Winning Hearts and Minds

We Need Better Ways to Spread the ‘Gospel of Achievement’ Where It’s Needed Most

By Hugh B. Price

Pressured by employers worried about the quality of their workforce and exposed by the tougher reporting requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, beleaguered public school systems are beginning to register credible and encouraging academic gains. Most of the energy and resources expended on improving school performance is focused these days on accountability and transparency, along with instructional and structural reform—from new school models to new governance paradigms.

This arduous yet essential work must continue, given the weaknesses in the way struggling schools work and are run. Yet progress probably will be incremental, with modest gains from one year to the next. To accelerate the pace of improvement, these initiatives focused primarily on school systems and schools should be augmented by a concerted effort to stoke a heightened desire for achievement on the part of children, their families, and community groups in locales with large numbers of youngsters who chronically underachieve.

Research and real-world experience affirm the importance of active parent and community involvement in children’s education. That’s certainly consistent with my own experience, first as a pupil, eons ago, and subsequently as a parent. Our family lives in a Westchester County, N.Y., town where active (bordering on intrusive) involvement by parents in the schools is the norm. The combination of parents intent on their children achieving and youngsters who actually strive to do so is...