The actual problem in the education system was that children from poor communities were receiving not as much attention as concerned their education. The article outlines what the Bush administration could have considered as parental involvement in education. One of the problems cited by Paige on what parents could have done or had done to improve education was that African American parents had been accustomed to hearing scores of children’s achievement, and they had come to expect and accept it. According to the administrator, parents should have been close to schools and not been too different from the education system. Parents were supposed to, according to Bush and Paige, utilize data on test scores to understand the child’s performance and know what can be done to improve the score.
Bush and Paige proposed providing information to parents to know the performance but did not seem to specify the type of participation. However, it can be understood that Paige propagated the idea of supporting children to learn and ensuring that schools used the right methods that worked. This does not include the participation of parents as a group to ensure the quality of the education of their parents but instead encourages every parent to take responsibility individually on participation by basing on the results from their children. NCLB, on its part, encourages the involvement of parents through dialogue with educators and districts to aid the making of important decisions and how the performance for children would be improved. Parents were empowered in that the Act required them to participate in the signing of written agreements with educators on how to improve the academic achievement of students.
The article “Forces of Accountability? The Power of Poor Parents” in NCLB changes our focus and understanding on what participation parents could have by effecting into our mind that parents can influence educators as a group to not only blame individual educators but rethink the education system, formulate the solutions and come up with proper answers. In addition, the power of the group can be used to influence the motivation and expectations of educators on parents.