Settling Parent-School Spats: the Backlash

A New Jersey parent wrote me recently about her son who has a bipolar disorder. She was annoyed that the school required her to send a note every year saying her child STILL had this condition, since there were already reams of evaluations and psychiatrist reports in his file.

When she called the district's special education office about this, an official said, "I don't apply logic or reason to these decisions. I just follow the rules. . . . If we don't apply the policy uniformly, you could sue us for discriminating against you."

"Excuse me?" she said. "I would sue you for not making me write a yearly letter regarding an incurable disease??!!"

"Yes," the man said. "That's right. You could sue us."

Her story was just one of many I received after my June 20 column about Ryan Gellis, a high-IQ, 16-year-old whose parents have gotten themselves into a lengthy dispute with their school district because two teachers lowered his grade for absences caused by congenital health problems, as well as other grading practices the parents thought made no sense.

I suggested that a friendly volunteer mediator, maybe a retired teacher with time on her hands, might have been able to persuade both Ryan's angry parents and what I thought were somewhat stiff-necked educators to find a compromise and go on with their lives. A few of the messages I received agreed with me. "I have incidents like the one you described happen quite often," said Diane Joyce, supervisor of language arts in the Pennsauken, N.J., school district. She said the idea of introducing what she called "friendly referees" to such disputes made sense to her.

But, I am sorry to report, most of the people who responded to that column did not see much chance of compromise. Some said there were too many school officials and teachers wedded to their rules and unwilling to consider that parents might have a good argument. On the other side were similarly outspoken readers who thought parents like the Gellises needed to let their children grow up and learn to fight their own battles.

To my surprise, some of the anti-parent comments came from parents and some of the anti-educator comments from educators. But almost everybody took one side or the other.

One Northern Virginia parent was particularly bothered by the honors English teacher at Ryan Gellis' high school who reduced his grade by 25 percent on an oral presentation because he wore black jeans rather than the required khaki pants as part of the appropriate attire she had dictated for the assignment. He thought the effect on students who wore the proper clothing would also be bad. "That teacher worked hard to teach them the value of style over substance," he said. He said his daughter "lost all interest in science after figuring the method to make pretty science presentations in about two hours that are always good for an A or B." His son, he said, concluded that "science is stupid" when his teacher knocked off two grade points because he attached definitions on three-by-five cards to his project board rather than writing the definitions directly on the board.

His view was strongly endorsed not just by other parents, but by a former principal who now works for a state higher education agency conducting training in Oklahoma. "The fact is that we are still producing teachers to work in schools where rules matter more than children do," the educator said.

Harry Keller of Playa del Rey, Calif., was particularly unhappy with my saying that the Gellises might have been better off if they had accepted the lowered grade for wearing black jeans, since it had little effect on Ryan's final mark and "all teachers have their little quirks." He said "these 'little' quirks can make the crucial difference between an unacceptable classroom environment and an unacceptable one."

"I've run into too many teachers who only know about following rules," Keller said, "and I would have fought back just as strongly were my children involved. Once you ask nicely and discover that the teacher is a hide-bound jerk, you have only two choices: 1. validate that teacher's style by acceding to the arbitrary enforcement or 2. fight."

And then there were the many people who thought the Gellises were wrong to make such a fuss. The Gellises, they said, were "helicopter parents," a label affixed to moms and dads who tend to hover over their offspring. One reader said, "Perhaps the school district wasn't flexible, but who doesn't live with arbitrary and capricious rules that may be selectively enforced? Pointing out the arbitrariness, or the selective enforcement is not a valid defense. Try telling that to a police officer when you're pulled over for speeding. 'What about that other guy?' won't get you out of a ticket."

A college professor said he has encountered helicopter parents in higher education also. They "complain to the administration over every little point," he said. "Frankly, their principles seem to be the common idea that 'little Johnny' is perfect and doesn't need to follow the rules."

Parents are as divided on these issues as educators are. David Pancost of Silver Spring, Md., said he once attended a PTA meeting called to improve communication between home and school. About half of the parents attending were native-born Americans and half were immigrants. The cultural gap between them rivaled the distance between the Washington Nationals and first place in the National League East.

"The native born parents all [complained] about how Susie couldn't eat lunch because the monitor was so mean, Jimmy had nightmares after being shushed by the nasty librarian, etc.," Pancost said. "The immigrant parents all complained there was no discipline and too little homework; they wanted their kids to behave so that they could learn."

Pancost decided the immigrants made more sense: "No little part of happiness in life depends upon being able to navigate stupid rules and indifferent bureaucracies, and no small part of every day is spent dealing with the consequences of stupidity, incompetence and fecklessness, both other people's and our own. High school is not too early to learn how to do both by one's self."

I have seen teachers fall too deeply in love with their rules. I have also seen parents push a fight with their school too far. As I said in my column, when The Post finally cancels my computer password and tells my wife to come get me, I hope somebody has set up a volunteer corps of referees to help in such disputes, because I think I might be good at that. But the reactions from readers suggest that this is not going to be nearly as easy as I thought it was going to be.