I can't tell you how disappointed I was in this long, front-page feature on parent invovement in Education Week. On the one hand, I suppose it's great that American Education's Newspaper of Record is focusing on involvement.  It happens far too infrequently throughout the insiderdom of education.

But I'm always amazed and disappointed when a writer and nearly a dozen strong education sources can talk at length on involvement and not once mention the huge involvement infrastructure that already exists in so many schools.  Yes, PTOs and PTAs.  It happens all the time.  I actually spoke on this very peeve at a National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education (NCPIE) meeting a year ago this month.

It seems to me that the researchers and many principals and district-level types (plus the education media, which typically only talks to those same folks) are always looking to invent a new way. This committee or that. This new rule or that.

My question: how in the world can folks so focused on building parent involvement look right past and dismiss the groups who: 1) currently do more to foster involvement than any other entity in the school world; 2) exist to build community and ionvolvement around their schools; and 3) are led by the kind of passionate, committed parents who will make the best first-movers in any and all involvement improvements.

In Massachusetts some years ago, a mandate came down that every school had to establish a School Council with a good deal of parent representation, basically a new parent organization with some decision-making and accountability input. Nice idea, but why the heck did we need another level of bureaucracy when virtually every Massachusetts school already had/has a PTO or PTA of some sort. Why not mandate that principals help their existing groups take on some of those same valubale roles? The training and relationship-building and communication work being put into Councils could have been used much more effectively. What a waste.

I'm not at all saying that PTOs and PTAs get it all perfectly right.  I'd love to see (and we try and share in the magazine and on this site -- see here and here, as examples) groups getting even more adept at taking parents up the ladder to new heights of impactful involvement at their schools. But it's crazy to think about these kind of improvements without co-opting the potential of existing PTOs and PTAs. It's an army of parent passion at the ready to help make their schools great. If we're going to think about new solutions and training and new committees, start with the installed infrastructure and take advantage of it.  A principal (or district) who really gets it re: involvement paired with a parent group ready to work on involvement -- now that's a combination that can work.

Every proposal for classroom improvements obviously includes teachers. And school changes start with principals. It's just plain... dumb... that parent involvement efforts don't start with the hundreds of thousands of parent-leaders already working in our schools.  It's an insider-itis that leads to good-minded folks missing tools and solutions that are right there in front of them.   I hope it changes.