The theory of action behind parent involvement in NCLB is very simple. Provide parents and communities with reliable information so that they can make informed decisions about the two major intervention strategies embedded in the law—the choice of moving their children to a higher performing school and/or a choice of providers of supplementary education services. That is why references to parents and parent involvement occur throughout the law, more than 150 times.

Testimony at the PEN hearings, however, strongly indicated that the theory is not working out. Parents must go to extraordinary efforts to become well informed. Choice of another school not only is a hollow opportunity, it goes against the values of the parents and communities who want their schools to be excellent. Few had been able to access supplemental education services. If information is power, then the people in schools and communities most impacted by NCLB remain powerless.

Still, it is the hope of becoming empowered
that brought people to the PEN hearings. The emphasis in NCLB on parent involvement emboldened parents who had never spoken up before. They wanted to tell their stories and
present their ideas on school improvement. In
some places, such as New York City where community school boards no longer exist,
access to top school officials seems out of their reach, but NCLB gives them a wedge. “For far
too long,” testified a parent from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, “parents have allowed local
districts to make decisions for our children. As a parent, I felt they knew what was best for my
child. Now I know that I can have input in the
decisionmaking process and that all decisions
that are made are not necessarily in the best
interest of my child.” Attending a school fair, a
Los Angeles parent found out that all of the
schools where her children were “needed improvement.” She then attended a school
meeting and realized she and other parents
were not getting full information. “I decided that I
had to demand that my children get a quality education and not leave it up to teachers,”
she said.

This parent, who had participated in a parental
involvement policy committee, learned what her
rights were and organized a small group of
parents to educate others. At several hearings, witnesses told stories about grassroots
organizing stimulated by the message in NCLB
that parents are important. A parent from the Washington Unified School District in northern California also had organized“ a handful of
strong parents” who are using phone trees and
other personal contacts to inform parents.
Across the river, parents, businesses, and college campuses in Sacramento are collaborating as never before on standards and supports for students. The leadership of business and faith communities in Memphis testified in favor of the parent involvement provisions of NCLB, saying they meshed with their growing collaboration around student support.

The reality of the typical relationships between schools and their parents/communities, however, is sad and the reasons almost unfathomable. Those who testified were passionate about their faith in education, their children’s welfare, and their willingness to help. Yet, they told of being excluded, even of being subjected to restraining orders;
of feeling they were token participants in order to satisfy paperwork compliance; and of having no way of either accessing or understanding information about their schools. Those who are trying to organize other parents experience problems seldom found in higher wealth districts. They need increased resources beyond the one percent etaside
provided in No Child Left Behind to cover the time, program, and methods to eaningfully
involve parents. Information needs to be translated into families’ languages. Perhaps the most serious barrier is the lack of trust between parents whom the advocacy groups try to involve and the schools, born out of years of the parents being treated as if they “don't matter.” A parent organizer in Boston even said that parents need a place to meet away from schools “where it is safe to talk.”

Speaking with difficulty in halting English, a Los Angeles mother told about wanting to work with her school. She won trophies as a parent volunteer, but the school ignored parent ideas and her criticisms of how money was being spent.“ On dishes,” she said, and “on programs that are not good for the children. Maybe they don’t care.”

More than disdain for parent and community involvement surfaced at the hearings. In some places, school officials were out of compliance with NCLB requirements on providing information, involving parents in decisionmaking, and monitoring interventions available to parents. Moreover, the online survey results substantiated how seldom
people are being included in NCLB’s school improvement efforts. Three-fourths of the respondents have not participated in any of them, even though 87 percent report they know either something or a great deal about the law.

Online NCLB Survey on Community and Parent Involvement

The issue of listening to parents and communities and respecting their involvement reflects far deeper problems than a law can resolve, commented an Ohio social justice activist. This report, therefore, focuses on those areas where parent interests and
NCLB intersect.

• Becoming informed. Few parents or students who testified knew much about
  the details of NCLB. While they could speak to the issues it addresses, eloquently at times, they either did not know how to access information about NCLB or were confused by it. Students said their peers ought to be informed about the law and its consequences so they would understand about the importance of testing. Because students are unaware of the law and reason for testing, “they just disapprove of it and do not take it seriously,” said a Los Angeles high school student. Nor did she see any change in reporting to parents, who are just as uninformed as students.

Educators seem unaware of how confusing the information is to parents. Parents in some states receive data from two different assessment systems, described in different verbiage. “We at least need a common language,” suggested a Pennsylvania parent. One-third of the parents who contact an advocacy group in Boston for special
needs children “are confused, not informed or misinformed about their rights under the education reforms,” reported a parent who works with the group. A community activist in Chicago has worked with parents on the process of drawing up school plans, “then we look at what the mandates from central office are and how they conflict with our plans, and then we look at the mandates from Springfield and how they conflict with our plans, and that’s really disempowering.”

School report cards fail to provide all the information parents and communities want and what is reported is written in jargon, many complained. Witnesses in New York City particularly criticized the lack of information on school report cards. They wanted specifics—
the climate of the school, teacher qualifications, classroom size, sources and use of funding,
and comparisons with schools in other districts—“in user-friendly language that
the ‘common Joe’ can understand.”

