Schools to Parents: "Get Involved but not Too Involved"

More and more I am beginning to think that schools suffer from multiple personalities when it comes to the quest to have parents involved in education. Schools provide tools like Edline that supposed help parents get involved, but then there are incidents like the ones described by Jay Mathews today:

Schools nationwide are calling on parents to get involved. The Maryland State Board of Education endorsed a broad range of family outreach initiatives in a 2005 report that called public education "a shared responsibility."

Yet some parents in Montgomery County and elsewhere have discovered limits on the get-involved policy when they ask questions about individual teachers, whether those queries are about alleged abuse of students or a decision to fire a popular instructor.

Dawn Mosisa said she found an information void when she tried to follow up on her daughter's story about a teacher who allegedly hit another second-grader at Maryvale Elementary School in Rockville. Likewise, scores of parents at Lakewood Elementary School, also in Rockville, said they had a hard time finding out why a teacher they considered top-notch was recommended for dismissal. They also felt their input was ignored.

School officials said they are required to hold back information because of privacy laws, union contracts and potential lawsuits. Some acknowledged that a more open policy would help families handle the repercussions of incidents involving teachers. But the officials said there is little they can do.

Look, privacy concerns are important and I am not asking the state to divulge them, but if a teacher has alledgedly physically abused a student, then the other parents in that class and probably school have a right to know about the status and outcome of the investigation. If the union knows what's best for them and their members, they won't stand in the way either. That is not to say that the union cannot and should not provide legal assistance if asked by the teacher, but the union cannot be seen as standing in the way.

The fact that school officials pass the buck on some personnel issues tells me that there is something they are covering up, particularly when it comes to the dismissal of popular and effective teachers.

Third-grade teacher Soon-Ja Kim retired in 2006 after being recommended for dismissal, according to Kim and others familiar with her case. The recommendation stunned many parents who believed their children had thrived in her class. More than 100 families had written letters on Kim's behalf. Parents told school officials that Kim, who had 20 years of classroom experience, was "a phenomenal role model" and "in a peerless category" and had "enhanced confidence, self-esteem and motivation" in her students.

Those letters were put into Kim's case file and later reviewed by The Post.

But a panel of eight teachers and eight principals charged with reviewing Kim's performance gave little weight to the parent letters when they considered her future in a closed-door meeting, according to panel members.

Doug Prouty, vice president of the Montgomery County Education Association and co-chairman of the panel, said in an interview that the strong parental support for Kim was considered only a "secondary data source."

The good test scores of Kim's students, he said, were also secondary. The primary sources for the decisions, he said, were the judgments of Principal Elaine Chang, a consulting teacher assigned to evaluate Kim and the panel members themselves that Kim was ineffective in the classroom and hurting her students' progress.

"That's a bunch of hooey," said Elyse Summers, one of the multitude of pro-Kim parents. "Our children went to Mrs. Kim's class every day, came home and are performing extremely well."

Let's see, solid test scores and parental support are "secondary sources" but the subjective evaluation of a principal and a "consulting teacher" are paramount. "A closed door meeting" determined the fate of a popular teacher with 20 years of experience.

Let me take a guess at what happened, this teacher was making waves about something that irriated the administration and then stepped on a few union toes and so got no support from that quarter. The Montgomery County Education Association is the teacher's union in the People's Republic of Montgomery County and the tepid statement by the Union Vice President tells me that they didn't like this teacher. I am sure also that the dismissal includes a gag order preventing the teacher from airing her complaint.

Something sure smells rotten in Denmark!