Seeing their daughter walk across the high school stage at graduation gave Edith and her husband a swell of pride and satisfaction. Their daughter’s education had been a long road, longer than Edith and her husband had expected. Their daughter had been a slow starter in school, drawing their concern that she’d never catch up. But catch up she did, as her high school graduation with honors showed. Edith had devoted a lot more time and effort to help her daughter with education than Edith had received as a child and youth from her own parents. Homework assistance, tutors, and special services had all helped. And now, they had done it together as a family. Their daughter had graduated.
Education
A good family life certainly includes a sound education for your children. An inspiring education that helps to form your children’s character and equips them with knowledge and skill for vocational and life success would be even better. Families make big and small sacrifices, and spouses make big and small decisions, solely or primarily to prioritize and improve the education of their children. Spouses decide whether to homeschool their children or send their children to public or private school out of a concern for their best education. Spouses also decide in which school districts to live to get their children the best education. Spouses take extra jobs, take out loans, and forgo privileges and pleasures to pay for private or college education for their children. You and your spouse likely put a high priority on your children’s education. Doing so is wise to ensure a good family life not only for you and your spouse but also your children, now and when they have their own families.
Benefits
Education is important to parents, children, and families because of the benefits that families expect education to bring. Those benefits begin with academic training, expanding the child’s academic knowledge and skill base. Broad knowledge of academic subjects like math, science, social studies, and history give a student cultural, political, historical, and social context for navigating life. Development in reading comprehension and grammar, spelling, and other writing skills equip a child to communicate clearly and with authority. Exposure to music and the arts refines a child’s tastes and aesthetic, while physical education develops a child’s strength and coordination. Education socializes the young child and equips the older child with procedural knowledge and skill, preparing youths to enter adulthood, form their own families, and enter the workforce. Families generally recognize and embrace the rich benefits of sound education, as a big part of a good family life.
Goals
You and your spouse may do well to have educational goals for your children. Children have a knack for living up or down to their parents’ expectations. Setting a goal that your children will attain a certain level of education generally makes it more likely that they will do so. Setting a goal that your children will attain certain academic honors or meet certain academic standards also generally makes it more likely that they will do so. Affirming your children’s desires and plans to enter certain programs, schools, and fields also generally makes it more likely that they will do so. Visiting schools and their facilities, events, and programs with your children even when they are young, wearing school insignia, and talking about schools and school ambitions can all sow seeds of familiarity, opportunity, and expectation. Education isn’t everything. Children can and do succeed in various ways in life without a lot of education. But education can lay a pathway to success for your children, making for a good family life.
Choice
You and your spouse also have choices to make in the education of your children. Education can seem like a given, something that just happens in the natural order of family life. Education and truancy laws make it that way. State laws mandate compulsory education of your children from around ages six to sixteen. Your family must educate your children for at least those ages. State taxpayers, with a little help from federal taxpayers, pay to educate your children from at least kindergarten through high school and so for thirteen or more years. You and your spouse don’t, though, have to educate your children in the public schools. You have the option of homeschooling or private school. If you do decide on a public education for your children, you may not have to send them to your neighborhood school. Some districts offer limited choice of schools and programs. Wherever you enroll your children, you often have choices to make or help your child make about arts and sciences programs, language-immersion programs, vocational or college-prep programs, and co-curricular and extracurricular programs. You and your spouse can help shape your children’s education. Doing so demonstrates your engagement in the lives of your children, from which your children may derive substantial benefit.
Partnership
School teachers and leaders often say that elementary and secondary education involves a partnership between the school and the student’s parents. That saying is to reflect the value of parental engagement in their child’s education. When parents care, children care. When parents don’t care, children may not care, either. Your involvement in your children’s schooling, in partnership with the school, can take several forms. You and your spouse should consistently attend school family orientations, parents’ nights, teacher’s conferences, and of course band, choir, drama, dance, or other performances and special school athletic events in which your child participates, expecting and desiring your attendance. You may further benefit your child by volunteering as a homeroom parent, coaching school athletics teams on which your child participates, driving and supervising your child and classmates on special school trips, and in other ways that the school requests and invites. Doing so not only shows your child your commitment to your child’s education but also gives you a glimpse or more of the effectiveness of your child’s instruction. You can learn a lot about teachers, programs, classes, students, and instruction, and about your child’s school conduct, when participating as a parent volunteer in a school community. Accept the invitation of your child’s school to make your child’s education a partnership.