Information sent to parents about transfers or
supplemental education services, often stuffed
in children's backpacks, is late and garbled. A
Chicago local school council parent
representative complained that parents learned about supplemental services in a legal format. “You needed a Mississippi lawyer to decipher
it,” she said. Many parents already feel disconnected from the schools, said an Erie, Pennsylvania, community representative, and
then they are given data that “seem put down
on them from some entity they know nothing about, and they completely withdraw.” Outside advocacy/parent groups seem to be the only sources for parents wanting intelligible, useful information, but they also acknowledged that
their efforts usually reach only a small
percentage of parents. No one reported extra efforts on the part of school districts or states
to use non-traditional means— such as
different kinds of media—to inform parents
about NCLB and their rights under the law.

• Transfer Provisions. At the time of the "hearings, the transfer provision under NCLB—allowing parents to transfer their children to a higher-performing school after their current school failed to meet adequate yearly progress for two years—was not a viable option at any of the hearing sites. First, it was not working as intended. Second, it was not the option most parents and communities wanted.

According to a December 2004 General Accountability Office study, about 1 in 10 of the nation’s 50,000 Title I schools were identified for school choice in each of the first
2 years since enactment of No Child Left Behind. The proportion of schools identified for choice varied by state. Yet only about 1 percent of eligible children, or 31,000 students, transferred in school year 2003-2004.

At the PEN hearings, not only did witnesses say information about the transfer options was unavailable
or late or incomplete, they believed it was a hollow promise. Some parents, living in urban fringe as well as rural areas, have no schools to transfer to. Others said there were
very few openings at available schools. Students, teachers, and parents talked about the negative effects on receiving schools—overcrowding and attention diverted away from successful programs to help incoming students who were
seriously behind academically. Transferring students were
boarding buses before dawn for long rides to a different school.

Most witnesses, however, did not focus so much on the shortcomings of the choice option. They had another message. They wanted their neighborhood schools to
have the resources to become good schools instead of abandoning them.

“Leaving one school and going to another does not
guarantee success for students,” said a Springfield, Massachusetts, parent. “We need to know what is wrong in schools that are failing.” A Boston parent termed moving students to other schools like “an underground railroad.”
It results in creating “a majority of under-performing
schools rather than working with the schools to become performing.” Another Boston parent realized the “high
price” his daughter paid in participating in an inter-district
transfer program—boarding buses before dawn, no
chance to participate in high school activities, isolated from friends. She was admitted to a four-year institution,
however. He placed his son in the local city school, but
he did not do well academically. “Why,” the father asked,
“did the schools not give my son a better education
without his having to go to another community?”

Witnesses particularly objected to the loss of resources
from schools that were struggling to meet their AYP goals. Obviously, they were unaware of any new monies
available to these schools but were troubled that schools lacking adequate support to begin with were now facing
the possibility of losing funds because of transfer transportation costs and/or loss of the average per pupil funding for transferring students.

The President of the National Association of Women Business Owners, testifying in Los
Angeles, said that as a business owner, she knew that “it is counter-intuitive to sanction or
withdraw resources from an underperforming entity or department. It makes far more sense to use tests that measure performance as a means of determining what kind of targeted assistance is necessary to actually improve the education of children in that particular school.” Her group, she said, has serious reservations about simply moving
children from one place to another as if this were a “magic wand.” Instead, “we believe that children should be educated in their school, in their community.” An Austin, Texas, youth community organizer believed the choice option will cost American society because it undermines the country’s social and equity efforts ever since the Brown desegregation decision. “Allowing parents to pull their children out of underperforming schools at the school district's expense may result inadvertently in segregating low-income students and students of color into underperforming schools,” he said. Without the needed resources,
the choice policies may create “a cycle of failing schools in urban low-income neighborhoods…(and), ironically, cause greater numbers of children in these neighborhoods to be left behind.”

• Supplemental education services. Parents’ other option under NCLB is to
  select a provider of supplemental education services, usually for after-school tutoring. The transfer option was available in schools failing to make adequate yearly progress in the first year; the supplemental services became available in the second year (the timing varies among states because they had different starting points for determining which schools need improvement).

Testimony at the hearings about supplemental education services duplicates somewhat the experiences with transfers—not enough information, received too late, or without enough time to reply. However, some witnesses preferred this intervention
to transfers. New York City parents revealed a flaw in NCLB, or how New York interprets it, when they told about using the transfer option, then finding out children were no longer eligible for supplemental education services at the new schools.

States have approved about 1,300 supplemental education services providers, but according to some witnesses, the quality of the services is not being monitored by districts or states. “Who is responsible for holding the providers accountable?” asked a Chicago parent. The previous year, she said, the supplemental services started months late “and parents are still waiting for reports on their children.” After the Chicago hearing, the U.S. Department of Education disallowed the Chicago Public Schools from being a supplemental services provider because the district was not making adequate yearly progress.

Some providers could not serve students with special needs. A survey in Buffalo found that“ half of the private providers were unaware of the needs of their students and less than half actually had services to accommodate special population students.” In New York City, providers assured authorities they would serve English language learners, but a survey by the Immigrant Council found out differently.