Families & the Community

Grassroots Activists Reaching Out to Parents

By Karla Scoon Reid — March 17, 2004 6 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Veronica Rivera is a foot soldier in the movement to spread the gospel about free tutoring to public school parents.

In the morning, she serves as a translator and advocate for a Latina mother meeting with a Camden, N.J., principal. In the afternoon, she leads an intensive training session for Hispanic parents at an adult education center. Just before dinner, she stops off to visit a Latino family for a one-on-one chat. At night, Ms. Rivera is the featured speaker at a church.

Her audience: parents who often have never heard of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and know nothing of their children’s right to receive free tutoring under the law’s “supplemental educational services” provisions.

Last fall, the U.S. Department of Education awarded $1.3 million in grants to three organizations to reach out to minority families in 10 cities with information about their options under the law, including their right to transfer to other schools.

“We are training parents to find ways to better their children’s education,” said Ms. Rivera, a Camden-based field organizer for the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options, known as Hispanic CREO. Using part of its $500,000 federal grant, the group has trained more than 2,300 parents nationwide.

The need is urgent, Ms. Rivera and representatives of organizations that have received the grants say. Many school districts so far have made only flawed and inadequate attempts to inform parents about their children’s educational choices, critics and advocates for students complain.

Confronted with uninformed or confused parents, field organizers say they are left to make sense of district guidelines and encourage frustrated parents to assert their rights. The federal-grant recipients are using billboards and radio advertisements in English and Spanish, community meetings and workshops, door-to-door campaigns, appearances on local-access cable shows, and easy-to-read letters and fliers to reach their audience.

“It’s not a matter of pointing fingers,” Ms. Rivera said. “It’s collaboration to make the schools better.”

Jargon and Complexity

Under the No Child Left Behind law, schools that receive Title I funding and fail to reach state goals for “adequate yearly progress” for three years must offer supplemental services to poor children, using Title I money. (“Tutoring Aid Falling Short of Mandate,” Feb. 25, 2004.)

Advocacy organizations that have been monitoring the implementation of the supplemental-services provision say districts have sent jargon-filled, complex letters to parents. Sometimes letters are sent in the wrong language, said one Chicago advocate: “If your name was Lopez, you got a letter in Spanish.”

Other common criticisms include: no attempts to reach parents, beyond an initial letter. Short enrollment periods to sign students up for tutoring programs. Inconvenient tutoring sites that stymie parents without transportation. Limited choice of providers of tutoring services.

“It was so technical and so thick, we knew parents wouldn’t even read [the tutoring letter],” said Merrilyn Wilcox, a Detroit grandmother and the president of a local school committee in a building where only a handful of the almost 300 eligible children are being tutored. “It’s as if they did not realize ... you have children raising children.”

In Chicago, a federation of local school council members filed a complaint with the Illinois education department, calling the tutoring program a “bureaucratic nightmare.” Xavier E. Botana, the Chicago schools’ director of No Child Left Behind accountability, said the district made “strong efforts” to reach out to parents, including developing a tutoring hotline.

In addition to Ms. Rivera’s employer, the Washington- based Hispanic CREO, the federal Education Department awarded grants to the Black Alliance for Educational Options, or BAEO, also based in Washington, which is working with parents in Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia, and the Indianapolis-based Greater Educational Opportunities Foundation, which is targeting parents in Denver and Gary, Ind. Hispanic CREO is helping families in Camden, Miami, and the Texas cities of Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio.

All three organizations support and promote school choice, including publicly funded vouchers.

Nina Shokraii Rees, the deputy undersecretary in charge of the Education Department’s office of innovation and improvement, said that at the most basic level, districts have to send a letter to parents. Informational fairs highlighting the offerings available from tutoring providers are being held “sporadically,” she said.

“To really help parents understand, ideally districts need to do more, and most are not doing that,” she said in an interview last month.

Outside Their Realm

Monique D. Miller, the executive director of Project Clarion, BAEO’s parent-outreach effort, said outside organizations had to become involved in fostering greater parental awareness.

