"As parents we are the owners of the public school system. As owners, we bear a responsibility to participate in the schools. Accountability for the schools, its employees and its funding, rests with us and the rest of the school's owners. Our children's future depends on the improvement of the public schools, and school improvement depends on our participation."
-Former President of the Unites States, Woodrow Wilson
(http://members.aol.com/pledgenow/appleseed/rand.html)
There are many people who complain about the educational system in America today. Undeniably, the educational system that exists has its problems. But given all of these problems, how can this flawed system be repaired? And whose job is it? The educational system is a product of the society. Then society as a whole should be involved in the educational process.
Parental Involvement is one way that the educational system could be improved. There has been extensive research that has proven that parental involvement in a child's education proves to yield better success rates. But can society count on parents to get involved in their child's school and with their children directly? In some cases, all the parents need are the resourcesto start down that successful path. But in other cases, it may be helpful for local communities for state and local officials to enforce or mandate certain programs and/ or guidelines, or for the federal government to set goals like Goals 2000, and to create partnerships (e.g. Partnership for Family Involvement in Education ) and incentives for families to get involved. One program called Project Appleseed creates an efficient and easy way for parents to become involved with the education of America's children.
Project Appleseed is a national campaign for Public School Improvement that encourages and specifically organizes parental involvement in education. The project began in St. Louis, Missouri in 1992 and has since then received much support and praise at the national, state and local levels. In November of 1992 Project Appleseed became the first and only national campaign that required parents to sign a written pledge stating that they would volunteer at least for ten hours in their local schools and to spend fifteen minute each night helping their children with homework. The numbers of parents signing the pledge shows the interest in this issue- since 1993, more than a million and a half parents nationwide have signed this pledge and joined the efforts of Project Appleseed.
"Like Johnny Appleseed of folklore, Project Appleseed is our name for the non-profit campaign to spread the seeds of school improvement across America. To improve education in our public schools, a coalition of parents, parent groups, educators, business leaders, and local teacher's union leaders have come together under the banner of Project Appleseed. Our purpose is to systematically organize parents, at the grassroots level, seed by seed, parent by parent, in states and local school districts, to mobilize community support for public school reform.Project Appleseed will develop the grassroots "army" and provide the ground troops in the battle for school reform at the local level. There are over 70 million parents in America. Groups much smaller than Project Appleseed have become extremely effective when they have become educated to understand their own interest. Real education reform in this country cannot take place without an effective parent constituency. If we fail to make systematic efforts to address how we get parents back into the schools, we are clearly fighting an uphill battle with some very unpleasant long-term consequences for this country."
(http://members.aol.com/pledgenow/appleseed/rand.html)
Membership to the project requires that parents commit to a written pledge, but it also provides parents with other options and ways in which they can help their children and their local schools.
As parents we are the owners of the public school system.
As owners, we bear a responsibility to participate in the system.
Accountability for our public schools and its employees and its funding rests with us and the rest of the system's owners.
Our children's future depends on the improvement of the public schools.
And this improvement depends on our participation.
Therefore as parents, we take personal responsibility for our children's education.
PROJECT APPLESEED(tm)
(http://members.aol.com/pledgenow/appleseed/rand.html)
This idea of a "pledge" to commit to education was received with much admiration and interest from National governemnet. In a sense, one could say that the establishment of the Project Appleseed was a predecessor of the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 in November by the U.S. Congress. This act required that all public schools that received Title I funds would be mandated to use learning compacts in school much like the Appleseed Pledge. Currently, the Appleseed Parental Involvement Pledge is the most widely ditributed learning compact in th U.S. (Ibid.) Learning Compacts aim to organize parental involvement and provide incentive for parents to maintain responsibility for America's schoolchildren.
The U.S. Department of Education describes a compact as this:
These pledges/compacts are seen as the way to create a workable and living bridge between parents and school, between home and the classroom.
The main motive behind the program is that the organization believes that children will do better in school when their parents involved directly with their education and with the schools their children are attending. Better education is a benefit to the child, to the family, the community, and to society as a whole. Education is not merely a child's responsibility to do their homework and to attend classes. Parents must be involved, but it is vitally important to have programs like Project Appleseed to guide parents.
Parents all over the United States are pleased with the initiatives of the Appleseed Program. Parents are signing on to be members as fast as they can find out that the possibility to mobilize becomes available. The Parental Involvement Pledge is distributed in Canada, New Zealand, Germany, and Hong Kong. Many school districts, parents, superintendents, local communities have become involved in this grassroots organization. Quantitatively, the responses and involvement with the program are difficult to measure because it is a recent program and inclusion and participation are voluntary. I am not hesitant to say that if the movement continues, we will see improvements in our school systems in time.