The Bibb County school district in Georgia had 500 people just attend a Winter Parent Engagement Conference, and you can view a local television report on it. It sounds impressive. They apparently put it on as part of their involvement in a parent involvement campaign called “Be There,” which I have written about critically in [...]
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Teaching Tolerance is a well-known website and organization that provides excellent resources to teachers for promoting justice and equality in schools. They also have a nice Family Engagement page that has a number of good resources that are worth a visit.
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Groups that want to run up to thirty schools in Los Angeles have begun making their presentations to the Los Angeles School Board. The Mayor’s organization, Partnership For Los Angeles Schools, now runs twelve schools and is competing for some of the schools that are “up for bid.” According to the Los Angeles Times, they [...]
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I posted yesterday about the South Carolina Lt. Governor’s idea to have benefits such as food aid yanked from families if they didn’t attend PTA meetings. Mr. Layman in South Carolina sent me a link to a column their local paper published that I thought was incredibly thoughtful and insightful. It was written by a [...]
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i’ve written several times about the Family Literacy Project we have at Luther Burbank High School where we provide computers and home Internet access to immigrant families. They, in turn, use them to develop English skills. Student assessment results have been so impressive that the project was the Grand Prize Winner of the International Reading [...]
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A book has just come out highlighting what the author researchers say are the five “essential supports” to school success. You can read details about it at in a post on my other blog — “Five Essential Supports For School Success.” I wanted to share here, though, what they say about parent-community ties, which is [...]
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Instead of looking for positive ways to encourage parents connecting with schools, South Carolina Lieutenant Governor (and gubernatorial candidate) Andre Bauer, thinks that poor families should have their government benefits cut-off if they don’t go to to PTA meetings. Why, you might ask? Lt. Gov. Bauer explains: “My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, [...]
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The excellent blog Public School Insights has a nice summary of everything that the Prince George’s County’s school district (Maryland) is doing to connect with parents. Check-out Getting Buy-In from Everyone in the System.
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Monday, February 8, is National African American Parent Involvement Day. I had never heard of it before, but that’s probably more a commentary on my ignorance than on anything else. You can read more background on the day here.
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According to the United States Department Of Agriculture, only 48% of Californians who are eligible for food stamps actually got them last year. The California Budget Project recently released a report called FOOD WITHIN REACH: Strategies For Increasing Participation In The Food Stamp Program In California. The report’s recommendations don’t include schools working more closely [...]
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A school in Norfolk, Virginia, after hearing from parents saying they wanted to study for their GED, began a GED program. You can read about it in this newspaper article titled Norfolk school caters to parents who want GEDs. If schools use their ears and listen more than using their mouths for talking, they might [...]
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Parents in New York City have developed a very lively blog titled NYC Public School Parents: Independent voices of New York City public school parents. It doesn’t shy away from making what seems to me to often be valid complaints about New York schools. They certainly have a challenge in getting their voices heard. I’ve [...]
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The Baltimore School District recently put on hold a parent involvement effort that would have required students to assess how each students is performing in 100 (yes, 100 different ways). According to the Baltimore Sun, “o help teachers communicate better with parents about how their kids are doing in the classroom.” That same Sun editorial [...]
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The National Coalition For Parent Involvement In Education, which does good work, recently put out a newsletter reporting on a recent meeting Deputy Assistant Secretary Massie Ritsch had with the group. According to the newsletter, Mr. Ritsch highlighted five parent involvement efforts — three related to charter-school operator Green Dot; Mastery Charter Schools in Pennsylvania, [...]
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Race to the Top, but don’t forget the parent part of the equation is the title of an Op Ed piece that just appeared in the Seattle Times. It’s a decent read, and makes a couple of good points.
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Last week, the California state legislature passed, and the Governor signed, legislation that included the so-called “parent trigger” law. This, as the LA Times writes: gives parents the legal right to launch major reforms at a low-performing school by collecting signatures representing 50% of the school’s current or potential future students. The Legislature capped the [...]
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This month’s issue of “The California Educator,” published by the California Teachers Association, has an article about The Algebra Project and how it’s being used to engage parents in Sacramento. The Algebra Project was begun nationally by civil rights pioneer Robert Moses. The article highlights how it was begun in partnership with a local community [...]
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David Kapuler, writer of the popular ed tech blog Technology Tidbits, just published a very positive review of my book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools. Glad you liked it, David!
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I’ve posted before about some parent engagement efforts in the United Kingdom (see Connecting Parents And Schools In The UK Using Technology). I recently discovered that BECTA, the government agency in the United Kingdom whose job it is to help schools use educational technology effectively, also hosts a discussion forum where educators throughout the UK [...]
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“One Dream, Two Realities: Perspectives of Parents on America’s High Schools” is a report that was prepared for the Gates Foundation last year. There’s nothing particularly new in it, but it does have a good summary of research related to parents and schools and encourages schools to engage parents more in discussing school reform issues.
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