The national teacher organization “Teachers Count” has just published an interview with me that focuses on parent engagement issues. Readers might find it useful/interesting.
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A local paper in the Tahoe (Nevada/California) area recently published an article titled Connecting Latino parents with Lake Tahoe school communities. It’s another example of how a small effort by a school can pay dividends. Thanks to Colorin Colorado for the tip.
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At school focus groups, parents voice concerns, call for more input is the title of an article in today’s Boston Globe. It describes a series of fourteen parent focus groups organized by the school district to “solicit input about school closings, program changes, and other plans for the district.” The title of this post comes [...]
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A New Era of Family Engagement is the title of an article in The Education Innovator, a publication of the U.S. Department of Education. It provides some good information and links. I’m a bit skeptical, however, about the “new era” headline. It seems a bit ironic that the article highlights the work of some Parent [...]
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The deadline is approaching — this coming Monday — for applications to become one of the Obama Administration’s “Promise Neighborhoods” to “replicate” the Harlem Children’s Zone. National Public Radio has just finished a two-part series on the prospects for these efforts: Up For Grabs: $10M For Groups Reaching Kids Lessons From Harlem Take Root In [...]
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Regular readers are probably familiar with the internationally-recognized Family Literacy Project we have at our school that provides computers and home internet access to immigrant families. They, in turn, use the technology for English language development activities. We have also worked with the Sacramento Mutual Housing Association (SMHA) to expand the project to their affordable [...]
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I’ve just heard about the Connecticut Parent Trust Fund. This is how it describes itself: The Parent Trust Fund helps communities improve the health, safety, and learning of their children by providing the funding needed to train parents in civic leadership. This is the first initiative of its kind in the nation. The Fund was [...]
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Kenneth J. Bernstein has just written a great column in Education Week titled “Teaching Secrets: Phoning Home.” At the beginning of each year, he calls the parents of all of his students.
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The Public School Insights blog has an interview with the leaders of a project in Boston called City Connects. It’s designed to help connect students to both school-based and community resources, and has resulted in higher student achievement. Here’s an excerpt from the interview — both the question and its answer: Public School Insights: In [...]
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“Should Parents Be Punished For Truancy?” is an interesting, though, I don’t think, a particularly well-written, article in the Huffington Post. Here are a some excerpts that raise important questions (though it’s focused on New York City, I think these may be issues faced in many districts): Kelley’s story is just one of many that [...]
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Here’s another bad idea to promote parent engagement in schools — a Michigan prosecutor wants to make it illegal for a parent to miss a scheduled parent-teacher conference. As I wrote in my post about an equally ill-conceived plan to make parent involvement mandatory in a San Jose school District (see “School to Parents: Volunteer [...]
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As I wrote over the weekend, Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke at the National PTA Convention in Memphis. The Department of Education has just made the transcript of his speech available. It has a great title: “Beyond Bubble Tests and Bake Sales: Secretary Arne Duncan’s Remarks at the 114th Annual National PTA Convention.” Unfortunately, it [...]
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The National PTA Convention is happening in Memphis this weekend. You might want to read the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s newspaper report on Education Secretary Duncan’s speech to the convention. (I’m hoping to locate a transcript) The PTA’s website has a nice feature letting you download all the Convention Workshop Materials.
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Readers of this blog and my book know how highly I think of the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project. With the support of the PTHVP, staff at our school have made about 400 home visits to students each year for the past few years. This summer, though, under the leadership of Elisa Gonzalez, our extraordinary [...]
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Creating a Bridge Between Home and School is the title of an article on the National Education Association website about two recent state conferences on parent engagement/involvement. It’s the latest in a series of similar conferences, with one happening in Tennessee earlier in the year (see Guest Post: Report From Parent Engagement Conference).
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The Department of Education’s blog has just published a report titled “Parents Gather in Washington, D.C., to Discuss Rights and Responsibilities.” Here’s an excerpt: More than 250 parents, grandparents, caregivers and community members from 17 states gathered in the Department of Education’s auditorium on May 26 for a dialogue with a panel of senior ED [...]
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Last month, National Public Radio had an interview with Education Secretary Duncan on parent involvement. You can read or listen to it here. I don’t think you’ll find anything particularly new, but he did say a number of good things. I also found it interesting he said “It’s been a great, great year.” That would [...]
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I’ve just created a “widget” from PostRank, which rates the popularity (they call it “engagement”) for each of my posts. I’ll have it on the left sidebar of the blog. It might be worth looking at now-and-then. I tried including it in this post, too, though for some reason it didn’t work here. But, as [...]
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The United States Department of Health and Human Services is accepting proposals to form a National Center on Parent, Family and Community Engagement. Three million dollars is allocated for the project. Here is how it is described: The Center will showcase key research-based strategies related to parent, family and community engagement practices that are positively [...]
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Partnering with the Community to Ensure Student Health: Montrose County School District RE-1J’s School-Based Health Clinics is a post from Public School Insights that describes in detail the success of school-based health clinics in Colorado. It’s really quite impressive. The post also describes the rationale behind the clinics and their connection to increased academic achievement. [...]
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