If you go back to 1963, to Crescent City, Fla., to Middleton High School, to my graduating senior class, which was Constance Howard's homeroom, you would find 18 students. Sixteen of them went on to college that fall. The other two went to trade schools several years later, one to a barber college in Jacksonville, the other to a culinary school in New York. The point is that my entire class studied beyond high school.
All of us - African-American - had one essential thing in common: The adults in our lives cared about education. They taught us that education was the most important factor in our lives.
My folks brainwashed me into believing that I would be a failure (a "no-good-for-nothing," as my mother called it) if I did not attend college. Morris Carey's parents did the same and so did those of Joyce Hanks, Jane Carol Smith, Joan Forman, Robert Long and Catherine Walker. We, along with the others, were afraid of becoming "no-good-for-nothings."
Yes, what I write is anecdotal. But I believe that my classmates and I - disadvantaged in almost every other way - have had modest success because our parents and grandparents were obsessed with educating us and were involved in every facet of our school.
My grandmother, for example, could not read or write well enough to teach anyone else, but she was a magnificent cook. She used that talent to supply Middleton High with delicious snacks on special occasions and holidays. Pete White's mother washed our sports uniforms. Robert Long's mother volunteered in the principal's office, and his father, a landscaper, kept our sports field free of sand spurs and sting nettles.
Our school lives and our home lives were virtually seamless because our guardians were active in both places.
Parental involvement in school was important 40 years ago, and, given the pressures to achieve on children's shoulders today, parental involvement is more important than ever.
Several years ago, when I did research on parental involvement, I discovered a comment by Pope John Paul II, a great teacher, that is one of the most insightful observations ever about parents and their children's education: "I wish to stress that parents cannot be disinterested in the education of their children, but it is necessary that they become even more aware that the school does not exempt them from their mission, but aids them in fulfilling it; and that they are the first educators of their children, the harmonious collaboration between family and school is indispensable: Both united in the impassioned task of forming men and women."
Many states, especially in Florida where I live and work, have made standardized testing so important in measuring student achievement and in rewarding and punishing schools that parents have become slaves to real estate - location - in their zeal to live in places with the "best schools."
Where families live is important, of course, and where children attend school is important. But nothing is more important than the active interest that parents take in their children's educational lives.
How else do we explain the success of thousands of kids who come from the heart of the ghetto? In nearly every instance, a caring adult at home, who is involved in the child's school, makes all the difference.
Several decades of research support the power of parental involvement in schools. In addition to bolstering student academic achievement, parental involvement improves students' self esteem, motivation and behavior. It engenders a more positive attitude toward school among students and parents. It increases parents' satisfaction with teachers.
"Parental involvement also boosts teacher morale and improves the school climate," states a report by the Association for Childhood Education. "Schools and parents should welcome and celebrate different ways for parents to be involved in their children's education, as each party benefits."
States, such as Florida, that spend millions on standardized tests to determine academic achievement would do well to spend some of those precious tax dollars and time forging close ties between parents and the schools their children attend.
One researcher refers to parents as a "forgotten treasure" in the nation's public school and home equation. Our schools and the lives of our children would be greatly enriched if we rediscovered and used this "treasure."
