7 Ways to Become Involved in Your Children's Education

According to a study published in the American Educational Research Journal, parental involvement has been shown to positively influence graduation rates, children's achievement in language and mathematics, their academic persistence, and their behavioral problems. 

You never want your child or children to think that schoolwork is too hard and either start to withdraw or stop making an effort.

If you are a single parent, parental involvement falls solely upon your shoulders. If doing this is a struggle for you, admit to it and ask a relative, a friend, your neighbor, or a pastor for help in keeping close tabs on how your children are doing and working with the school to implement an action plan for improvement.

However, if parent involvement is not a struggle for you, here are: 

7 ways to carry out your parental involvement effectively.

1. Establish and maintain an ongoing dialogue with your children's teachers. Learn how to make sense out of your children's report cards. Determine what type of question to ask at parent-teacher conferences. And, make sure you know what your child should be studying and the tests they are required to pass.

2. Set up regular time for homework completion. Establish appropriate routines at home like creating quiet time for homework as well as for recreational reading. Limit the amount of television they can watch or video games they can watch.

3. Set a good example for your children. Let the children see that you value reading and lifetime learning by enrolling in classes yourself and taking part in study groups. Moreover, if you have younger children, read to them and with them.

4. Praise the child's effort. Instead of criticizing the child's mistakes, guide them into discovering the right answers through their own efforts. If you can't help them with their homework, keep a close enough eye on them to know if they're doing it themselves.

5. Establish a relationship with other like-minded parents and community groups to strive for excellence in the school.

6. Expose your children to a variety of learning experiences. Get up on Saturday mornings and take your children to the museums or the library. Help them to turn their favorite hobbies into enjoyable learning experience.

7. Volunteer, if possible, in the classroom and at least accompany your children's classrooms on field trips. Go to the parent/teacher conferences and meet all the teachers.

The fact of the matter is that the active involvement of parents is the first step in creating a level educational playing field. Parental involvement in the school can turn it from a dropout factory into one of excellence. 
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You can influence the choice of the principal, the type of curriculum, the quality of teaching, the expectations of teachers, and the security and safety of the classrooms.

Three Essential Goals of Education No One Talks About

The focus is on ending Black dropouts. When dropout factories continue to exist, it begs the question, what are the goals of education.

While I firmly believe that the education of our youth is a local issue and not a federal one, each locality should be clear about their educational goals.

Here I am offering a guide for developing specific educational goals.

1. The goal of a good education is to help young people to become both more receptive to and more discriminating about the world: seeing, feeling, and understanding more, yet sorting the pertinent from the irrelevant with a more discerning touch, increasingly able to integrate what they see and to make meaning of it in ways that enhance their ability to keep on growing.

2. The goal of education is to promote significant learning. Significant learning entails development. Development means successively asking broad and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. This is for first-graders as well as for graduate students, for fledging artists as well as for graying accountants.

3. The final goal of education in the schools should be to create men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done ; men and women who are creative, inventive, and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept everything they are offered.


What are your thoughts. Do you think these goals are realistic?

Leave your comments below.

3 Things Dropout Prevention Programs Must Do to be Effective

There are various dropout prevention programs functioning across the United States with varying degrees of success. From my perspective as a mental health consultant, there are 3 important ways if implemented would help stop the high school dropout epidemic.

Lets look at the 3 ways:

1.    The school program must be perceived by the students as leading to higher status roles in the future and to future economic realities. 

In other words, the school programs must have a connection between their school and work either with a future career or at least with a decent paying job with the possibility of advancement after graduation.

2.    The school program must be personalized, challenging, and have a sense of community established whereby the relationship between teacher and student are supportive and trusting rather than unhelpful and distrustful. 

Every high school must be either small enough or divided into small enough units to allow teachers and staff to know the students as individuals and to respond to both their specific learning needs and learning styles.

3.    The school program must provide the student with some choice about the nature of their academic program and what they are interested in learning. As part of their classroom work, students must have an opportunity to design independent projects, work on group projects, conduct experiments, solve open-ended problems, get involved in activities that connect school and work, and have opportunities to encounter some real psychological and practical success in their endeavors.

In reflecting on my experience as a former high school dropout, if I was in a high school that connected school and work or at least connected school work with a career I was interested in, treated me as an individual, and, allowed me some choice in my academic program, I never would have dropped out. 

