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When school begins next month in Mississippi, Akeeleon Lewis will head to kindergarten for the second time. He started school last fall not knowing his colors or numbers.

"He couldn't even hold a pencil," says Judy Packer, his kindergarten teacher at McNeal Elementary School in Canton, a city of 13,000 about 30 miles northeast of the state capital in Jackson.

Akeeleon was one of about 10 percent of kindergarteners kept back at McNeal when the school year ended in May, a rate twice the national average. Before he arrived at McNeal, he hadn't played much with children his age or ever set foot in a classroom.

Thirty years after Mississippi established statewide kindergarten and made school attendance compulsory starting in first grade, classroom readiness remains a major obstacle to student success in this state, which has the highest rate of childhood poverty in the country and test scores that are consistently among the nation's worst.

Although neighboring states have made great strides in early education, Mississippi remains the only state in the South — and just one of 11 in the country — that doesn't fund any pre-k programs. Researchers have found that high-quality pre-k programs can improve long-term outcomes for low-income children and help close an achievement gap for minorities that tends to worsen over time. Being able to stand in line, listen to directions or make eye contact with the teacher play in an important role when it comes time to try to teach kids how to read and write. And a lack of school readiness is evident the minute children walk in on the first day of kindergarten, says Kaye Sowell, who has taught for 30 years in Rankin County. "I've had to chase children into the street," she says. "I have kids who don't know their given name and can't recognize it in print. They can't go through the lunch line without holding it up. You can't fathom it unless you've lived it."

Failure to prepare children for kindergarten or first grade costs the state a lot of money. One of every 14 kindergarteners and one of every 15 first-graders in Mississippi repeated the school year in 2008, the most recent year for which statistics are available. From 1999 to 2008, the state spent $383 million on children who had to repeat kindergarten or first grade, according to the Southern Education Foundation. Children like Akeeleon start so far behind they may never catch up, and those who repeat one or more grades are much more likely than their classmates to drop out of school, decades of research have shown.

The state's academic results — abysmal by just about any measurement — don't improve as the children grow older. In 2011, the state's fourth-graders were outperformed on the reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress by their peers in 44 states. In math, they finished second to last in the nation, ahead only of fourth-graders in the District of Columbia.

Just 61 percent of Mississippi's students graduate from high school on time — more than 10 percentage points below the national average. Mississippi found itself at the bottom again this week, ranking 50th on six of the 10 national indicators of child well-being in a report released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Over the years, countless committees, taskforces and politicians in the state have argued that investing in pre-k will improve high-school graduation rates and build a more highly educated workforce in Mississippi. Retired military leaders added their voices in May, calling for state-funded pre-k to help prepare the more than 75 percent of young Mississippi residents who are ineligible to join the military because, among other reasons, they failed to graduate from high school on time.

But legislators have held firm in the belief that the economically depressed state cannot afford pre-k. Nationally over the past decade, enrollment in pre-k programs has soared even as state funding has declined by more than $700 per child, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.Much more at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2120539,00.html

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Parent involvement takes on a very different meaning when I see the parents of my students every week ringing me up in the grocery store, rinsing me out at the beauty shop, tuning up my car at the local garage, or delivering my mail. I worship with them, bowl with them, sit in the waiting rooms with them. I know them, and they trust me.

Trust is the issue with most parents. Here in the Delta, over 40% of the adults are illiterate; others have had very little formal education. Even those who finished school often had to do it over significant obstacles. Some parents had horrible educational experiences as children, particularly in the period of transition from the segregated schools. Like our urban colleagues, we have increasing numbers of parents who speak little or no English. Many of our parents simply trust us to do what is best for their children because we are the professionals.

Principal Shannon Flounnory of Stonewall Tell Elementary School in College Park, Georgia puts it this way: “High levels of parental involvement would be an outstanding asset, but if we don’t get it, then we still have a responsibility to the students we serve.”

As part of a classroom research project several years ago, I interviewed many parents and set up a response group. They repeatedly expressed dismay over the increasing number of adults working in the schools who did not take the time to know their children as individuals or to care about them as persons. My husband and I have raised 11 children, all of whom attended public school. Every one of them had different abilities, talents, personalities, and habits. We tried to help their teachers understand how best to work with each of them, but we also expected their teachers to learn about our children for themselves and work with each one appropriately. The good teachers did; the lazy ones wouldn’t.

Despite years of studies and initiatives, educators and administrators across the country are still wringing their hands and shaking their heads over the need for “more parental involvement in our public schools.” But what exactly do we educators mean by “parental involvement”? Two common scenarios seem to prevail:

#1. Send us your child: Clean, well-dressed, fed, disciplined, obedient, eager-to-learn, cooperative, and (preferably) already reading, counting, and computer literate. In 12 years (give or take a few months), we’ll send the little darling back to you ready to use that college trust fund.

#2. Come to school when we call you and deal with your child (this usually means there is a disciplinary problem); send money, supplies, science fair project boards, and your signature when required. You may come on parent night or to special events.

That’s not always what we get, of course. What about…

The parent who believes public education means the public gets to run it. The parent who wants to approve lesson plans, classroom rules, and the reading list. The parent who questions the necessity and logic of homework or class assignments. The parent who demands to see staff credentials, has a copy of the curriculum guide, and highlights the school’s published report card, noting deficiencies. The parent who has the principal’s cell phone number and that of the school board president on speed dial. The parent who visits the classroom frequently--and stays. The parent who never misses PTA meeting and always has questions, suggestions, or criticisms for the staff.

When I hear fellow educators lamenting the lack of parental involvement and blaming parents for not supporting their children’s education, I wonder which of these scenarios they’d rather see? There are some places where meaningful parental involvement is routine. In those places where it is not, there are reasons--and some of those reasons are us, the educators. If we had genuine parental involvement from the majority of our parents, how many of us could really take the pressure?

Some of the best and brightest students I have ever taught had parents who were not just dysfunctional; they were dangerous. Conversely, some of the lowest performing students I know of had parents who were passionately interested in their education. Many things can hinder effective parental involvement; not the least of which is the unwelcoming attitudes of educators or the limits we put on when and how we want parental input. How many educators are using lack of parental involvement (or, lack of the kind of involvement we would like) as an excuse for low expectations and minimal instruction, particularly for the children of the poor or children of color? http://www.learningfirst.org/ReneeMooreParentInvolvement

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