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Thanks for your very thoughtful response to Larry's remarks, Renee.

To some degree at least, the language of consumer choice works against the goals of engagement. While choice can be a very important element of parent empowerment, the notion that parents can select the best school for their children the way they choose the best-fitting shoes can serve as a disincentive to the sort of engagement Larry describes. The relationship between choice and engagement is complex, indeed.

As I think about consumer driven K12 Education as our product, involvement seems to be a marketing responsibility of selling what we have. Engagement might be a lot more like product development that explores how the product might be altered to better meet the customer's needs. Perhaps the hardest part is that the needs and wants of our user--the student, our customer---the policymaker, and our funder--the taxpayer, may not always align.

Back to Larry's comments, engagement is more about community building whereas making educational choices based on a consumer driven model sounds more like breaking a community down into individual goals.
Recently it occurred to me that our local high school is becoming less and less relevant to our students because of both its dis-connection from the local community and its inability to become part of the global community via the internet and web 2.0 resources. If we dis-engage from the community by isolating our students and fail to join the global community then we have created a space that is completely irrelevant to the world our students and their parents inhabit.

Very thought-provoking discussion. Certainly the possibility of community growing from engagement is very important. In my urban district, I have not experienced a school-community connection. Some schools do better than others at building a community within their walls that is inclusive of parents, but I would say that anything "in the neighborhood" is typically held at arms length as suspicious, dangerous or "not my job." I have heard too many (including our superintendant) talk about the incursion of problems from "the neighborhood" into the schools--as if they believe that the school is a fortress that lands from outerspace every weekday at 8 AM.

As a parent, I have run headlong into the first two scenarios described by Renee--and fit more accurately into the third. It is odd that in this single area of my, and my children's, life, my efforts garner so little respect. There are so many things that I "don't need to know." Personally, I don't feel a great need to write the curriculum--but there are times when I would like to know what it contains (particularly if it is being used as an excuse for doing, or not doing, something that makes sense; or if there seems to be a learning problem that goes beyond my individual child). And sometimes it takes a bit of looking into things to figure out what it is that nobody is sharing about IDEA, or NCLB, or parent involvement in school improvement.

It is very odd to walk into a place as a parent, that I could walk into as a professional adult and be treated as such, and be treated with mistrust and suspicion. Whether it is the security buzzer or the need to know basis for sharing information or the plain out and out rudeness from some front line employee answering the phone or the oversimplification mixed with obfuscating jargon in all communications--there are so many ways to ensure a lack of parental involvement or engagement. What I have learned from work in communities is that everyone brings something to the table--that we need. To the extent that allow assumptions about the value of others contributions to determine who is at the table, we miss out on a lot of dishes at the banquet.

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Well it is getting harder to trust schools these days. I do not agree in the schools stepping into the discipline between a student and parent (just to give one topic). But I do agree that there needs to be a trust between parents and schools and this can be achieved by creating parent-teacher relationships and better communications between the two.

You might think this comment is spammy, but to be honest with you, I actually read the article and it did provoke thought (unlike the previous comment). Great article, i'll be searching the rest of the site!

Education in modern times has always been customer driven.
It is mostly dependent upon the parents to find out the result oriented and well disciplined schools for the kids first of all.

Secondly, an attentive parent would come to know what is lacking in the current school and must plan a change for the ward asap.

Nice article, shall look out for some more.

Yes, alright! Today education pattern has been directed to consumer driven. Finding good schools and place for students are based on parents. Great article... Keep like work.

very good, look forward to view your other articles.

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The blog is absolutely fantastic! Lots of great information and inspiration, both of which we all need!

Thanks for sharing your views about education.Education is very important for making a good community and society so we must pay attention to it.
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