Archived: The Educational System in the United States: Case Study Findings

Parental Expectations
A teacher at King Junior High best expressed the belief of many of the parents
and teachers with whom we spoke regarding factors in the academic achievement
of students.
Parents, parents, parents. If there is somebody at home saying ‘‘School is
important,’’ ‘‘Do your homework,’’ or, ‘‘Let me help you,’’ you are going to
be successful.
The director of counseling at Hamilton High had this to say:
I think there is a high correlation between impressive academic achievement
and parental involvement. Where parents are involved, kids are performing
better.
While there was an overall consensus that parental support and encouragement
were important factors contributing to success in school, we found that parents
varied in their expectations of the school and of their children. Academic success
was sometimes defined differently, depending on the level of competition at the

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various schools and the parents’ expectations for their children’s future academic
and career opportunities.
A fifth-grade teacher at Central Middle School explained that parents in the local
elementary school that sent students to their middle school were sometimes upset
if their child was not placed into a special math program that offered long term
opportunities for higher-level math courses. He said that they believed ‘‘if my
third-grader is not chosen, then he can never take algebra in the eighth grade,
which means that he will never be able to take calculus in high school, and he
will never get into Harvard.’’ He went on to say that it ‘‘broke his heart because
the children were only eight years old when all of this was taking place.’’
Another teacher at Central reported her experience:
I see parents who are very successful in their own right with a high edu-
cational level, income, and success. They want the competitive edge for their
children, so that they can go to Harvard, Stanford, or Yale.
A parent from the same community noted that ‘‘most people are jumping through
hoops to make sure their children get A’s.’’ Her hopes for her own daughter was
that she fulfills her own goals and get good grades. Her expectations for the
school was that it would teach students to be confident of their ability to think
and analyze and that it would enable them to develop several academic strengths.
The level of competition found at the high-achieving middle schools carried over
into the local high schools. Both types of school were often located in the same
general neighborhoods and therefore were influenced by the same pressures from
parents. However, since the high schools were much larger institutions, they also
had more diverse student populations in terms of level of achievement. As a re-
sult, the high schools offered courses at multiple levels of difficulty. Honors and
advanced-placement tracks were the preferred or recommended tracks for those
expecting to go on to college, but general-level courses did not preclude a student
from taking the college entrance exams.
While parents often were not actively involved in volunteer activities at the high
school level, parents of both Hamilton and Springdale High students were well
aware of the opportunities which these schools offered. Parents also spoke of the
responsiveness of the schools to their requests for changes in the level of courses
for their students. However, in an indication of the increasing independence of
students at this level, most parents said they believed it was up to the students
to take advantage of all that the school had to offer.

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In contrast to students at Hamilton and Springdale, students at Uptown High
School and South Central, according to the students and parents we spoke with,
often had very little in the way of parental support. In fact, one mother of a stu-
dent at South Central said she told her child, ‘‘The world don’t owe you anything.
Your parents don’t owe you nothing. You owe them.’’
The principal at South Central had hired someone to call parents and invite them
to meetings of the local school council and other school events. He attributed the
lack of involvement to the ‘‘intimidation factor’’ among parents whose own expe-
riences with school ‘‘had left a bad taste in their mouths; people talked down to
them, so they have a bad image of schools.’’
Among the South Central parents who were actively involved in the life of the
school, one father reported that since he started doing volunteer work as a secu-
rity guard in the school, his son had earned straight A’s. One of the mothers at
South Central said that she expects the school ‘‘to teach the kids and let them
know that education is very important.’’ Both parents agreed that the school
should offer courses at different levels, so that the ‘‘advanced students could go
up and not be slowed down by the slow students.’’
The student counselor at Uptown High School had this to say about the role of
the family:
The family is very important. They come here and say—you take care of him.
We don’t know how to handle him anymore. Somewhere along the line par-
ents just give up. By the time the students get to high school, they have given
up too. The streets are a big draw.
Teachers at South Central often spoke of the differences in parental support along
cultural and ethnic lines and attributed some of these differences to a higher per-
centage of two-parent homes among some ethnic groups. Having two parents at
home, they say, positively affected student motivation towards school. An English
teacher at South Central added:
Students now get less family support. We have a lot of latchkey kids. There
are often no parents at home when the kids get home from school and some-
times, instead of supporting students so that they can make better grades, the
parents resort to violence.
Despite these critical comments by teachers and counselors at the two lowest-
achieving high schools, we did speak to several parents who were interested in
their adolescents and in what was happening at their adolescents’ schools. How-
ever, their comments also revealed that their expectations about what the school
would provide their students and their expectations about postgraduation oppor-

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tunities differed from those expressed by parents at the higher-achieving suburban
schools.
A mother who had emigrated from Vietnam and had a daughter enrolled at Up-
town High agreed to speak with us. Both she and her husband graduated from
high school in Vietnam. She said she comes to school frequently to meet teachers
and checks her daughter’s report cards. Both parents wanted their daughter to
attend college. When her daughter told her that she wanted to be a doctor, Mrs.
N. said that she suggested, because of their low income, that her daughter study
nursing in college.
Unlike most of the parents we spoke with in the higher-achieving suburban
schools, a father we spoke to at South Central did not see college in his son’s
future. He said he wants his son to become a certified auto mechanic after gradua-
tion. He also expressed satisfaction with the training his son was receiving in the
automotive program at South Central, and likened it to on-the-job training. He had
told his son, ‘‘cars will be here for the rest of your life. You can work on two
cars a day and pay the rent.’’
In summary, there emerged from our interviews with parents, teachers, students,
and administrators a clear indication of the strong influence that parental support
for schooling can have on students’ levels of achievement. In addition, the dif-
ferent expectations of students and parents regarding the viability of opportunities
for university study often influenced student motivation.