This year, the district lineups and schedules changed and matched our local high school with an “inner-city” school (for lack of a better term). We traveled to play the home team in a low-income part of the city, and the involvement level really surprised me. I understand that low income parents have a lot of limitations regarding jobs and hours, and there will be less involvement at these schools, but what I saw was astonishing. It wasn’t that there were fewer parents around, there were almost none.
We rolled in as our typical entourage and almost completely filled the guest bleachers. If it wasn’t for the large number of parents working with the band, cheerleaders, football team, and dance team, we would’ve overflowed. This is typical for an away game for us. Doing a little math while looking at the stands, my best guess would 500-600 supporters.
Contrast this with the home team. At kickoff there were 19 people in their stands. Seriously, I counted. We had more parents on load crew than they had for the entire school. And this was a home game for them. Both were 4A schools (~1500 students).
Is parental involvement in low-income areas really this bad? One of our teachers at the game told me this was typical, but I find it amazing. Even assuming half the kids are in single-parent households, that’s still less than 1% of the parents showing up.
I don’t know, but my daughter was in Head Start (where everyone is low income) for two years at two different schools, and most parents attended the several parent meetings they had throughout the year.
I don’t think you do understand. When you’re working multiple jobs to make ends meet and dealing with government bureacracies for basic needs and your car is on it’s last legs and gas costs $4 a gallon, going to a football game held mid-work-day just isn’t an option. It doesn’t have anything to do with interest in your child’s education. With activity/equipment fees and juggling transport to practices, the parents are probably already sacrificing more than you can imagine just to let their kid participate in any afterschool nonwork activity.
Urban schools generally (in my experience) do not have big turn-outs for home games (football never had turnout in the district I worked in, basketball did)
If the team isn’t any good, people don’t come.
School spirit and “pride” in many urban schools is almost non-existent compared to suburban schools. Kids go to school and may identify with it, but don’t create their identities as pupils from the specific school.
From my experience working in a high-poverty city school, YES parents are less involved, often because they have more obligations/less free time. Also transportation an issue if they have no car.
It is also true, that some parents couldn’t be bothered to come out and support their kids, absolutely. Many kids had parents who were checked-out. And yes, there were far more single-parent households in the urban schools I’ve worked at compared with my colleagues in middle/upper income districts.
you, know, just as people can overjudgemental and insensitive to the difficulties in these situations, you can also go too far into making excuses for these parents, which is what I feel, you have done. 19 parents out of a potential 1500 students showed up.
I also imagine many of the hundreds of supporters are parents of a student in the school, not parents of the players. Who is going to lose work and spend money they don’t have to support kids who aren’t even their own?
I bet most of the 19 people who showed had a kid on the team, and were showing support for them.
I’m a bit puzzled as to why you’d equate attending a football game as being involved in their kids’ education? It’s one thing if their kid is on the team and in the game, but you make it sound like you’d expect most people with kids in the school to show up regardless of being on the team or not. I never once went to a school team game myself, in HS or college, of any kind, nor did my parents. Then again I see that you’re in Texas so as I understand it, HS football is basically the state religion
Yeah, what’s with these high-income parents who are so interested in their kid’s school that many of them routinely travel to away games that their own kids aren’t participating in? Don’t they have anything better to do? Isn’t this extreme identification with their kid’s school kind of unhealthy?
High school football is a middle class community entertainment event in Texas. The OP is shocked that it isn’t a entertainment event that the poor take time out of their schedules to attend.
A question to the OP, how many middle class parents show up at a speech or debate tournament? Bet that it isn’t 600. Are the parents not showing up because they aren’t interested in their kids educations. Because they don’t have school spirit. Or because they aren’t interested in being entertained by a debate tournament.
You do have a point, but the OP virtually presumed that the parents were just doing fuckall instead of spending their afternoon watching other people’s kids play football for god’s sake (and then concluded that based on their nonattendeance of a afternoon football game their kids probably weren’t even playing in, they also don’t care about their kids). And in a world were absolutely everyone wants to shit on the working poor, I’m fine with going a little strong in the other direction, since most of the people doing the shitting have no clue at all.
Wait a minute. I thought 500-600 people was a lot and I was wondering about the size of the team. It didn’t occur to me that people without a kid on the team would go to a game. What on earth for??? The mind boggles. I was a cheerleader for a year in HS and I deeply resented having to go to games.
If I had a kid on the HS football team, I’d probably go to a couple of games. I can’t see any reason to go to a game otherwise.
This is all that needs to be said. 19 people likely constituted 75% of the live-in parents of the players of the other team. Asking other people to show to a HS football game that their kid isn’t even playing in is baffling.
It has generally been my experience that low-income parents place MORE emphasis on standard education than wealthier parents. They often see education as a way to a better life. That they fail to show in droves for a football game does not seem to me as evidence of a lack of interest in their children’s education.
Why does anybody need to be “excused” for not going to the same recreational activities as you? Sitting in bleachers passively watching a game seems to be the opposite of “involvement” to me.
