Posted on October 30, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
Churches, school system look to build partnership is a recent newspaper headline in Maryland. It describes a meeting held between members of a community organizing group, Partnership for Renewal in Southern and Central Maryland. and a Superintendent of Schools. This is just another example of the kind of parent engagement we talk about in our [...]
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Posted on October 29, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
I’ve posted in the past about how some schools use student-led parent/teacher conferences as a way to connect better with parents. This coming Monday, Parents As Partners will be hosting a webcast to help people learn more about this practice. It’s worth a listen…..
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Posted on October 29, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
A group of parents have begun what they are calling a “Parents Union” to push for improvement in Chicago’s public schools. You can read about it at Parents hope to form a more perfect union in dealing with CPS. It’s particularly impressive to me because its focus is to improve public schools, and is not [...]
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Posted on October 29, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Education Secretary Duncan spoke at a conference yesterday designed to support the creation of more “community schools” in the United States. Typically, community schools are ones that host multiple social services, as well as regular school classes. A report on community schools was released at the conference. The [...]
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Posted on October 29, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
Over the past two days, there has been a lot of media coverage about a recent decision by the Los Angeles School District to “to allow parents to initiate school reforms” (as the LA Times put it). Here are links to two articles about it: L.A. Unified to allow parents to initiate school reforms L.A. [...]
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Posted on October 29, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
Community organizing is one of the four parent engagement strategies we outline in our book. A recent study by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform highlights its benefits for students, families,and schools. You can read more about the study here. You can also view a presentation about it here.
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Posted on October 24, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
One of the chapters in our book highlights the work of the Industrial Areas Foundation in developing Alliance Schools in Texas. The IAF, as far as I can tell, were the first to begin talking about the difference between parent involvement and engagement almost twenty years ago. If you’re interested in learning more about them, [...]
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Posted on October 23, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
“Parent Academies” appear to be “in” this week… TIME Magazine has just published an article titled Parent Academies: Helping Mom and Dad Face School Too. This follows on the heels of several other recent media articles on this topic (you can see the last few posts on this blog). Unfortunately, at least as far as [...]
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Posted on October 22, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
The Toronto Globe and Mail ran an article today headlined ‘Parent academy’ offers dividends to children. It focuses on a new effort in Toronto that has this as its goal: “In effect, schools would become de facto community centres for whole families, offering programs to help parents with their most pressing needs – from finding [...]
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Posted on October 22, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
Here’s a great post from Patrick Larkin, a high school principal in Massachusetts, with an answer to that question. It’s a good “read.”
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Posted on October 22, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
Teachers’ house calls make pupils, parents feel at home is the headline on an article today in the Globe. It highlights some visiting programs in Springfield, Massachusetts and in Boston. The one in Springfield, initiated by the community organizing group Pioneer Valley Project, is also highlighted in our book.
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Posted on October 20, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
Building Parent Engagement In Schools, my first book (written with Lorie Hammond), was published earlier this month. You can learn how readers of this blog can get a discount by reading this. You can read two “previews” of the book: One is an article I wrote for Public School Insights in April titled Parent Involvement [...]
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Posted on October 20, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
Renee Moore has an excellent article in Teacher Magazine titled Reaping What We’ve Sown: How Schools Fail Low-Income Parents (free registration is required to access the whole piece, but it’s a quick and easy process). As John Norton accurately describes it, the article: “…challenges those who question whether low-income parents as a group care about [...]
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Posted on October 17, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
Students take charge: Carpenters Middle School expands innovative program is a nice article about one school in Tennessee is using student-led parent/teacher conferences — and other strategies — to connect with parents.
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Posted on October 14, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
The California Department of Education has an Online Resource Kit for Developing Partnerships to Close the Achievement Gap. It includes a short piece on the role of families. I’m not sure how helpful the resource is (though I did learn about the California Parent Center through it), but it never hurts to be able to [...]
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Posted on October 14, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
The Industrial Areas Foundation began making the distinction between parent “involvement” and parent “engagement” during its community organizing efforts in schools during the 1990′s, and Professor Dennis Shirley wrote about it in his 1997 book Community Organizing For Urban School Reform. Even though a chapter in our book focuses on the IAF’s work (I was [...]
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Posted on October 13, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
In Philadelphia, Reaching Kids by Teaching Parents is the title of an article in this week’s Education Week. It highlights efforts Philadelphia schools are making to connect with parents. It particularly talks about their “Parent University.” It’s unclear, though, how much parents participating in developing its content. One of the main things, I think, that [...]
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Posted on October 13, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
(Cross-posted at Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites Of The Day) I recognize that going to college is not necessarily the best choice for everybody. However, I also think it’s important for students — both our English Language Learners and those in the “mainstream” to be knowledgeable about college options so they can make a decision with all [...]
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Posted on October 11, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
Bill Ferriter, teacher, blogger and columnist for Education Leadership — among many other things — has just written a review of my new book (written with Lorie Hammond). Check-out what Bill thinks of “Building Parent Engagement In Schools.”
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Posted on October 10, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo
According to a newspaper interview published yesterday, New York City Mayor Bloomberg said: parents need only be involved in the micro issues of their child’s education, like the child’s attendance, behavior and grades. It does not make sense for parents to be involved in larger issues If that is an accurate representation of what he [...]
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