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Davidson schools try out program
Focus on parent involvement
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Published: November 3, 2008
LEXINGTON
School officials in Davidson County are trying out a new program that they hope will get parents more involved in their children's education and prevent students from dropping out.
The program, called Partnering with Parents, is being piloted at Lexington Middle and Central Davidson Middle schools this year.
The idea is to give parents the tools that will help them encourage their children to stay in school and pursue higher education, said Barry Sink, who works with a separate initiative to reduce the dropout rate and increase the number of students attending college.
"We start with the premise that every parent wants their child to be successful," he said. "But in many cases, the parents don't know the steps in helping that child to succeed."
Partnering with Parents consists of monthly sessions with parents throughout the school year that focus on such issues as helping parents to better communicate with their children.
Some parents just don't have the tools to be good parents, and that results in students not doing well in school, Sink said.
"There's no better mentor than the parent for that child," he said.
The program is open to all parents, and is also focused on ways that schools can be more welcoming to parents, Sink said. There are sessions with school administrators about ways that they can be more parent-friendly, he said. Sometimes, it is as simple as a teacher returning a parent's call, Sink said.
Two years ago, Sink and several other people went to a conference and heard about the Parent Institute for Quality Education, a similar program in California that was started in 1987. Sink said that they also looked at a program in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. They felt that the program could work in Davidson County and eventually throughout the state, Sink said.
GEAR UP NC soon became involved, and decided to team up with Lexington City Schools, said Michael Lane, the western regional director for GEAR UP NC, a federally financed initiative that works in 20 school districts on ways to increase the number of students pursuing higher education.
Davidson County Schools is piloting the program at Central Davidson Middle School.
Lane said he and others saw the program as an effective way to get more parents involved in education.
"The program involves everyone in the family so that we
have a holistic approach," Lane said.
Kristin Redington-Bennett, an assistant professor of education at Wake Forest University, said that programs like the one in Lexington can be effective in helping students.
Often, parents don't participate in their children's education because they had a bad educational experience when they were young, she said.
Schools can do a better job by doing small things, such as having teachers call parents when their child has made a positive accomplishment.
"It's not like the school is calling my kid for something terrible," Redington-Bennett said.
Rhonda Wagner's 12-year-old daughter, Kayla, is a seventh-grader at Lexington Middle School. Wagner said she loves the program.
She said it was especially important for her to get involved because she had her daughter after four failed pregnancies. She said she made a promise that if she were blessed to have a child, she would do everything she could to make sure that her child was successful in school.
"I'm a firm believer that it starts with the parents," she said. "If we as parents don't lay the foundation, how do we expect them to go to school and be strong and interact with other students and teachers?"
■ Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.
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