Study to Urge More Parental Involvement in Education

By LEE MAY

Feb. 28, 1986 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The Reagan Administration will release a report next week that places parental help above federal assistance as an ingredient for scholastic success.

The study, by the Education Department’s research division, advises parents of poor children to create a “curriculum of the home” by providing books and supplies, monitoring television time and observing routines for meals, bedtime and homework. When parents of disadvantaged children take such steps, the report says, “their children can do as well at school as the children of more affluent families.”

The report, which emphasizes “common sense” and local control of education policies, will be released Tuesday in a White House ceremony similar to that heralding “A Nation at Risk,” the landmark study three years ago by a presidential commission that scathingly indicted the nation’s schools.

Tougher Discipline Urged

The new report lays down well-publicized guidelines on how to get better education in local schools. It calls for more parental involvement, more homework and tougher discipline.

But, unlike other such studies, this one is aimed at parents, not just educators, Education Secretary William J. Bennett said Wednesday during a breakfast interview with The Times’ Washington Bureau. The Times later obtained a copy of the report from sources outside the Education Department.

Bennett called the new report an example of the proper federal role in education. “If the American people will fix their own schools, they ought to be able to rely on the federal government for better, more reliable information about what works,” he said.

Asserting that a method of improving education is “not something in a bottle we can send out,” Bennett said that improvements begin in individual schools, with strong principals and thorough teachers.

Asked what action the Education Department intends to take on the report, Bennett said: “Not much.” He explained that the report is “addressed to parents, what they should be doing. It’s addressed to teachers, what they should be doing. And it’s addressed to principals and superintendents and policy makers. The levers of action that are pointed to in this report are local.”

‘Propaganda Machine’

One Education Department official said that there was a conscious effort to avoid controversy in the new report because the Administration is “extremely sensitive” to charges that the Education Department research division is a conservative “propaganda machine.”

Thus, the official described the new report as being not so much a series of new recommendations as “doses of medicine for things that were pointed out in ‘A Nation at Risk.’ ”

In a letter accompanying the report, President Reagan said that education “begins in the home.” With “renewed trust in common sense,” schools will be improved, he said.

The report, begun last June, is divided into three sections--home, classroom and school. Among its findings:

--A belief in the value of hard work and responsibility contributes to greater success in school.

Phonics Stressed

--Children get a better start in reading if they are taught phonics, a method stressing the relationship between sounds and letters.

--Physical objects such as blocks, marbles and poker chips help children learn mathematics effectively.

--Teachers who have high expectations of their students “obtain greater academic performance” than others.

--”Strong instructional leadership” is a key component in all good schools.

At the breakfast, Bennett, who has made teaching visits to a number of schools in recent months, said that principals “set the tone” in schools. It is “very rare,” he said, to find a good school that does not have “a very strong principal.”

Turning to budget matters, Bennett said that President Reagan, as part of his effort to meet the deficit reduction target of the Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing law, is asking for a 15% cut in the Education Department’s fiscal 1987 budget. The department has proposed to cut $1.5 billion from college student aid and $350 million from the vocational education budget.

“Increasingly,” he said, “there is less pressure on the federal government to be a major player in terms of money.”