Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post weighed in today on the crazy proposal in Florida to have teachers grade parents of their students. Here’s a great excerpt from her piece, titled Legislation: Teachers should grade parents: Requiring teachers to grade parents is a nutty idea. Some parents work two or three jobs and can’t be [...]
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As most readers know, Rahm Emanuel is favored to become the next Mayor of Chicago, where there is mayoral control of public schools. In his response to the question “Please explain how you would encourage more parental involvement in the public schools. Do you support tying parental involvement to school funding or what schools should [...]
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The Los Angeles Times just published a surprising good editorial critical of the parent trigger law. Here’s one line I especially like: Parent trigger must not become a means for private charter groups to get free school buildings through secret proceedings.
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Latino parents’ efforts to cultivate empowerment and inclusion are paying off on multiple levels in Forest Grove schools is a nice article in The Oregonian newspaper. It describes one school where parents are taking leadership, and it appears to be encouraged by the school administration. Definitely worth a read.
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Maybe This Is Why Attacking Teachers Is So Popular…And Why It’s So Important To Speak Positively About Our Students is the title of a post I’ve recently written at my other blog. It talks about a new study that I think points out why we need to speak positively to parents about their kids.
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Parents give Wake school board an earful is the headline of an article in the News Observer. They’re upset (rightfully, I believe) by the District’s decision to end a longstanding integration policy. I’m sure the Board there would say they want parents involved in the schools, but I suspect this is not what they would [...]
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Parents reject Compton’s demand is the title of a post at the Thoughts On Education blog. It gives an update on the parent trigger fiasco in southern California. What a mess….
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It sounds like they’re trying to do a decent job setting-up parent academies in Toronto, unlike in many other places (see Some Of These “Parent Academies” Just Don’t Get It….). Here’s a quote from the Toronto article: “For parent academies to be successful they really have to function based on parent voice, so parents tell [...]
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Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post makes an important point in her analysis of President Obama’s State of the Union address. Here’s an excerpt from her column, titled Obama’s faulty education logic: What he said and failed to say: Obama rightly said that a child’s education starts at home: “It’s family that first instills the [...]
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Lee Kolbert has written a satirical post on the grading parents proposal I’ve been writing about over the last few days. Check out My Thoughts and Predictions on Grading Parents.
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A few days ago, I posted about a Florida legislator’s proposal to grade parents (see Bill Proposed To Grade Parents — What’s In Florida’s Drinking Water?). A Florida newspaper just published an editorial against the bill, which also provides more details on the proposal — Stargel Bill to Grade Parents: State Intrusion in Parenting.
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I initially heard about this on Richard Byrne’s blog, but was so incredulous I had to do a little more investigating. It’s true — Texas school districts are having misdemeanor tickets with fines up to $500 being issued to students as young as…six years old. Offenses including leaving class early and using profanity. See a [...]
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I use PostRank to determine the most popular posts from my blog, Engaging Parents In School, and post a list every quarter. This quarter, PostRank is acting a little strange, so I’m just going to use the number of “hits” on posts to determine this quarter’s ranking. You might also be interested in these collections: [...]
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Yesterday, I posted about a Florida legislator’s proposal to have teachers grade parents. Late last year, I wrote about a Michigan prosecutors plan to jail parents who didn’t attend parent-teacher conferences. Now, an Indiana legislator wants parents to perform community service if their child misbehaves in school, apparently targeting instances of bullying. I’ll admit that [...]
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A legislator in Florida is proposing a bill that would have teachers grade their student’s parents on their school participation. Now, THAT would really do wonders for teacher-parent relationships… Linda Perlstein has a good piece exploring the consequences of such a bill. If you combine this crazy scheme with all the other unhelpful ideas Governor [...]
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A message of Hope – Dr. Debbie Pushor on Parents as Partners is the title of a post at Parents As Partners. It’s a summary of an online talk and chat with Dr. Debbie Pushor, who has written on parent engagement. You can find a link to the Elluminate recording of her talk there, too.
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State faces a moving target in implementing ‘parent trigger’ law is the title of an article in today’s Los Angeles Times. It offers good information and analysis.
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A St. Louis school is paying families if they attend parent-teacher conferences. That’s a bad idea. You can read why it’s a bad idea at my post last September at The Washington Post, Why paying parents to attend school events is wrong.
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Erik Wells Proposes West Virginia Bill That Would Revoke Parents’ Licenses For Children’s Truancy is the headline in the Huffington Post about another proposed punitive “parent engagement” strategy. Sigh… If only public officials put as much time and energy into creative and positive ways to engage parents in public education….
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Former lawmaker won’t support changing ‘parent trigger’ law is an article from California Watch that provides interesting information, and it appears that trigger proponents don’t really have a grasp on how different an effort to unionize workers is from talking to parents, teachers, and districts about their schools. You can read my perspective on that [...]
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