Tutoring, parent outreach aid literacy is the title of a guest column in yesterday’s Sacramento Bee. It’s about an organization in Fresno, California called Reading and Beyond. It sounds like they may be doing some pretty good parent engagement work. I haven’t heard of them before, but I’m looking forward to learning more.
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According to a recent article in the Madison, Wisconsin newspaper titled In Madison, an effort to get minority parents involved in their kids’ schools, one school has increased parent involvement by starting separate Hmong, Latino, and African-American groups. I applaud the school for recognizing the problem, and for putting time, energy, and resources into trying [...]
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Last month, I posted about an organization called the Detroit Parent Network, and how they were likely to get a major contract from the Detroit Public Schools to coordinate parent involvement for the district. That contract has indeed come to pass, and they’re opening seven “parent centers.” From what I read, the Parent Network sounds [...]
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Debbie Pushor, a Canadian professor who has done research and writing on the difference between parent engagement and parent involvement, has some good short videos on the subject available on YouTube. They’re worth viewing.
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I began this blog seven months ago — it was timed with the publication of my book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools. I thought it might be useful to share — in order of popularity — which posts have been “clicked-on” most over the past six months. Here are My Most Popular Posts On Parent [...]
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I’ve written extensively about the Parent-Teacher Home Visit Project in our book, and actively worked with them. In fact, I’ll be helping with a training they’re doing later this month, and I’ll also be interviewing Carrie Rose, its Executive Director, next month for a piece that will appear in this blog. So I was thrilled [...]
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The local NPR affiliate in Kansas City has just run a ten minute segment (that’s available online) titled “Parental Involvement in Urban School Districts.” It’s an interview with Valerie Blackwell, an assistant teaching professor at the UMKC School of Education. I think she does a very good job at distinguishing the concept of engagement from [...]
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Lorna Constantini writes about a new “chat” that happens every Wednesday night “parents and teachers are invited to gather together on twitter and share their thoughts and ideas about parents/teachers/students/schools.” Learn more about it by reading her post and consider participating!
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I’ve written before about Community Schools, and how they can help engage families. Typically, community schools are ones that host multiple social services, as well as regular school classes. Two articles about them have recently come-out. One is titled Community Schools: Reform’s Lesser-Known Frontier and appeared in Education Week. The other is A Community School [...]
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I’ve written several times why I think the so-called “parent trigger” (which, here in California, lets fifty-one percent of parents of school-age children in a schooI’ve written several times about l’s attendance area sign a petition to trigger a school overhaul or takeover by a charter. Now, Alexander Russo reports that an effort is underway [...]
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In a “Hall of Fame” worthy example of how NOT to encourage parent involvement/engagement, the Charlotte Observer reports that a school secretary was fired for continuing to translate for parents who couldn’t speak English after a new principal banned her from doing so. The school in question is 42% Latino, and its motto is “Academy [...]
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Parent Information and Resource Centers are federally funded organizations in every state and territory in the United States. They are designed to promote parent involvement/engagement in schools. According to the PTA, the Obama administration is proposing their elimination and “consolidation” so they focus their efforts on charter schools. From what I can see, the caliber [...]
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I make a point of writing posts about how parent engagement/involvement is looked at and implemented in countries other than the United States. You can see previous posts in the “Countries Other Than the U.S.” category here. An extensive paper titled Parent Involvement in Inclusive Primary Schools in New Zealand: Implications for Improving Practice and [...]
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Last week, the South Carolina Lt. Governor made some ridiculous comments about denying low-income parents government aid if they don’t attend PTA meetings. He went on to compare poor people to “stray animals” that will breed if they are fed. Here’s a thoughtful response to those comments that appeared in a South Carolina newspaper yesterday. [...]
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