Smart & Good High Schools - The Flippen Group

CHAPTER 3: The Ethical Learning Communityused the Internet to find an appropriate paper.What’s missing here—and arguably in most schools—is anexplicit compact between parents and the school to worktogether to support shared expectations regarding excellenceand ethics. When that kind of home-school compactis not in place, some administrators faced with anirate parent may be tempted to placate the parent ratherthan support a teacher who has confronted a student.And when teachers go out on a limb to confront dishonestor irresponsible student behavior and don’t get supportfrom administration, they are less likely to confrontsuch behavior in the future. The character of the schoolculture suffers.What’s missing in many schools is anexplicit compact with parents.Schools must, therefore, take proactive steps to forge acharacter compact with parents. See the box on page 39for a sample letter to parents, sent by a principal at thestart of the school year, which seeks to make a compactwith parents around the issue of academic integrity.Making an explicit compact with parents creates a commonlanguage—a language of character. It goes a longway toward preventing student infractions of school rulesand provides a framework for dealing with the infractionsthat do occur. If a parent, despite the school-home compact,persists in defending a child who has broken schoolrules, one high school principal says she finds it helpfulto ask one or both of the following questions: “Howwould you like the school to handle this?” and “What lessonwould you like your child to learn from this experience?”These questions force parents to be more reflective:How do they want the school to handle it? Do theyreally want the school to have separate rules for theirchild? Do they want their child to walk away thinking, “Myactions have no consequences”?Honesty is the first chapter in thebook of wisdom.—THOMAS JEFFERSONELC Principle 2:Align practices with desired outcomesand relevant research.Ask, How does a given practice contribute toperformance character and moral character?2 PROMISING ALIGNMENT PRACTICES1. Engage staff in aligning practices.2. Encourage parents to align their parenting practiceswith relevant research.ELC 2: Align practices.Promising Practice 1:2.1 Engage staff in aligning practices.ELCSchool leaders, faculty, and other staff havethe primary leadership responsibility foraligning school practices with desired outcomes and relevantresearch. We therefore describe practices for engagingstaff in aligning practices when we discuss the ProfessionalEthical Learning Community (Chapter 4).ELC 2: Align practices.Promising Practice 2:2.2 Encourage parents to align theirELCparenting practices with relevantresearch.Whenever possible, educators should try to be guided bywhat research shows about effective practice. Logically, thesame should go for parents. How can research help thembe the best parents they can be? How can it guide theirdecisions about particular questions, such as how to handlethe issue of adolescent use of alcohol?For example, is it a good idea for parents to permit theirteenagers to engage in “moderate” underage drinking athome (at parties, for example), so that they “learn todrink responsibly”? As reported in the Washington Post,one mother whose son was starting high school didn’ttrust some parents’ “kids will be kids” attitude towardallowing underage drinking. She did some research andcame upon this remarkable finding in a National Institutesof Health study: 40% of people who are drinking by age15 become alcoholics at some point in their lives. 1340Smart & Good High Schools