I just noticed today that the publisher has enabled the “Search Inside This Book” feature on Amazon for my book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools.
So, now, in addition to all the previews and excerpts I’ve posted from the book, you can now access at least a few pages on the web (table of contents, a few pages of the introduction and from the body of the book, and the index).
Claus von Zastrow has written a very intriguing post over at Public School Insights called Getting Students Ready by 21. It’s about an organization named Ready by 21. In many ways, it’s similar to the Harlem Children’s Zone.
I’ve posted about the Harlem Children’s Zone several times here and like its work. The work of Ready by 21 seems impressive as well as it tries to build a support network for students to deal with some of the issues outside the schoolhouse walls that affect student achievement.
I have to admit, though, I also have similar concerns about both. I wonder if both might relate to parents more as clients rather than partners. I also wonder about what kind of relationships they have with other neighborhood institutions like religious congregations and grassroots community groups — they appear to be primarily social service based.
If they don’t have that kind of grassroots base, I wonder how any kind of real neighborhood transformation will be able to take place. It also puts both organizations in a politically weakened situation where they are at the mercy of wealthy donors without a power base to push for additional resources.
However, I want to emphasize that these concerns might very well have no foundation in reality, and might just be due to my lack of knowledge…
I’ve written several posts about some interesting sounding efforts by the Detroit schools to connect with parent. Unfortunately, all I know about what’s going on is what I read in the papers. I’d love to hear from someone on the ground there.
The head of the Detroit schools, Robert Bobb, and the leader of the parent group I’ve posted about, Sharlonda Buckman, have recently co-written a guest newspaper column titled Why Parents Matter.
Much of the column sounds good. However, I am troubled by the fact they lay-out goals that are wildly unrealistic. Here’s an excerpt:
By 2015, the district will increase from 31 percent of schools meeting Adequate Yearly Progress to 100 percent; the district will move from 58 percent of students graduating to 98 percent graduating; and the percentage of students being accepted to postsecondary institutions will jump from 35 percent to 100 percent.
I’m all for setting up ambitious goals. I love the story (that I’m probably butchering) that John F. Kennedy supposedly told about goal-setting…
A group of children were walking and met an an obstacle of very high bushes. Most were saying that there was no way they could go through it — they’d have to find another way. One of them threw his cap over to the other side. He said, “Now I have to find a way.”
Yes, it’s a great story. But the kid had a far more likely chance of getting to the other side than any district has of meeting those kinds of goals in five years.
It raises some questions in my mind about the judgment of school leaders there. But good luck to them.