The Wall Street Journal is reporting that recent data released by the
New York City Department of Education shows that the level of parental
involvement with the school system has fallen to a new low this year.
The information is giving ammunition to critics of both the Mayor
Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Dennis Walcott for fostering a culture
at the Department of Education that is “unresponsive to families.”
All indications seem to be that the efforts by Walcott to increase
parental engagement haven’t paid off, as the participation in phone
calls, attendance at parent-teacher conferences and school-hosted
workshops during the 2011-2012 academic year was substantially lower
than the year before. In some cases, parents and guardians of students
were 50% less likely to interact with teachers over the course of the
year than they were during 2008-2009. In the instance of
parent-coordinator workshops, the attendance fell from over 450,000 to
less than 270,000 between 2009-10 and 2010-11.