“We knew school districts would not go out of their way to make sure that parents are informed and understood the provisions,” she said.

But Jennifer Harmon, the deputy director of the supplemental educational services quality center at the American Institutes for Research, in Washington, said it was too early to assess districts’ effectiveness in implementing the 2-year-old tutoring provision.

AIR received a $1 million, two-year grant to develop ways to raise awareness of tutoring; increase the number of providers; and coordinate the efforts of those working to meet both of those goals.

School districts, Ms. Harmon suggested, have limited experience in reaching out to parents, who may have a range of literacy skills. Reaching individual parents about specific options is often outside their realm. As a result, Ms. Harmon said, some districts are relying solely on the federal guidelines.

Bart Leff, the spokesman for the Camden public schools in New Jersey, said: “I think we’ve done a better job than most in letting our parents know about supplemental services.

Mr. Leff explained that the district sent parents an informational flier and held a town meeting in November that drew roughly 200 people. The meeting is shown frequently on the local-access cable channel. The 18,500- student district is able to pay for tutoring for 1,800 students; 1,400 are now being served, and another 300 are scheduled to begin receiving tutoring next month.

Carmen Malavez received a notice from the Camden schools about the tutoring option for her son Juan Castellano, 12, who has speech problems and has been suspended from school multiple times.

She filled out the notice. Then she filled out a second form at school. But nothing happened. “I thought he didn’t qualify for the program,” she said in Spanish.

Ms. Malavez got in touch with Hispanic CREO after learning about the group’s parent-training sessions at a local church. Ms. Rivera, the Camden organizer for the group, then accompanied the mother of four to Juan’s middle school to speak with the principal last month.

If it weren’t for Ms. Rivera’s insistence, Ms. Malavez believes her son would not be enrolled in tutoring sessions today.

Assistant Editors Catherine Gewertz and Mary Ann Zehr contributed to this report.

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

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

Families & the Community Opinion Why Educators Often Have It Wrong About Right-Leaning Parents
Stereotypes and misunderstandings keep educators from engaging constructively with conservative parents, write Rick Hess and Michael McShane.
Rick Hess & Michael McShane
5 min read
Two women look at each other from across a large chasm.
Mary Long/iStock + Education Week
Families & the Community Opinion Chronic Absenteeism Has Exploded. What Can Schools Do?
The key to addressing this issue is rebuilding the relationship between families and schools.
8 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Families & the Community Leader To Learn From Absenteeism Was a Big Problem in This District. A New Strategy Is Getting Results
Sharon Bradley remembers how it felt to miss school for reasons outside her control.
11 min read
Sharon Bradley, director of student, family and community services for Plano ISD, listens to members of the Character, Attendance, and Restorative Education (CARE) team discuss their current projects in Plano, Texas, on Dec. 14, 2023. The CARE department focuses on equipping students and adults with the tools, strategies, and resources that support a safe, engaging, and collaborative learning environment through character education, attendance recovery, and restorative practices.
Sharon Bradley, the director of student, family, and community services for the Plano, Texas, school district listens to staff members on a special team that focuses on helping students and their families address a range of challenges that may get in the way of regular attendance and engagement at school.
Shelby Tauber for Education Week
Families & the Community Leader To Learn From A Former Teacher Turns Classroom Prowess Into Partnerships With Families
Ana Pasarella maximizes her community's assets to put students first.
8 min read
Ana Pasarella, the director of family and community engagement for Alvin ISD, oversees an activity as Micaela Leon, 3, a student in Alvin ISD’s READy Program, draws on a piece of paper on Alvin ISD’s STEM bus in Manvel, Texas, on Dec. 8, 2023.
Ana Pasarella, the director of family and community engagement for the Alvin Independent school district in Texas, oversees an activity as Micaela Leon, 3, a student in the district's READy Program, draws on a piece of paper inside the district's STEM bus in Manvel, Texas.
Callaghan O’Hare for Education Week