EXPERT SAYS NEW WAYS TO COMMUNICATE WITH FAMILIES NEEDED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 21, 1992                   TAG: 9202210314
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-9   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: DUBLIN                                LENGTH: Medium
EXPERT SAYS NEW WAYS TO COMMUNICATE WITH FAMILIES NEEDED
Teachers are still using techniques to communicate with the parents of their students "which are based on Beaver Cleaver's family, 1950," according to the man who helped bring new technology to bear on the problem.
Jerold P. Bauch, director of the Betty Phillips Center for Parenthood Education at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, says fewer than 16 percent of today's families fit that TV show's profile of one breadwinner husband, one full-time homemaker wife and two children these days.
He told teachers at Pulaski County High School that single parents or families where both parents work outside the home have little time left for teacher conferences or to check on their children's homework or class work.
"Every parent you talk to thinks they're busier than you. . . . Parent involvement with children in the schools has been stuck in the '50s for years," he said. "You can't fix family demographics from this school."
But, he said, the school can use technology to bring parent involvement up to date.
Bauch developed what is known as the TransParent School Model, which is being adapted by Pulaski County High School in a telephone-computer system going on line next month. It will allow parents and students, by calling the school and punching in a four-digit student identification number, to hear brief messages from all that student's teachers on what was covered in class that day and what the homework is for tomorrow.
He visited the school Wednesday to help conduct a three-hour work session with teachers on how the system would work, tips on recording their messages, and other training. Helping with the workshop was Frances Bishop, a math teacher from Sterling (Ill.) High School, to give a teacher's viewpoint on how a similar system was working there.
Bauch said Pulaski County High School would be joining about 160 schools in 25 states from some 10,000 across the nation that are trying such a telecommunications project. It will be one of the cutting-edge schools in America able to give information to parents that they need and in a form they can handle.
"Everybody can learn to use this technology, even principals," he joked. "It's going to allow you to make every minute count, but make every minute count many, many times."
Data from the relatively few schools where the system has been tried shows that parents of about half a school's students will continue to call regularly "when the curiosity settles down." But roughly half of those frequent callers will be parents who had not been involved with the school before.
Many will be parents who, for various reasons, would not come to the school but will call, he said.
Only about 25 percent of U.S. colleges prepare teachers to work toward parental involvement, he said. If parent involvement is a key to better schools and getting more students to complete homework assignments, he said, this system can do the job "so you get back to assessing your students on the quality of their performances rather than the absence of them."
In families where parents are divorced and one lives far from the child, Bauch said, that remote parent will also be able to call the system and keep up with the child's progress. The system can also be used to place recorded calls to selected homes after school hours when parents would be there, he said. Its use is limited only by teachers' views of what parents' needs are, he said.
Bauch said he began working on the system in 1987. "That's a whole lifetime, in terms of technology."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB