BETTER U.S. EDUCATION BY LENDING ASSISTANCE

The new year brings with it numerous resolutions, pledges made in earnest but most often dispatched with haste. Among the negligible promises for losing unwanted weight or increasing personal discipline may be one of far greater significance: an enlarged role in your child's education. This one should not be cast aside so casually. Parental participation is essential to the betterment of education.

School districts across the state will be asked to bear a dual burden in 1992: increase educational outcomes with ~inert educational funding. The challenge is formidable. One positive step is the infusion of parental participation in the school system. This might be a throwback to the ongoing enterprises of parent-teacher organizations, but it goes beyond that. Parents and other concerned citizens are needed at many levels to bolster the efforts of public school systems. An enhanced interest is needed by a public calling for better schools.

Fiscal difficulties can't be held solely accountable for the problems. The Wall Street Journal reports that this type of school support by parents has declined naturally as society has changed. Nationally, 25 percent of all households with children have only one parent present; 10 years ago, this was 20 percent.

As statistics like these have taken shape, parental involvement in schools has receded. A U.S. Department of Education survey showed that only 43 percent of parents of eighth graders helped their children with homework more than twice a month. Seventy-one percent of these respondents hadn't seen their children's classroom. Modern, hectic lifestyles might make for easy excuses, but they don't bolster education.

In some quarters, this reality is being recognized. Missouri is one of a number of states setting aside educational funding to endow teaching skills for parents of young children. Such early education efforts show promising results. In Cape Girardeau, where the public school system is working to develop a long-range strategy for the district, parents and other citizens are being called on to provide input for shaping educational ~efforts. For the price of furnishing information, citizens can step forward to help establish priorities and direction for public education locally.

(Neyland Clark, public school superintendent, will be the speaker tomorrow at the Chamber of Commerce First Friday Coffee, which begins at 7:30 a.m. at the Drury Lodge. If business leaders and others here use educational strength as part of their economic development pitch, this should be an excellent chance to learn first-hand about the school system.)

If you're dissatisfied with education in this country and wondering why nothing is done to better it, take the matter into your own hands. Your input is sought: offer it. If nothing else, sit down with your young child tonight and read to them. Do the same in the coming nights. Don't under~estimate your skills as a teacher.

If no other goal for 1992 is achieved, ensure that you've done all you can to help your children reach their educational potential. The time spent will be paid back to you, your community and your nation.