The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has finished their ambitious series of articles on parent/school connections.

I thought it was pretty good, though I was surprised its article on home visits didn’t highlight the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project more.

The paper’s editorial today on the topic, though, left a lot to be desired. In discussing what school’s should do, it appeared to put the entire responsibility on teachers. Granted, teachers can play a key role in developing parent engagement. But, come on, districts and schools can also provide resources to hire parent engagement staff (one reason why our school has one of the most successful “parent universities” around is because of Elisa Gonzalez, our parent engagement staffperson) and can free up administrator time to make it more of a priority.  Schools and districts  need to also accept that more parent engagement will result in sustainable long-term gain in student achievement, but perhaps not as big of a bump in test scores than a useless several week focus on test prep in the classroom — and that this is okay.