Black parents tackle a gap

NEW YORK -- Aisha Tomlinson is a receptionist living in Harlem, but she parents her two young daughters like a professional in the suburbs.

The single mother dutifully attends PTA meetings, knows the names of her children's teachers, and sends her daughters to after-school tutoring, test preparation sessions, and karate lessons. On weekends, the family sometimes visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art or a public library in Harlem.

Tomlinson acknowledges that she was not always so involved, though, and she regrets leaving the education of her 18-year-old son entirely in the hands of the public schools he attended. She thought only prosperous parents had the time and ability to navigate a school system -- until last school year, when Harlem educators taught her how to do the same.

''I only went to the school when I was called," Tomlinson, 40, recounted as she watched outside a classroom where her younger daughter, who is 5, was learning vowels at an after-school program. ''Now, I go to the PTA meetings because I want to know what's happening."

Hers is the kind of transformation that a concerted effort launched in the 2003-04 school year by African-American academics, social workers, and the College Board aims to achieve widely in Harlem -- to get black parents, regardless of their income, to match well-to-do white parents in being deeply involved in the education of their children and providing learning experiences outside the classroom. Both are proven strategies for boosting academic performance.

Elsewhere in the country, educators describe a similar phenomenon among middle-class and affluent black parents, whose children do not perform as well academically as white students from families with comparable incomes, according to a controversial 1999 study.

In Silver Spring, Md., outside Washington, black parents have organized networks to exchange information about enrichment programs and to swap test-taking strategies. In St. Petersburg, Fla., parents have attended summits to learn more about the achievement gap and how to be more involved with their children's learning.

The campaign in Harlem and the independent efforts around the country represent a new approach to closing the persistent gap between black and white students, one that does not rely solely on school systems to change what happens inside the classroom.

''What we are trying to do in the black community and Latino community is to build a commitment to intellect," said Edmund Gordon, a retired psychology professor at Yale University who was a coauthor of the 1999 study and is helping lead the Harlem campaign.

Some worry that the focus on black parenting amounts to blaming the victims and allowing bad teachers and failing schools to escape responsibility for the poor-quality education they deliver.

Mano Singham, director of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve University, said studies indicate that middle-class parents have a positive impact on their children by visiting the library or reading the newspaper with them at home, but he cautioned against focusing too much on parents as a way to close the gap. ''I think the school is the problem," he said. ''Parents can partially overcome that, but it's not like the schools are great . . . I think the schools are failing because they do not really teach in a way that makes it fun for the kids."

Some researchers have cited poverty, bad teaching, and racial stereotyping as contributors to the gap. But Ron Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University, cites his research that suggests some middle-class black families lean too much on schools to educate their children. Using his calculations based on a 1998 government survey of parents' habits, Ferguson determined that about 47 percent of college-educated black parents surveyed read to their children daily, compared with 60 percent of white parents with at least a bachelor's degree. Black parents with that much education had 65 books in their home on average, while white parents had nearly double that -- 114. White parents also were more likely to discuss science or nature with their children.

''I do believe middle-class and affluent black parents are seeing we have to do more and more," said Virginia Walden Ford, an educator in Washington who is African-American. ''The dialogue is intense. The phone now rings off the hook in April about summer programs." Ford, 53, said she was a hard-working parent who initially placed the responsibility for educating her children on the schools. ''I started seeing in my children things education was not giving them, and it became very clear in watching them that I needed to intervene," she said. ''I started watching my white friends and asking them for advice: 'How do you get into that community organization and that program?' They were like bulldogs when they wanted something for their children."

Unorthodox measures to teach the tenacious habits of the affluent to African-American mothers and fathers in Harlem have been taken by the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Columbia University's Teachers College, which Gordon directs, as well as by Harlem Children's Zone, a large social service organization, and The College Board, sponsor of the SAT.

''A lot of our parents are tired. They are worn-out and they need almost a pep rally, so we say, 'Hey, I know you are tired, but this is important,' " said Geoffrey Canada, CEO of Harlem Children's Zone, which runs Promise Academy Charter School, an extended day school that Tomlinson's daughters attend. ''We have begun to say, ''You have to do this, or there just is no way your child is going to make it.' "

Gordon's institute hired a firm to create a public awareness campaign to promote the idea that school alone does not guarantee academic success. Researchers are spreading the message in churches and from door to door, and it will be preached this summer at parent conferences. Faculty members at Promise Academy, which opened in September, give away compact discs and hold barbecue suppers to entice parents to attend PTA meetings. Harlem Children's Zone begins to push parental involvement early on.

''With educated white parents, there is a real understanding that the race for a seat at Harvard and Yale and Princeton begins at birth," Canada said. ''When school breaks, you are thinking, 'What can I get my children into so that they will have a competitive advantage?' It's different with black parents. They believe from 9 to 3 is when this happens. The rest of the time is to relax."

Tomlinson said she keeps an eye out for new activities for her daughters, Alaysia and Aleyah Joseph, partly because she wants to condition them to try new things, just as many affluent children are. Still, she wonders whether affluent parents have to work as hard to do it all for their children. On a recent weekday, she had to leave work to pick up Alaysia, 11, who got into a fight at school. Hours later she had to pick up Aleyah from an after-school program.

Tomlinson, who completed her GED, does not always understand the homework her children bring home, but she makes them finish it before bedtime after their 10-hour day at Promise Academy. ''It's hard," she said. ''Sometimes you are too tired to try to find them something to do, but I know now that you have to do it."