I've spent a lot of time lately talking about what schools need to change.
The programs. The evaluations. The professional development. The district offices. The state requirements. The endless layers of accountability.
But there's another group we need to talk about.
Parents.
And I say that as a father of three.
I think we've played a bigger role in creating this mess than most of us want to admit.
Think about what we expect from schools today.
We want to know what our children are learning. We want to know how they're performing. We want to know what assignments they're missing, what grades they're earning, what behavior they're displaying, and whether their teachers are doing a good job.
We want access to everything.
And when something goes wrong, we want somebody to explain why.
Immediately.
Now, none of those expectations sounds particularly unreasonable by itself.
Parents should know what's happening with their children. Schools should communicate. Teachers should be accountable. Children deserve to be safe and receive a good education.
But here's the question nobody seems to ask.
What happens when every reasonable expectation becomes another requirement?
A parent wants more communication. So the district creates a communication expectation.
Another parent wants more information about grades. So teachers are required to update another system.
Somebody complains that classrooms aren't consistent. So the district creates common procedures.
Somebody questions whether teachers are teaching the standards. So administrators develop another monitoring process.
Somebody wants proof that students are learning. So we add another assessment.
And eventually we've built an education system where everybody spends an extraordinary amount of time proving they're doing their jobs.
Meanwhile, we keep wondering why teachers don't have enough time to teach.
I spent 22 years in public education, including 14 years in administration.
I've sat in meetings where a single parent complaint became a new rule for an entire building.
I've watched reasonable concerns produce unreasonable solutions.
And I've participated in that process myself.
That's the part administrators need to acknowledge.
Sometimes we create a rule because it solves a problem.
Other times we create a rule because we don't want to deal with that problem again.
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
And once the rule exists, it rarely disappears.
It becomes part of the handbook. Part of the evaluation. Part of the expectations. Part of what everybody is supposed to do.
Until somebody complains about something else.
Then we add another rule.
Parents aren't solely responsible for this. State agencies, legislators, district administrators, vendors, and educators all contribute to the accumulation of requirements.
But parents have more influence over this process than we sometimes realize.
And I think we've confused being involved in our children's education with controlling every part of it.
Those are different things.
When you hire a mechanic, you expect the mechanic to understand cars.
You can ask questions. You can expect an explanation. You can decide whether you're satisfied with the work.
But imagine standing next to the mechanic and insisting on approving every tool, every procedure, and every decision.
At some point, you have to decide whether you're hiring a professional or supervising someone you don't trust.
Now consider teachers.
We expect them to be educated professionals.
We expect them to understand instruction, child development, classroom management, and how children learn.
But we also increasingly expect them to explain, document, communicate, justify, and sometimes obtain approval for decisions that used to be considered ordinary professional judgment.
Then we complain that teaching doesn't seem like a profession anymore.
Maybe we should examine our role in that.
I'm not suggesting parents should blindly trust schools.
I've been asking difficult questions of school districts myself. I believe parents deserve honest answers about how decisions are made, especially when those decisions affect children, public money, and educational opportunities.
And when a child isn't receiving required services, when a school ignores a serious concern, or when something genuinely harmful is happening, parents absolutely should intervene.
But there's a difference between demanding accountability and demanding control.
Accountability means expecting professionals to explain their decisions and accept responsibility for them. Control means insisting that we make those decisions for them.
We've become very good at demanding the first while increasingly practicing the second.
And schools have responded by creating systems designed to demonstrate compliance.
That brings us back to the larger problem.
We say we want great teachers.
But are we willing to let them teach differently?
We say we want strong principals.
But are we willing to let them make decisions we might disagree with?
We say we want children to become independent.
But are we willing to let them struggle, make mistakes, and occasionally experience disappointment without immediately asking an adult to fix it?
Because freedom doesn't mean much if it disappears the moment somebody becomes uncomfortable.
And improvement requires freedom.
That doesn't mean abandoning standards, ignoring evidence, or removing protections for children.
It means understanding that professional judgment and accountability are supposed to work together.
A teacher should have room to make instructional decisions and a responsibility to explain them.
A principal should have authority to lead and a responsibility to evaluate whether those decisions are working.
A district should establish legitimate expectations without assuming every classroom needs to operate identically.
And parents should remain involved without becoming the people who manage the school.
I think public education needs to change.
I think teachers need more professional freedom.
I think principals need more authority.
And I think state agencies and district offices need to examine how many requirements they've accumulated.
But maybe the rest of us need to change, too.
Because if we want schools to operate differently, we have to be willing to let the people inside them make some decisions differently.
Even when we wouldn't have made the same decision ourselves.
Schools need permission to change.
And some of that permission has to come from parents.
— Mike Pope
Read more from The Pope Report, explore Mike's books, or support the work at pope-studios.com.