It is the impersonal and alienating nature of high school conditions, specifically in the largest cities, that needs to be changed.

What do you think? Leave your comments below.

The Need for Equality in Education Still Exist

Now, even after the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board and the first time students of color became the majority in U.S. public schools - the state of education in Black America today is at a critical juncture. 
The achievement gap between Black children and their classmates continues to widen, and too many students are simply not being equipped with the tools that they need to succeed in a rapidly changing, global society.

Why? Because in areas where Black children are concentrated and poverty is pervasive, we are falling short of providing a high-quality education for them.

Of the 50.2 million students enrolled in public schools in the U.S. today, 16 percent are Black. While our national graduation rate is at 82 percent, the graduation rate for Black students is 57 percent. Those who do reach that graduation milestone are not as prepared as their classmates for learning beyond high school. 

Racial and Socioeconomic Achievement Gap
Upon entering college, only 12 percent of Black students are ready to succeed without taking remediation courses (basic skills courses) that can be so costly they lessen the odds of some students attaining a degree. These are sobering statistics. But if we want to close the racial and socioeconomic achievement gap, we must have a clear understanding of its exact dimensions and contours. 

Tools for Realizing High Standards
Not only do we need to be able to describe the problem, we need to also use our understanding to build tools that meet the challenge of educating all children to high standards. What are those tools?

In K-12 education, the emphasize needs to include the following: access to great teachers who deliver high-quality instruction; high expectations and challenging coursework; and approaches to personalized learning that allow a more tailored approach for students so we can meet their individual learning needs and build on their strengths.

The Single Most Important Quality of a Great School
The recent New Education Majority national poll of parents and families of color suggests that parents agree. It showed that Black parents overwhelmingly consider good teachers to be the single most important quality of a great school, and that they their young-sters should be challenged more in school to help ensure they are successful later in life.

Today, more than ever before, education doesn't end with high school. A post secondary degree or credentials offers the surest course to career opportunity and individual success in life. We need to make college more personalized and flexible to meet the needs of today's students, who are more diverse than ever. Many are working full-time, while others are raising kids or returning to school at an older age.

Why Some Students Drop Out

Georgia State University, for example, analyzed millions of student to try to learn why some students were dropping out. They found that a low grade in the first course in a student's major can signal trouble. The university gets an alert when students earn a C or lower in the first course tied to their major - and students get more support. It's one of the data-driven steps that helped Georgia State double the graduation rate for Black students and triple the rate for Hispanic students over the last decade.

Georgia State University, among other institutions, is facing the issue of educational inequity head-on and proving that it is not intractable or inevitable. The real question is, do we accept it in our country? Are we going to accept a system that sets students on different trajectories based on the color of their skin or the language they speak? Can we sit comfortably knowing that future leaders and great minds are sitting in classrooms today and not receiving the quality education they deserve?

Absolutely not. We cannot accept the status quo. It is time to look closely at approaches suggested by the data, listen to families and commit to implementing real solutions in our schools and communities.

Throughout history, Black people have always prioritized and fought for educational opportunities. Since the time when slaves learned to read and write despite the threat of physical danger that could result, through the battle for equality in our schools and Brown v. Board, the fight for opportunity through education, no matter the risks, is a part of our nation's story.

Your Thoughts. Leave your comments below.

End Black Dropouts. Sue the School District

Suing the school district for educational malpractice should not be viewed as a last resort. It should be considered anywhere in the process of taking control of the school that your child goes to.

• If the school is hostile to you going in to visit your child’s classroom; 
• If your child has a bad teacher or teachers and the school will not get rid of them; 
• If the school is teaching your child political propaganda rather than the basics and how to learn; 
• then, the chances are you have grounds for a lawsuit against the school district.

The lawsuit itself would be a wake-up call to the school districts that you are concerned about the quality of education provided to your child and that you will not accept any nonsense. Your taxes pay the salaries of the teachers, the administrators, the support staff, their pensions; the books, and all the other expenses connected with the school.

Also let’s be clear, the teachers' union and you as a parent are not on the same page when it comes your child’s education. The teachers' union represents the teachers and exists to make sure that the teachers have a job, have a great salary, and great retirement benefits and health care. Anything else that the union says for public consumption is just hot air.

You and only you must be concerned about the education of your child. The union could not care less if your child is educationally unprepared or just drop out.


Have you considered suing your school district? Leave your comments below. 

