Arne Duncan on the Need for Greater Parental Engagement

Last week Arne Duncan gave a great speech to the National Assessment Governing Board Education Summit for Parent Leaders.  In it he highlighted one of the most important things missing in our efforts to reform the American public education system, the motivation gap.  Mr. Duncan notes that while our efforts are in the right place, we often stop short and don’t fully demand expertise as many other countries do, citing South Korea as an example:

In 2009, President Obama met with President Lee of South Korea, and asked him about his biggest challenge in education. President Lee answered without hesitation: parents in South Korea were “too demanding.” Even his poorest parents demanded a world-class education for their children, and he was having to spend millions of dollars each year to teach English to students in first grade, because his parents won’t let him wait until second grade. President Lee was very serious. Korean parents were relentless and had the highest of expectations – insisting their children receive an excellent education. I told that story when I spoke to the National Assessment Governing Board a couple of years ago, and said that I wished our biggest challenge here in the US was too many parents demanding excellent schools.

He goes on to thank the parents that attended the summit and encourage them to expand their efforts to demand quality educational opportunities for their kids:

Doing something about our underperformance will mean raising your voice—and encouraging parents who aren’t as engaged as you to speak up.  Parents have the power to challenge educational complacency here at home. Parents have the power to ask more of their leaders – and to ask more of their kids, and themselves.

He goes on to discuss how this impacts teacher recruitment efforts in both countries:

Both South Korean and US citizens believe that the caliber of teacher matters tremendously, and the great teachers make a huge difference in children’s lives. The difference is: they act on their belief. We don’t. We talk the talk, and they walk the walk.  In the United States, a significant proportion of new teachers come from the bottom third of their college class, and most new teachers say their training didn’t prepare them for the realities of the classroom. So underprepared teachers enter our children’s classrooms every year, and low-income and minority kids get far more than their share of ineffective teachers. In contrast, in South Korea, elementary teachers are selected from the top 5 percent of their high school cohort.

He goes on to discuss how South Korea provides incentives for teaching the highest need students, provide high speed internet to all their schools and discussing teacher training programs and the importance of parental engagement as we implement common core standards in the vast majority of American states.

We certainly do not want to be South Korea in all aspects, but I think he raises a critical point.  All the reform efforts in the world will not improve our schools if they aren’t backed by parent and community support.  As reformers, if we truly believe in the policies we promote we need to work hard to invest our parents in these systems and hold our politicians accountable when they don’t put our kids best interests first.  We can certainly have a debate about what constitutes the best reform practices, but the bottom line is that our kids today aren’t getting the education they deserve.  Only through the combined efforts of stakeholders will this change.  And until that happens, nothing will change.

Tom Friedman at the New York Times also wrote a great follow up piece citing the speech which I highly recommend reading.

Picture credit to the washingtonpost.com