Family Engagement in Education Act of 2011 Introduced

The Family Engagement in Education Act of 2011 was introduced in Congress this past week.

The PTA has been pushing the bill, and you can read their press release about its introduction. Here is an excerpt:

The bill would provide incentives to districts and schools to implement best practices, such as parent leadership academies, place family engagement coordinators in schools, and provide professional development for educators on how to partner with families.

When I tried to see what the bill actually said, the sponsors’ congressional offices said they were still waiting to get official copies from the Government Printing Office. I don’t quite understand why they need it before they publish it online, but our government can work in strange ways…

I also have no idea about its likelihood of passage.  Would anybody like to hazard a guess?

Podcast On Community Engagment

The curriculum support group ASCD has a new podcast titled Beyond our halls and walls: Getting to community engagement that’s publicly available.

Here’s how they describe it:

The May episode of the Whole Child Podcast is all about involving members of the community in our schools. Listen in as Brookings Institution’s Hugh Price, district superintendent Dave LaRose and professional-development director Deborah Wortham discuss the value and fundamentals of developing and sustaining community engagement programs.

“Examining California’s Parent Trigger Law”

Examining California’s Parent Trigger Law is a new segment from NPR. Here is its description:

California’s new “parent trigger” law allows parents with children at a troubled public school to “trigger” one of four school intervention models simply by signing a petition. Parents in Compton have done that already. Gloria Romero, the former California state senator who wrote the law, offers her insight. And Rogers, professor and director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access, says he thinks the challenges of funding school transformations could ultimately make the parent trigger law ineffective.

More Perspectives On Secretary Duncan’s Speech To The “Mom Congress”

Last month, I wrote a post critical of Arne Duncan’s speech on parent engagement to the Mom Congress — see Arne Duncan Speaks To Mom Congress. Angie Miller, New Hamsphire’s Teacher of the Year, had her own critique of the speech that she expressed directly to Department of Education officials at a recent meeting of all the Teachers of the Year.

Melissa Taylor attended the speech and the Mom Congress, and had a much more positive impression.  I invited her to write about it here:

When I’d listened to Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan on NPR last year, I didn’t get a good impression – not at all. Mostly because he was cutting my favorite programs like RIF and Reach Out and Read, and also because I doubted that a non-teacher could understand what issues were really at stake.

I changed my opinion last month when I heard him speak at Mom Congress.

Parenting Magazine’s Mom Congress on Education and Learning at Georgetown University invited Duncan to speak with the 51 delegates about parent engagement, among other issues, this past April of 2011. I attended representing Colorado where I live with my two kids and husband.

I found Duncan to be funny, self-reflective, and wanting the best for children.

First, Duncan shared his plan to double funding for parental engagement for Title I schools. The proposed increase comes out of Title I money and would jump from 1% to 2 %. “We have to invest more in parents . . .” he said.

Here’s the part I really liked. He revealed, “Our department has been part of the problem. We need to look at the best practices at a local level. We’re not going to know what the best programs are. This can’t come from Washington, it’s to come from the local level.”

Amen to that.

Duncan is all about “getting Washington off” your back– to give states and districts more flexibility to reward success and hold programs accountable.

Differentiation from the government, who would have thought!? I was impressed.

He added, “We want to put a lot of money in places that are doing a great job in engaging parents that improve student achievement . . . in meaningful and significant ways like higher graduation rates.” In other words, not feel-good programs that don’t have any impact on student achievement.

Duncan wants to shine a spotlight on success, programs that are raising the bar. He added, “I’m wildly optimistic because we have so many places that are beating the odds every single day.”

My fellow delegates and I listened as he gave us our marching orders – be informed. As parents, he said, we must be informed to advocate for our kids. We must be out there asking questions, understanding the budget, and helping make decisions.

“ . . . when we’re eliminating days out of the year, when states are eliminating or cutting back on early childhood, or cutting back on extra curricular, all those things hurt children, all those things hurt kids. That’s where you guys have to be out there pushing – not that any of these cuts are easy. There are smart ways to cut and dumb ways to cut . . . How can any educator look themselves in the mirror and say we should go to school four days a week? It’s a reflection of the lack of priorities, lack of values. Having you guys as advocates out there is very important. We are pushing these things but we are not going to solve the nations issues by ourselves.”

So, I asked myself, if our budget reflects our priorities, what do we value? As a country, you and I can probably answer that. But, let’s look at our schools, our districts, and our states and try to answer it at the local level. What do our states value? Our schools? What do I (you) value?

Listening to Duncan talk, I realized that I actually liked him. I liked him as a person. More than that, I liked him as a leader. But, as Secretary of Education he is not elected, nor can he make policy. So that’s where we must also be informed, get involved, and stay involved.

We must know about education initiatives and tell our Congress people what we want them to support.

I know I’m not as well-informed as I should be on legislation – not unless I get an email from one of the non-profits I support. Duncan made me want to be better informed, to stay current on legislation, and to keep writing my emails to my Senators and Representatives. More than that, want to be much more knowledgeable about the budget of my school and district. There’s a lot to learn but as a mom, that’s part of the job I took on when I had kids.

You can read more about what Duncan said on other issues like ECE and STEM on my blog, Imagination Soup. Also, you can hear his entire speech on YouTube.

Bio: Melissa Taylor writes about education-related topics at her award-winning playful learning blog, Imagination Soup, and for publications such as Scholastic Parent and Child, Babble.com, Colorado Parent Magazine and others. She’s the Book Editor-at-Large for Colorado Parent Magazine, writing their book review blog, Bookmarkable and is a certified teacher with a M.A. in Education.

“What Parent Engagement Posts Did Readers Find Most “Engaging” This Past Quarter?

Post Rank uses a variety of ways to measure level of “engagement” that readers have with specific blog posts. I have a constantly updated “widget” on my blog’s sidebar that lists these posts, but I thought a quarterly post would be helpful/interesting to subscribers who don’t regularly visit the blog itself.

Here’s a listing of the “most engaged” posts from the previous quarter.

Here are their rankings for this past quarter:

  1. My Best Posts On Parent Engagement Over The Past Six Months — April, 2010
  2. If It Quacks Like A Duck — Thoughts On The “Parent Trigger”
  3. Rahm Emanuel’s “Transactional” Perspective On Parent Involvement/Engagement
  4. Why It’s So Important To Speak Positively To Parents About Their Kids
  5. Good Middle School Journal Article On Parent Involvement
  6. Again, Let’s Not Blame Parents
  7. Annenberg Starts “Center For Education Organizing”
  8. Update On Ridiculous Florida Bill To Give Parents Grades
  9. Memo To Tennessee: I Don’t Think Requiring Students To Document Their Immigration Status Is Going To Enhance Parent Engagement
  10. Newark’s Outreach Effort Appears To Have Been A Sham
  11. More On Star Wars & Parent Engagement
  12. Q & A With Florida Legislator Who Wants To Grade Parents
  13. “What ‘Star Wars’ Can Teach Educators About Parent Engagement”
  14. Now It’s New York City’s Turn To Show Us How NOT To Do Parent Engagement
  15. L.A. District Receives Parent Engagement Recommendations
  16. Mayor Bloomberg Appears Tone Deaf…
  17. “John Muir Elementary SF gets parents more involved”
  18. More On Florida Legislator’s Plan To Grade Parents
  19. “Title I and Parent Involvement: Lessons from the Past, Recommendations for the Future”
  20. “Schools can learn from program that puts parents in classrooms”
  21. PTA Calls For Changes In “Parent Trigger”
  22. Parents Upset In North Carolina