Don't Drop Out. Take Control of Your Education

This is a message to all teenagers who are prone to dropping out of high school. 

When you become a teenager you will increasingly be held responsible for your actions and behavior. Your parents will expect you to take responsibility for your own clothes, your allowance, and your chores as a resident of the household. Taking responsibility for your education is no exception.

It's Your Future
Think about your future. Consider what your strengths are. There is something that you do well – – something that you become so engrossed in that the time goes by without you noticing or something that you do so well that others would say that you are in your “element”.

My brother had a natural gift for playing the piano which we discovered early. He would hear a tune and just began playing it on the piano without knowing how to read a word of music on a music sheet. On a different note, when I was a teenager it was the norm for a group of guys on a summer night to gather together under the street lamps and just sing. Many of these guys went on to either form or become parts of great singing groups.

Know Your Strengths  
Consider your strengths and skills very carefully. Keep in mind that you will have some teachers who are caring and competent and some who are uncaring and incompetent. Use your powers of discernment  and do whatever it takes to get out of the bad teachers’ classes. Enlist your parents' help and, if necessary, go to the principal together. It is your education and your future. And by your efforts, you’ll get your parents to wake up and take notice.

Accept Challenges 
Do not get discouraged and drop out of school. If you feel at all that your actions are futile, then you and your awakened parents can work together to get you transferred to a new school. However, if you remain in your current school, ask your good teachers to challenge you more. This is an especially  good step to take if it’s a subject you like and if it has significant real world value. More on this and how it worked for me in a future post.

Once again, take control of your education and your future. Don’t drop out of school.  

Parents! End the Black Dropout Epidemic by Creating Charter Schools

Creating your own charter school can be an excellent answer to help end the Black dropout epidemic. While it is not the total answer, it can be a significant part of the solution.

If you are engaged in creating your own charter schools and enrolling your children in them, the chances are close to zero that your child will drop out.

Creating your own charter school will:

• allow you to design the curriculum, 
• hire the teachers, 
• hire the principal and other support staff, 
• make sure your children are getting a quality education, 
• and finally to maintain the  school climatic and culture you desire.

Charter schools week occurs every May. Visit Black Alliance for Educational Options and learn more about recognizing this important initiative.


Would you like to create you own charter school? Let me know.

Who Benefits from Dropout Factories?

Dropout factories are the norm in most large cities with a significant number of black students. Specifically, a dropout factory is a high school where graduation is not the norm. Nearly half of the nation’s Black students attend such schools whereas only 11% of white students attend high schools where graduation is not the norm.

On May 22, the mayoral appointed school board in Chicago made the final decision to close 49 schools. The parents were not at the table when the decisions were made and it is their children who are affected – not the mayor’s children, not the school board members' children, not the CPS (Chicago Public Schools) CEO’s children, nor the union president’s children. More about this in an upcoming post.

This was essentially political decision because the evidence shows that most of the schools that the children will be transferred to are no better than the ones being closed. The CEO of CPS even told the parents to not expect any immediate improvement in the academic performance of their children after the transfer. Furthermore, when the children leave these elementary school, the high schools they will be going to are the dropout factories. Neither the union nor the politicians are concerned about the quality of education for the Black children who are being forced to either attend these schools or dropout.

But then who benefits from dropout factories.

Keep in mind that the unions exist to make sure that the teachers have a job, make good salaries, have an excellent health care plan, and have a retirement plan that is significantly better than what we taxpayers have.

Here’s an example from Chicago. The budget for the Chicago public schools is $5.11 billion. The average spending per pupil is $13,078. The average teacher salary is $74,839. Teachers average a 3 to 5% increase for the first 13 years of service and can get an average of 3.8% pay after earning an advanced degree.

These are the benefits the people get who teach in the dropout factories. Here are the results of their so-called work:

• Over the past 30 years roughly half of the students fail to graduate.
• The average ACT scores in this district dropped by 0.1% in 2011.
• In  2011, fewer than 24% of CPS graduates were prepared to attend a four-year college and only 1 in 7 tested college ready.
• 39 % of  CPS teachers send their children to private schools.
• And finally, in a recent study tracking CPS students who graduated between 1998 and 1999, only 35% of the student who went to college earned their degree within 6 years, below the national average of 64%.

The dropout factories should not be allowed to exist. This is what this site is all about -- ending these dropout factories. 



What do you think about dropout factories? Leave your comments below.