EDUCATION
REPORT - Parent-Teacher Associations
By Jerilyn Watson
This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English
Education Report.
Six-million people in the United States belong to
parent-teacher associations, or PTA's. PTA's work to help schools and
students in their communities.
Members give their time to serve on committees. They
plan school projects and special activities, such as sales and other
events to assist schools. Members also serve as activists for children's
issues before government agencies and other organizations.
There are national, state and local PTA organizations.
PTA groups exist in the fifty American states and the District of Columbia.
The PTA also operates in the United States Virgin Islands and in Department
of Defense schools in the Pacific and Europe. These are schools for
children of American military families.
Three women are responsible for establishing the Parent-Teacher
Association. Two of them, Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson
Hearst, established the Congress of Mothers in 1897. Both women lived
in Washington, D.C.
Alice Birney proposed the plan for the group in 1895.
Two years later, she met Phoebe Hearst who provided the money to start
the organization. Later, fathers, educators and other interested citizens
joined the group. It then changed its name to the National Congress
of Parent-Teacher Associations.
Selena Sloan Butler is considered the third founder
of the PTA. She established and served as the first president of the
National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers. In nineteen-seventy,
the congress united with the National PTA.
The National PTA provides members with, among other
things, information online about educational issues. It publishes a
free newsletter（时事通讯）called "This
Week in Washington" on its Web site, p-t-a dot o-r-g. It tells
about developments that affect education.
There are critics of the National PTA. In a recent
book, education researcher Charlene Haar says the positions of the group
mainly serve the interests of teachers unions. PTA spokeswoman Jenni
Sopko says the group speaks for parents, students and teachers, and
is not influenced by the unions. She also notes that other countries
have used the PTA in the United States as an example to develop their
own parent-teacher associations.
This VOA Special English Education Report was written
by Jerilyn Watson. I'm Steve Ember.
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