A child’s education does not begin with the first day of kindergarten. By then, he or she should be able to speak in five- to six-word sentences; read his or her own name, symbols and signs; use a correct grip to hold a pencil or crayon; and know how to copy or write letters and numbers, among other basic academic and social skills.
High-school students, beginning in 2004, need to earn at least 22 credits and pass six Standards of Learning (SOL) tests to earn verified credits in order to receive a standard diploma regardless of how good the child’s grades may have been throughout his or her academic career.
Parents need to be more aware of what is expected from their child and of the various opportunities available for their child through the school system. To that end, the Minority Student Achievement Oversight Committee, an advisory board made up of parents, committee leaders and educators appointed by the Fairfax County School Board, has created a booklet, The Advocacy Handbook for Parents, to guide caregivers through a child’s education beginning with preschool and ending with college.
“Things have changed from when my kids were in school,” said Ralph Cooper, the Fairfax County Council of PTAs’ representative to the committee. “I didn’t have to deal with SOLs and I didn’t have to deal with all theses other things. Parents have to realize the timeline for doing certain things stops.”
THE HANDBOOK has been the “pet project” of the committee for at least two years, and is the brainchild of Cooper. Just recently, the first 15,000 of an eventual 35,000 copies rolled off the presses. So far, the 72-page is available in English only, however, the committee is having it professionally translated into Spanish, Farsi, Korean, Vietnamese and Urdu.
The committee, whose main objective is to advocate on behalf of minority students, in particular to suggest ways of closing the achievement gap between minorities and white students. One way to close the gap, said Cooper, was to get parents involved in their child’s education.
“One thing we’ve found is that for minority families, their interface with the schools is different than how the school system is organized,” said Charles Jones Jr., co-chair of the committee. “For example, in the Korean community it is considered disrespectful to challenge a teacher, principal or counselor.
“A second thing we found was there were a lot of parents who just didn’t understand. In some cases, the child is the only English speaker and the parents would have the child interpret information coming home from the schools. And the parents couldn’t get to evening school events like Parents Night because of work. There was also an issue of accessibility. Many parents don’t have access to the Internet and e-mail, which a lot of teachers and counselors are using now.”
The handbook, Jones said, serves as a guide to stimulate a parent, providing nuggets of basic information which encourages the parents to ask questions, and to know it is OK to advocate for their child.
The information in the booklet is not new and is currently available to parents and educators. All the committee has done, said Cooper, is pull it together in one place and make it user friendly.
“We met in my office every day for a year last summer,” said Lawrence Bussey, an educational specialist with the Office of Minority Achievement. “The committee members put together the pieces and I made sure there was no school-system jargon.”
“IT’S A LABOR OF LOVE by the committee plus people not with the committee,” said Michael E. Glascoe, assistant superintendent of Department of Educational Accountability. “It’s not a FCPS [Fairfax County Public Schools] project, but a committee project.”
Glascoe said committee members were always being asked questions about gifted and talented screenings, admission to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology or the school system in general. The handbook contains the information parents need to know about special services available, gifted and talented programs, standardized testing and evaluations and important questions to ask.
“Let’s say you just moved to Fairfax County from Kansas and have children with special needs, whether that’s gifted and talented or special education. You would have to bounce around our Web site or call all these different offices to pull all the information together,” Glascoe said. “Parents can get frustrated by this. The handbook pulls it all together.”
While the book was written to help parents find the information they need, the committee is not just sending the books home with students and hoping parents read it. Instead, the only way to get a copy is by scheduling an orientation through the Office of Minority Achievement.
“We want to make sure we’re teaching parents to use it,” Cooper said. “If we don’t have an orientation, many parents wouldn’t read it.”
So far, the committee has organized two orientation sessions in the community and has more scheduled. At one event, requested by a Korean congregation, more than 150 parents attended, said Cooper.
He hopes that within a year, the handbook can be integrated into the school system, with staff members trained as facilitators able to teach minority parents about the book at the time they register their children for school. He would also like to see community groups have members trained as facilitators so they too can offer the training on their own.
COOPER SAID he expects the Spanish and Korean versions of the handbook to be available by this summer, with Vietnamese, Farsi and Urdu to follow in the fall.
The committee members, at first talked about having students help with the translation, but then decided to bring in professionals.
“We felt the students could do a literal translation, but won’t do a translation culturally,” Jones said. “The goal is to have the cultural nuances. Being a minority advisory committee, we are sensitive to cultural difficulties. It’s more than just the language.”
The books cost about $2.50 each to produce, Cooper said, with the money so far having been approved by the Fairfax County School Board. Glascoe said the committee will be seeking grants in order to keep printing the handbook, which will need to be updated periodically as programs and policies change.