I’ve written several posts about the unhelpful idea being pushed in Florida to have teachers grade parents.

Happily, it doesn’t look like its making any kind of substantial progress. Here’s a news report giving an update and a Florida newspaper’s editorial against it.

Our school has an International Baccalaureate program, and I teach a Theory Of Knowledge class as part of it.

The IB magazine, IB World, had a “Parents Issue” late last year. There’s some stuff that might be useful.

“Teachers at an East Harlem elementary school are bizarrely forbidden from communicating with parents without first getting a supervisor’s permission and from calling parents outside of normal school hours, the teachers handbook says.”

Read more about the bizarre rules discouraging parent engagement in this article at The New York Post.

I was a community organizer for nineteen years prior to becoming a teacher, and one of the lessons we learned from the work of Saul Alinsky (the father of modern-day community organizing) was that “the price of criticism is a constructive alternative.” I think I’ve provided plenty of examples of effective parent engagement/involvement — both in this blog and in my book.

I guess, though, in addition to making lists of how to do it, I will need to make a list of how NOT to do it. In the past few months, I’ve shared how badly Newark and New York City is doing on parent engagement. Now, it’s Hartford’s turn for the limelight.

NPR reports about it in a story titled In Hartford, Parents Don’t Always Pick Best Schools. School District officials just can’t believe that parents might use a different standard to judge their schools other than the arbitrary method of standardized test scores (maybe they need to read The Best Resources Showing Why We Need To Be “Data-Informed” & Not “Data-Driven”).

Because parents don’t “understand” that test scores are the only true basis on which they should judge a school, the district believe that they need to initiate a campaign “to get more information out to parents because, the theory goes, good information makes for better school choices.” They’ve even hired an advertising consultant to help them do it.

After all, what do parents like Myesha Simpson know:

“I love the school because I love the teachers, I love the way they teach, I love they way they solve their problems, I love the way they handle things,” Simpson says…She says that more information from the district might change the choices some parents make, but it won’t change hers.

No, instead of trying to learn from parents, hubris and a condescending attitude is the way to really connect with families….

Earlier this month, I wrote about how Newark Continues To Show The World How NOT To Do Parent Involvement/Engagement.

It now looks like the school district in my native town, New York City, is giving Newark a run for its money.

The New York Times reports this about the Office of Family Engagement:

In January, at a meeting of parent coordinators from a number of schools, employees of the office asked them to forge relationships with parents who they thought might speak out in support of the department’s policies, including its controversial push to close failing schools. The employees at one point used a nickname to describe the type of parents they were looking for: “Happy Harrys,” and not “Angry Sallys,” as two coordinators recalled it.

And on Tuesday, an employee at the office circulated a petition among nearly 400 coordinators citywide, asking them to round up parents’ signatures. The petition was in support of one of the mayor’s most concerted political efforts of the year: to persuade the Legislature to end the law protecting the most senior teachers in the event of layoffs.

You can read more about this at Gotham Schools.

Of course, why should District staff spend their time asking parents for ideas, connecting them with other parents, and helping teachers and families work together to help students? Instead, let’s develop our political agenda, organize parent against parent and parent against teacher. That is what parent engagement is all about, isn’t it?

The Detroit Public Schools has begun giving $25 gift cards if parents come to their parent centers.

What in the world are they thinking?

I hope someone there reads my Washington Post piece, Why paying parents to attend school events is wrong.

An Indianapolis newspapers has just run an article about an understandably frustrated teacher who want the state to mandate parent involvement in schools using the “stick” approach (I’ve previously posted about the dangers of that approach in Teachers Have Got To Stop Blaming Parents).

Thankfully, the reporter also contacted renowned parent involvement researcher Anne Henderson. Here is that piece of the article:

Anne T. Henderson, a leading researcher on parental involvement in schools who is a senior consultant with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, said good outreach to parents — along with training that teachers like — are two of the most important factors in gains in student achievement.

But Henderson said parent involvement couldn’t effectively be mandated.

“I think we need to take a proactive, preventive approach, but not a punitive approach,” Henderson said. “I don’t think that would work, and I don’t think there’s any research that shows it would work.”

But, she said, there are things schools can do that don’t involve a big stick.

Teachers must reach out to parents and meet them face-to-face, either by meeting them in the afternoon car pickup line or going to their homes. They must stay in touch with parents when things are going well, not just when there is a problem. And they must send home learning materials that parents can work on with children.

“What’s important,” she said, “is that the culture of the school is family-friendly.”

“John Muir Elementary SF gets parents more involved” is an article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle about one school’s efforts to connect with parents.

It’s worth a read.