Teach the parents

"The usual focus on improving education, with an emphasis on the quality of teachers or curricular reform, ignores what is an equally productive opportunity for education reform—altering the child-rearing practices of parents of preschool children," The Christian Science Monitor reported. "The approach is especially critical in tackling the achievement gap that plagues low-income and minority students throughout their academic careers."

Parents & education

The Monitor cites several factors that illustrate how parents are pivotal in how well children learn:

• Education starts early. "A child's academic training begins long before he or she sets foot in school," the report notes. "Studies show that more-educated parents instill patterns of thinking, processing information, and early reading instruction that form a vital foundation for later learning."

• Some children start school already behind. "Sadly, children born to parents who have not graduated from high school are more likely to enter primary school less motivated to learn these vital skills than those children growing up with college-educated parents."

•  Parents' education regulates children's achievement. "The best predictor of reading and arithmetic skills in the early grades of school is the education of the parents. This relationship can have a major effect, because parents without much schooling are less likely to read to their children, to engage in reciprocal conversation and play, encourage improvement in their children's intellectual talents, and promote in their children the belief that they can effectively alter their current conditions."

So, schools can't be expected to fully educate children without the help of mom and dad. And since many parents are ill-equipped to teach their children to learn, they need help themselves. That means other people—such as churches—face a significant ministry opportunity in their communities. 

Turning over a new LEAF

Although the Monitor's report is new, the concept is not. It's the idea behind the Learning English Among Friends — LEAF —  program developed by the Baylor University School of Education and School of Social Work. 

Baylor's parent-training program began ins 2003 at Cesar Chavez Middle School in Waco. Through the years, the program has served 450 families at five middle schools. And teaching parents how to help their children learn has made a profound and lasting impact. "Thank you for saving my family," a mother told Randy Wood, a Baylor education professor and co-founder of LEAF. 

Churches can help

The LEAF program is portable and scalable, Wood says. Practically every church everywhere can improve children's education by helping their parents.

“My hope is that others all across the state will catch this vision and many other LEAF programs will ‘branch off’ from ours to help families end the cycle of poverty through education,” Wood said “Baptists in Texas can do it. We have the financial base, but we’ve got to get over color, culture and class. We’ve got to understand that if people can’t read, how are they going to know what the Bible says to them?”

The stakes are high. If this generation of children are not educated well, they and their families will suffer. But it's not the affliction of one class alone. If these children are not educated, Texas will become a backwater, and all our communities will suffer.

We can change lives and share the gospel, simply by helping parents help their children.