Needs
Some parents, though, take it a step farther, asserting that they, not school teachers and administrators, are primarily responsible for and in charge of the education of their children. That attitude of parental responsibility and control can be especially helpful when parents must advocate for the special needs of their children in school. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA law and other federal laws require public schools to accommodate students with qualifying disabilities. That school obligation includes providing special-education services. The IDEA law gives parents of special-needs students the right to participate with teachers and other school officials in forming an individualized education plan (IEP) for their student. An IEP guarantees the student the plan’s specified accommodations and services. The IDEA law also places the burden on the school to have your student evaluated for a qualifying disability and needed services, if evidence suggests the need. Advocate for these rights for your child’s educational benefit, if you have a child whom you know or suspect has a qualifying disability.
Progress
Your child’s satisfactory academic progress may at times be your family’s major educational concern. Although generally grouped by age throughout elementary and secondary education, children learn at different paces at different points in their early development. Your child may at different times rush ahead or fall behind on academic measures. Ordinarily, some differences in learning pace are not concerning. But states maintain educational benchmarks to which public schools must generally hold students accountable. Your child’s school may resist advancing your child through grade levels if your child is not meeting academic benchmarks. If the school blames your child for disobeying teachers, acting insubordinately, disrupting class, or excessive absenteeism or truancy in connection with failing studies, the school could expel your child and transfer your child to an alternative disciplinary school. Beware academic progress issues that could seriously affect your child’s trust in and commitment to school.
Redress
Take seriously your child’s failure to academically progress. Failure to progress may be due to an undiagnosed or unserved special need. In that case, advocate with the school for your child’s referral for professional evaluation at school expense. See that the school puts the recommended special services in place, and ensure that those services are working. Get qualified attorney representation if school officials will not fulfill their IDEA law obligations and your child continues to have progression issues or face school removal. Your child’s failure to progress may alternatively be due to bullying, harassment, or intimidation by other students that the school should by law have prevented. Once again, get qualified attorney representation if school officials will not fulfill their obligations to protect your child so that your child can learn.
Misconduct
School misconduct allegations can be another serious parental concern, adversely impacting your good family life. Things get serious when a school accuses a child of behavioral misconduct like fighting, stealing, disrupting class, pulling fire alarms, misusing computers, vandalizing school property, or bringing weapons, drugs, alcohol, or tobacco onto school grounds. Student codes of conduct required by state law empower school and district officials to suspend and expel students, and transfer them to alternative disciplinary programs, for behavioral wrongs. Don’t let school expulsion happen to your child, if you can possibly avoid it. School discipline can have severe academic, social, and developmental impacts. Your student has due process rights against long-term school removal, requiring fair notice and a hearing. Your student’s alleged misconduct may have been in response to unlawful bullying, an unserved emotional disability, or another condition the school should have addressed. Retain qualified attorney representation to assist you and your student in maintaining regular classroom enrollment.
Studies
This chapter should already have shown you that while your children’s school plays a large role in your children’s education, the academic and intellectual climate of your home may play just as great a role, if not in your child’s education then in your child’s interest in intellectual and academic growth and development. While some children grow up to be the first in their family to go to college or earn the family’s first doctoral degree, academics tend to beget academics. The intellectual climate of your home has a lot to do with whether your children will value academics and a life of the mind. If you and your spouse read at home, and share and discuss your reading, then your children are more likely to be readers, thinkers, and sharers. If you and your spouse respect and value intellectual curiosity, and frequently explore new subjects and fields, then your children are more likely to exhibit intellectual curiosity and growth. If you and your spouse value thought, insight, articulation, inspiration, and a life of the mind, then share that value with your children for an enriched family life.
Reflection
What educational goals do you and your spouse have for your children? Are those goals consistent with their own talents, aspirations, character, and interests? How can you and your spouse help your children see education as a path toward vocational and life success? Have you and your spouse considered homeschooling or private school as an alternative to public grade-school education? What grounds would have you homeschool your children or seek their private education over public schooling? Who do you see as in charge of your children’s education, you and your spouse, the school, or a partnership of family and school? Do you attend your children’s school events? Do you volunteer at school? Do your children believe that you are engaged and invested in their education? Do any of your children have educational disabilities and special needs? If so, is your disabled child’s school serving those needs? Do any of your children have issues with failure to academically progress? If so, how are you helping your child and the school address those issues? Does your struggling child have an undiagnosed or unserved disability, or is that child facing school bullying or other disruptive school issues?
Key Points
A good family life includes a sound education for your children.
Education can bring your children and family lifelong benefits.
Setting goals for your children’s education can clarify intentions.
You and your spouse have choices in the education of your children.
Your children’s education improves in partnership with the school.
Public schools have a responsibility to serve your child’s special needs.
Get help addressing your student’s failure to academically progress.
Failure to progress may be due to disability, bullying, or other issues.
Don’t let misconduct allegations result in your student’s expulsion.