Five years ago, when Esti Iturralde’s daughter was in the first grade, the little girl struggled with learning to read. The teacher told her mother not to worry, Winnie just wasn’t ready yet, but Iturralde knew in her heart something was wrong.
She blamed herself, until the pandemic hit, the schools shuttered, and remote learning gave her a chance to peek inside the classroom. What she saw opened her eyes and shocked her into action.
“It really wasn’t until the school closures that I began to understand what she was missing,” said the Piedmont mom of two. “I got to see up close what was wrong with the lessons.”
Five years after Covid shuttered schools, the parent empowerment it sparked is going strong. While the pandemic inexorably disrupted everyone’s lives, parents faced a double whammy. Amid heated debates over masks, vaccines and school shutdowns, many parents found themselves on the front lines of hot-button issues on an almost daily basis. In that time of crisis, some families lost trust in the ability of the schools to meet the needs of their students.
Like Iturralde, some came to the conclusion that they had to fend for themselves. That’s one reason the pandemic became a watershed moment for a generation of parents. It shifted the dynamics between communities and schools, and, for some families, shook their faith in the school system in a lasting way.
“When schools remained closed for far longer than any other institution or business,” said Scott Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit that runs many Bay Area child care centers, “this broke the social compact that schools are compulsory for children because it is a critical function of civil society. It left parents in the lurch.”
That rude awakening spurred some parents to question all aspects of their child’s education, from the length of school closures to how reading is taught and how parental notification policies should work. Parents from all over the ideological spectrum, from people of color fighting for equity to conservative parents upholding traditional values, began to push for change. That surge of parental empowerment may be one of the lasting impacts of the pandemic.
“Parent empowerment and engagement certainly reached a peak during Covid school closures,” said Megan Bacigalupi, co-founder of CA Parent Power, an advocacy group. “The academic, social and mental health harms done to kids by those lengthy closures kept many parents engaged in their districts long after they reopened. One of the silver linings is that parents got a window into the classroom.”
All sorts of school governance issues that had long been taken for granted came under intense scrutiny, sparking a shift in thinking about public education. Some families got fed up. Instead of waiting for the system to adapt to their needs, they took matters into their own hands.
The dawning realization that Winnie was being taught to read by looking primarily at pictures, instead of words, was a red flag for Iturralde, who has a doctorate in behavioral science.
She decided to teach her kiddo to read at home, to see if she would bloom with more phonics, which she did. Winnie was soon reading above grade level. That showed Iturralde that sometimes you have to take charge of your child’s learning.
“Before, I was content to just trust and trust, and now I’m less trusting,” said Iturralde, who shared some of her lessons on YouTube to help other parents. “It’s like the curtain gets pulled away, and you see, all of a sudden, there’s no wizard out there.”
To be sure, Lakisha Young had long walked the do-it-yourself path, but the Covid era gave her new fire. She believes the pandemic merely highlighted the ways public education has always failed to meet the needs of low-income children of color. Nearly 70% of Oakland students failed to meet the standard for reading on the state’s Smarter Balanced test in 2023.
“Nobody is coming to save us,” said Young, the co-founder and CEO of Oakland REACH, a parent advocacy group. “The system is broken. Black and brown kids are typically already behind their white peers before they even get to kindergarten, and then those gaps just get bigger. The reality is, we keep seeing generation after generation failing. Somebody’s got to stop the bleeding.”
Young has worked with families where illiteracy has been passed down from one generation to the next, like an heirloom. She has tried to empower parents, to put families in the driver’s seat.
“We’re freeing our families from the system,” said Young. “We’re liberating them from the system. If a parent shows up, does her part or his part, their kid’s going to get what they need.”
During lockdown, Young connected families to everything from laptops and cash assistance to a virtual academy. Now REACH is a hub for parent and caregiver tutors, which they call “liberators,” who go into classrooms, teaching reading and math in partnership with Oakland Unified.
“These babies have to learn how to read and do math,” she said. “We have to empower families to make sure their kids don’t get left behind.”
Left to their own devices at the kitchen table, many in the dyslexia community also experienced the pandemic as a lightning rod.
“People were frustrated their children were not getting the services they deserved,” said Megan Potente, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA, an advocacy group. “There was a lot of learning happening among parents, who may have left things up to school if it weren’t for the unprecedented times of the pandemic and heightened feelings of urgency associated with seeing your child struggle at home.”
Many parents first organized out of frustration with extended school closures, she said, but then parlayed that momentum to push for education reforms, such as evidenced-based reading instruction, amid the state’s deepening literacy crisis.
“California schools are failing at their core function: teaching,” said Moore. “How many decades of data — showing less than half of students achieving proficiency in language and math — are needed before big innovation occurs?”
Emboldened by having to step up in a crisis, many parents began to demand a voice. Parents Supporting Teachers (PST) in Los Angeles began as a Facebook group during the LAUSD teachers strike in 2019 but gained momentum during the pandemic as parents began asking questions about how the district uses its funding.
“It’s important that we parents have a seat at the table when it comes to our children’s education,” said Vicky Martinez, a mother of three Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD) students and member of PST. “We know our kids best. You empower yourself with knowledge and ask questions and do some research and don’t be afraid. We need to be a part of the process so we can support our kids.”
Many hope that parental empowerment will remain robust even as the Covid years recede into memory. They are optimistic that families will continue to push for more transparency about academic standards and practices in the wake of falling test scores and widening achievement gaps.
“People want a fair shake, for themselves and their children,” said Moore. “Education is seen as the main vehicle for upward economic and social mobility. Yet the reality is, California’s education system only does well for those born into privilege, and it fails most everyone else.”
Many parents will continue to play a more active role in the education of their children. Iturralde, like most parents, has “bad memories” of the pandemic years and struggling to get her daughter what she needed, but all that effort has paid off.
She used what she learned about the science of reading, from the need for phonics to the importance of background knowledge, to tutor her younger daughter, Lorea, as well. She now also coaches Winnie on math, a subject in which she is poised to skip ahead a year.
“What I try to advise parents to do is to take care of your kid and advocate for your kid, but also try to think about the community,” she said. “When I make a fuss about something, I’m doing it because I think there are other kids whose parents are not going to be able to help them. You’ve got to zoom out and think about the big picture.”
