Community Involvement
Getting Businesses Involved in Education

New education trend starts closer to home and work.

What began as a novel idea soon overhauled the way a business approached the arena of improving local education.

The Newton-Conover school system in central North Carolina approached the hosiery manufacturer, Ridgeview, Inc., one of the area’s largest employers, with an interesting proposal. To better serve the children of Ridgeview’s 325 employees, the school could send guidance counselors once a month to the company’s worksite to meet with parents and discuss the progress of their children. The counselors would come equipped with students’ records, report cards and comments from teachers.

Ridgeview approved the idea, and the program became a huge success, so much so that the company has taken the approach one step further. Ridgeview now offers employees extra paid vacation days to be used for their children’s school activities.

The North Carolina company is just one of a growing number of businesses nationwide who are implementing programs designed to help their employees and other parents become more active in their children’s education.

Merrill Lynch has begun holding seminars on fathers and adolescence, beaming the conferences out to their branches alongside the standard professional development fare. DaimlerChrysler has sponsored parenting calendars and Learning magazines for distribution in the neighborhoods around its plants. And Meijer has begun sponsoring televised public service announcements to promote family involvement. They even include Learning Tips for parents alongside their ads for discount turkey and 2-for-1 soup.

The trend reflects two factors: a changing labor market and a growing realization that families need to contribute as much to educational success as schools. Some also hope that in the age of school choice, equipping parents to be better education consumers will ultimately improve schools.

In today’s tight labor market, employee priorities are shifting. Feeling more secure in their job, younger workers in particular are making more and more employment decisions based on what will improve the quality of their family life – even if it means less money.

A recent Radcliffe Public Policy Center survey found that about 70 percent of employees between the ages of 21 to 39 said they would swap some pay for more time with their families. In fact, younger men were even more likely than women to say they would give up pay. Which explains why when Charles Schwab held an employee session on balancing work and family lives, more men than women showed up.

But after decades of pouring money and energy into school reform, the move by employers probably also reflects a growing realism: schools can’t do everything. As a result, businesses are seeking strategies closer to home where they may also have greater influence — such as helping their own employees get more involved with their children’s education.

Research reveals that parental involvement plays an important, if not crucial, part in student’s academic success or failure. Put simply, when parents are involved in their children’s education, the students are more likely to succeed in school.

These students have higher grades and higher test scores, and eventually have higher graduation rates and are more likely to go to some form of post-secondary education. They are also more likely to have better attendance records, to stay in school and complete homework more consistently than students with uninvolved parents.

And this simple formula works no matter if the kids are rich or poor, Black or White. In fact, getting parents more involved from the start may be the key to reversing our nation’s most enduring educational divide.

In the Black-White Test Score Gap a team of five researchers examined the factors contributing to the 17-point difference between Black and White 5- and 6-year olds on a kindergarten readiness assessment. Only one point could be explained by income differences. Education level differences only accounted for another point or two.

However, as much as two-thirds of the differences could be traced to the child’s home environment — with the biggest chunk attributable to parenting practices such as reading to children, limiting TV viewing, taking trips and reasoning with them rather than using only straight commands.

Similarly James Coleman’s groundbreaking survey of inequalities mandated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act found that on average everything schools did accounted for about 5 to 35 percent of the variation in student achievement. Some schools had more impact. But on average, the child’s family and community still had a larger influence on his or her achievement.

All of which makes investing in equipping parents to fulfill their role a smart investment, which can also pay off in community good-will and employee loyalty. It’s not a miracle cure, but it will help many children to see immediate benefits. Long-term, strong families are as essential to building a high-quality workforce as strong schools.

Submitted by Bryan Taylor, president of Partnership for Learning, an initiative to equip families and communities to maximize learning. You can get more information about their research and partnership programs on the web at http://www.PartnershipForLearning.org or by calling (517) 374-4083.