Education

Do Wired Schools Lead to More Engaged Parents?

By Andrew L. Yarrow — October 28, 2010 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

There’s hardly a school in our overly wired age that doesn’t have web pages, online grade books, listservs, texting principals, Facebook pages, and PTA e-mail alerts. If you count all the parents digitally drawn into their children’s school communities, never have more adults been more involved in more schools more of the time.

Yet, while one may learn of a back-to-school night or a school fair via Twitter or Facebook, how much does this really translate into greater school involvement? Do schools, teachers, and, more importantly, students, benefit from all this?

The cliché may be that knowledge is power, but in the digital era, the flying bits and bytes of knowledge seem more like mosquitoes in one’s ear on a muggy summer night. They briefly garner your attention, literally “bug you,” and flit away.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and other books, recently wrote in The New Yorker that “social media are built around weak ties.” Unlike hands-on, high-stakes activism—he used the example of the 1960 civil-rights lunch counter boycotts—signing up for a PTA listserv doesn’t really involve much. As Gladwell says, you can get a lot of people to sign on to a cause “by not asking too much of them.”

As he acknowledges, social media, e-mails, and even tweets and texts can be a good thing to disseminate bare-bones information to lots of people. However, it’s still an open question as to whether school communities, or anyone else, can really achieve strong, large-scale involvement in a cause.

In the end, there are still likely to be five or 10 people talking over pizza at the average PTA meeting.

A version of this news article first appeared in the K-12, Parents & the Public blog.

Events

Student Well-Being Webinar After-School Learning Top Priority: Academics or Fun?
Join our expert panel to discuss how after-school programs and schools can work together to help students recover from pandemic-related learning loss.
Budget & Finance Webinar Leverage New Funding Sources with Data-Informed Practices
Address the whole child using data-informed practices, gain valuable insights, and learn strategies that can benefit your district.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Classroom Technology Webinar
ChatGPT & Education: 8 Ways AI Improves Student Outcomes
Revolutionize student success! Don't miss our expert-led webinar demonstrating practical ways AI tools will elevate learning experiences.
Content provided by Inzata

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Education Briefly Stated: May 17, 2023
Here's a look at some recent Education Week articles you may have missed.
8 min read
Education Briefly Stated: May 3, 2023
Here's a look at some recent Education Week articles you may have missed.
8 min read
Education Briefly Stated: April 26, 2023
Here's a look at some recent Education Week articles you may have missed.
8 min read
Education Briefly Stated: March 29, 2023
Here's a look at some recent Education Week articles you may have missed.
8 min read