Parent Anxiety and School Reform: When Interests Collide, Whose Needs Come First?

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 80, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 265-271

  Fried, Robert L ^a  

^a NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040904741     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. Alfie Kohn, "Only for My Kid: How Privileged Parents Undermine School Reform," Phi Delta Kappan, April 1998, pp. 568-77.
2. This is precisely the response Kohn's article received in the Backtalk column of the September 1998 issue, where letters from parents accused him T "silly hippie views" and a "mean-spirited liberal streak."
3. This seems all more remarkable because many of Kohn's other writings (e.g., his wonderfully provocative book Punished by Rewards) look squarely at the systemic implications of education policies in schools.
4. Seymour Sarason has written often and eloquently about the systemic nature of the failure of reforms, most recently in Political Leadership and Educational Failure (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998).
5. Jeannie Oakes, quoted in John O'Neil, "On Tracking and Individual Differences: A Conversation with Jeannie Oakes," Educational Leadership, October 1992, pp. 20-21.
6. Tom Loveless, "Parents, Professionals, and the Politics of Tracking Policy," ERIC ED 390 121, p. 32.
7. Thomas Green, Predicting the Behavior of the Educational System (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1980), p. 25.
8. Elizabeth L. Useem, "Social Class and Ability Group Placement in Mathematics in the Transition to Seventh Grade: The Role of Parental Involvement" paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Boston, April 1990, pp. 17-18.
9. In a typical comparison, Useem discovered that a low-income parent, when informed that his child had been placed in a low math group, responded, "Boy, that one supped by me; if I'd known she was in the bottom group, I would have seen the teacher" - whereas a well-connected and more affluent parent reported, "A friend of mine was an officer at the high school PTA. She told me it was a big secret about how important it is for your child to be in a certain level in seventh-grade math."
10. See Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993).
11. Kathy Simon, personal communication, July 1998.
12. The high school in Branford, Connecticut, led by principal Ed Higgins, has instituted a performance-based graduation requirement policy, in which students graduate not by accumulating credits or Carnegie units but by satisfying the faculty that they have successfully achieved each of the clearly stated performance goals.
13. Seymour Sarason avers: "In our state capitals... especially in regard to matters educational, a Martian could spend months seeing and hearing legislators and governors go about their business and never realize that there are words like research and evaluation in the English language." Sarason, p. 125.
14. See Robert L. Fried, The Passionate Teacher - A Practical Guide (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), especially chap. 5.
15. Sarason, p. 141.
16. A two-year project I conducted in Hartford, Connecticut, resulted in the publication of an "I Can Do It" list in English and Spanish, which explains in child- and family-friendly language which activities and skills lead to student success and offers students a way to monitor their own progress.
17. Kohn, p. 576.
18. Hillel's actual words were "If not for myself, who will be? If only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?"