Parent Teacher Association (PTA) Essay ⋆ Education Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The Parent Teacher Association (PTA), or the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, is a federated voluntary membership association with local, state, and national levels of organization. At the core of its mission is parental support of and involvement in public education and issues, activities, and legislation concerning the health and well-being of children and young adults. The PTA is perhaps best known for its local meetings that bring parents and teachers together to address school issues, raise money, and foster collaboration between home and school. The asssociation’s headquarters are in Chicago, and its current membership stands at approximately 7 million. This entry looks at the PTA’s history, with special attention to issues of race and equity.

Early Years

Founded in 1897 by a group of elite White women in Washington, D.C., the PTA was originally called the National Congress of Mothers. A product of the Progressive era, the PTA grew out of the fervor of the women’s club movement of the late nineteenth century, which was primarily responsible for its swift ascendancy as a national organization. Founders Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst directed the early PTA into disseminating information on parent education and promoting child welfare initiatives such as sanitation laws, child labor laws, and mothers’ pensions.

The organization turned to public education in the early twentieth century by promoting kindergartens and providing hot lunches in schools beginning in 1912. By 1924, membership had grown to 700,000 from the original 2,000 in 1897. The PTA network grew rapidly in the early years of the twentieth century as local units were organized around the country and as women’s and mothers’ clubs joined the association. The organization over these years made a commitment to public education as it focused on building and improving schools, implemented health initiatives, and promoted the functional school curriculum.

In 1929, the PTA revised its program to support the Committee on the Reorganization of Secondary Education’s seven Cardinal Principles of Education: health, command of fundamental processes, vocation, worthy use of leisure time, worthy home membership, citizenship, and ethical character.

The leaders of the PTA maintained they would not draw the color line, though membership of African Americans was negligible during the organization’s first three decades. Despite the policy on nondiscrimination, Black teachers and clubwomen did not join the PTA, but instead began a parallel movement to organize parent-teacher and school improvement associations. Through the 1910s, Black units continued to be organized locally, but without any national oversight until 1926, when club leader and community activist Selena Sloan Butler organized the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, the segregated counterpart to the PTA.

A Black PTA

At the organizational meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, four states joined the “Colored Congress”: Georgia, Delaware, Alabama, and Florida. With the guidance of a representative of the White PTA, the Black PTA was thus organized as an entirely separate federated organization that would serve only those states with de jure segregation. By 1930, however, membership in the Colored Congress was extended to those states also practicing de facto desegregation. At this time, membership in the White PTA stood at 1.5 million members, while the Black PTA had about 14,000 members. Overall, the Black PTA maintained a larger proportion of men and professional educators in its membership than the PTA.

Through the middle decades of the twentieth century, the Black and White PTAs grew in membership and public visibility. The Black PTA had fully developed its federated structure and had incorporated district councils to organize local units under the state umbrellas by the 1950s. The work carried out by White and Black PTAs was wide-ranging, but connected to children and youth education and advocacy. While continuing its work on the local levels in local school districts, the state and national levels of the organization held leadership institutes for PTA workers, focused on health and safety initiatives, and promoted drug and alcohol danger awareness.

The Black PTA units supplemented this work by supporting Black history in the schools and working to secure voting privileges for adult members. Also, because of the meager funds segregated schools received, the Black PTA emphasized fundraising for local schools from the 1930s through the 1960s.

The Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954 that called for school desegregation presented a challenge to the national PTA. At this time the membership of the White association was 8.8 million and the Black association was 160,000. Immediately following the Supreme Court’s decision, the (White) national PTA put forth a pronouncement of its own supporting integration. This provoked a strong reaction in the South, as White and Black state and local units debated and discussed the challenges in desegregating schools and hence the PTA.

White and Black PTA units in border states to the South, such as Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland, desegregated almost immediately after Brown. In the Deep South, desegregation proceeded at a much slower pace. In the mid-1960s, the White PTA put pressure on those remaining states to integrate. Nonetheless, whether desegregation—or “unification,” as it was called by the organization—proceeded smoothly or not, the Black PTA faced significant losses as members and officers failed to find a place for themselves in the organization. Therefore, for the first time in the 1960s, membership in the overall PTA began to decline; it dropped from its high of 12.1 million in 1963 to 9.6 million in 1970, the year the two organizations officially became one.

Today’s Organization

With changes in public schooling and in the workforce with the women’s movement, the national PTA changed as an organization in the 1970s. Membership continued to decline, dropping to 5 million in the 1980s, largely due to the growth of parent-teacher organizations and homeschool associations that did not pay dues to the PTA. In recent years, the PTA has regained some of its membership, as local groups continue to conduct projects and fundraisers to support school programs and the national PTA provides leadership and materials to locals and is involved in lobbying for legislation to improve education and child welfare.

Bibliography:

National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers. (1971). Coral anniversary history. Dover, DE: Author.
National Congress of Parents and Teachers. (1932). Through the years: From the scrapbook of Mrs. Mears. Washington, DC: Author.
National Congress of Parents and Teachers. (1999). The PTA story. Chicago: Author.
Overstreet, H., & Overstreet, B. (1949). Where children come first. Chicago: National Congress of Parents and Teachers.
Schlossman, S. L. (1976). Before home start: Notes toward a history of parent education in America, 1897–1929. Harvard Educational Review, 4, 436–467.
Woyshner, C. (2003). Gender, race, and the early PTA: Civic engagement and public education, 1897–1924. Teachers College Record, 105, 520–544.

This example Parent Teacher Association (PTA) Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.