matter how cumbersome. The stakes are too high to simply pass the buck.
-- Cynthia Beldner, Largo

The pluses of private schools

Re: Pushing vouchers is outrageous, April 10.

As a teacher currently employed by an alternative, private school that has been in operation for more than 18 years, I take offense at the letter writer's blanket assessment of private school education. I, for one, made a conscious decision to forgo the extra $100 a week in pay so that I would be able to have a more significant effect on my students' futures. I teach six classes a day; my largest class consists of only 12 students. I have several who are in more than one of my classes. The small enrollment of the school enables me to understand each of my student's individual needs and thereby recognize each child's strengths and weaknesses so that I can adjust the curriculum to better suit him/her. We are very proud of the large percentage of our former students who have earned undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from major universities nationwide.

As I worked my way through college, I shared many classes with education majors interning at public schools. To make a blanket assessment of my own, many of these future public school teachers were at best, of average intelligence with questionable motivation for their career choice. Any person who enters the field of education "to be where the money is" is satisfied with mediocrity. There is no great amount of money to be made in the teaching profession, regardless of who employs you.

The concept of students coming from private schools to public schools is very ironic to me, as most of my students have been scandalously neglected by the public schools. They have been labeled SLD (severely learning disabled) and confined to what amounts to free adolescent day care. My colleagues and I are in the position of cleaning up the mess created by a bureaucratic system of politics and red tape, with very little emphasis on the individual student.

As far as viewing a student's parents as "customers," it would be logical to assume that the proprietor of a private school would rather lose a few disruptive "customers" in order to better serve the needs of the majority of her "customer base." (This customer base includes parents who are psychologists, public school educators and a former Pinellas County School Board member.) The public schools' solution to disruptive behavior? Repeated referrals, in-school suspensions, suspensions and finally, alternative schools. All of these options are not only stigmatizing, but also grossly ineffective.

Several of my students' parents have recently received survey calls from the state to help evaluate our success. This is in addition to the yearly audit that the Legislature requires.

I am proud of myself for deciding to use my education to benefit students who have been failed by the public schools. I have never sought approval from the Pinellas County School Board and hope that I never need to compromise my professional ethics for that extra $100 a week in the future.
-- Tara King-Acevedo, teacher/mother of five, Anchor Academy, Dunedin

Spraying students is reckless

Re: Pepper spray ends fray, gags 40 pupils, April 15.

The episode on April 14 involving two sixth-grade boys being "sprayed" for unruly conduct should certainly require the Pinellas County School Board to revisit the procedure manual. I cannot fathom the inability of a resource officer, or teacher, to control a child of this age without the use of a weapon.

To simply ask fighting kids to "stop" is a joke. You must physically separate them -- with assistance, if necessary. To chemically attack them, and affect those all around the fighting students has to leave all of us with the question of "who's in charge, and what will be done in future similar situations?"

Those involved are our children, and our school system has no business using a weapon of any kind. We need to be assured that our children will not be subject to reckless actions in future. Our School Board members need to address this issue now!
-- Tom Whieldon, Palm Harbor

Tax dollars didn't pay Clinton

Re: A failure of common sense and The best use of our money?, letters, April 11.

I'd like to clarify to people about the use of ACCENT's $80,000 to bring in former President Bill Clinton to speak at the University of Florida. ACCENT is a student-run speakers bureau, and it is entirely student funded. There are absolutely no tax dollars or taxpayer money that went to pay for that event. UF student government funds itself through student activity and service fees, which are paid by students entirely. It is against the law for student government organizations (like ACCENT) to spend that money on anything but student services. It would be illegal for ACCENT to redirect that money to things like paying for faculty salaries or new computers.

ACCENT stands by its decision to bring in former President Clinton, as we had brought in former President George H.W. Bush in January 2002 for the same fee of $80,000. Clinton's speaking fee was donated to the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation, which has several different programs.
-- Eric J. Trabin, ACCENT chairman, University of Florida, Gainesville

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