John Burzichelli is right that parent involvement makes for better students, but judging teachers based on whether parents engage with the school is pure nonsense.
A-2732, Burzichelli’s bill, calls on the state education commissioner to create standards for parentla involvement on which teachers would be judged, which can include “the parent’s responsiveness to communications initiated by the teacher; the parent’s participation in parent-teacher conferences; the student’s completion rate for homework; and the parent’s responsiveness in returning documents requiring the parent’s signature.”
Got that? A teacher potentially is going to be held accountable for the speed with which a parent fills out paperwork and gets it back to the school or whether a parent actually shows up for a conference.
There seems to be some support for Burzichelli’s bill — based on this story in MyCentralJersey.com, though, the structure of the story and some of the quotations raise questions about just how committed any of the educators quoted are to the bill. The focus of the story is on the importance of parental involvement — nearly everyone quoted talks about it and I don’t think you would find anyone who would disagree that it is better to engage parents than to not do so. But little attention is paid in the story to the elephant in the room — exactly how will teachers hold parent’s feet to the fire” — at least not until the final paragraph.
MyCentralJersey.com quotes Bruce Titen, who is the supervisor of mathematics and a school leader at Plainfield’s Frank J. Hubbard Middle School. Titen “called parental involvement a “very taboo” subject,” though it is “the No. 1 indicator for academic achievement in 95 percent of students, especially at the elementary and middle school levels.” Does he support this kind of legislation? Hard to say, but he does offer this comment:
“The quote given to me from numerous administrators from the time I was teaching,” Titen said, “was we can’t talk about what the parents do or don’t do at home because it’s not something in our control as a school system.”
The story never says whether Titen agrees with these previous administrators or not, though it implies that he does. More telling is that this is the only mention of what is likely to be a massive logistical problem. Teachers cannot control whether parents get involved. They can reach out. They can make the effort. But if a parent doesn’t care or, more likely, doesn’t have the time because he or she has to work, what is the teacher supposed to do?
I just don’t see how you can hold a teacher accountable for the things that go on outside of the classroom. We know, for instance, that students who get a good night’s sleep perform better in school, as do students who have healthy diets. Should these things be included in teachers’ evaluations, as well? What about making sure that students live in safe neighborhoods or that their parents are not economically forced to work multiple jobs?
We should be letting teachers do what they do best: Teach students, engage with students. And we should make sure they have the tools they need — which include money and top-notch facilities. We shouldn’t be blaming them for society’s larger failures.
If the goal is engaged parents, then let’s focus on the parents by enacting policies that make it easier for parents to be available to be engaged, starting with a fair economy that treats all work as valuable.
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Hank Kalet 
Dear God…..\”standards for parental involvement on which teachers would be judged…..\” That is utterly insane. Teachers already are being judged by the performance of the kids on standardized tests. In some states, teachers can be fired based in large part on the results of tests and now some politician wants teachers to be judged, evaluated, condemned and hanged based upon parental involvement. Geezus, when does this war against public school teachers end? Teachers do call the parents, they arrange meetings with the parents and in some cases will agree to send daily reports home about some of the kids. Keeping a daily log or diary for a child involves a lot of work for the teacher but it does keep the parent up to date and well informed about a problem child. Then there are the report cards and the days set aside for teacher-parent conferences. It's not as if the teachers are not trying, not making the effort to reach out to the parents, they certainly are. It's really tough if a teacher has a class size of 27 to 30 plus pupils.
Where the hell has this false notion, false idea that teachers are not being evaluated come from? News flash: teachers are being evaluated as we speak and have been evaluated forever and into perpetuity. Teachers are evaluated multiple times throughout the year by the principals and sometimes by the curriculum advisers in some special cases. There is a trial period for new hires which is now 4 years long. The new teacher can be fired for no reason, any reason during the trial period. It's just so \”terrific\” that teachers have more and more responsibilities and mandates dumped on their laps every year and many of these mandates are unfunded. The mandates are dumped on the teachers from Mt. Olympus by people who often have never taught in a classroom or even been an educator. Many of the new mandates are untested and not based upon good research. But the teachers become the sacrificial goats and guinea pigs for these feel-good policies. What more can they dump on teachers? Oh yeah, if the kids don't all go on to an Ivy League college, then fire those teachers. Geezus!
Teachers are cursed if they do and damned if they don't. I have a teacher friend who reported bruises on the arms of a child, she sent the kid to the nurse, as she was required to do by law. Then the nurse reported the incident to the authorities. The parent of the child turned around and blamed the teacher for the bruises on the child. The teacher was technically \”arrested\” for the alleged incident. However, the parent had a history of neglect which was reported to DYFS, she was terrified she would lose her child so out of desperation she accused the teacher of the physical abuse that caused the bruises. The teacher did not have tenure, so the school board told her to not dare go to the union for help. However, the story has a happy ending because the school board defended the teacher and even supplied her with a lawyer. The case dragged on for months in which the poor teacher went through psychological hell. Eventually she was cleared of all charges and her record was expunged and she had no lawyer's fees to worry about. This happened to one of the most gentle, caring and loving people on earth, she would not even have harmed a fly let alone man handle a child. She was doing her job and for that she was punished by a crazed parent. The school board didn't want the union involved because of possible poor judgment on the part of some of the administrators in handling the case; the school board could have been held accountable so the school board decided to defend the teacher.