Education Fairs Reach Out to Parents in Spanish is the title of a blog post at Latin Ed Beat. It describes an organization that helps School Districts around the country organize events geared towards Spanish-speaking parents.
The post also contains several good links to other articles.
An Interview with Carol Vincent: Parental Involvement in Education recently appeared in a United Kingdom newspaper — Carol Vincent is a professor at the University of London.
It’s not interesting enough for me to add to The Best Resources On Parent Engagement In Countries Other Than The U.S., but it might be worth a quick review.
Parent trigger not on the top of parent-involvement expert’s list of best practices is the headline of a column at the Tampa Bay newspaper in Florida (where an attempt is being made to pass a trigger law).
It quotes parent involvement researcher Joyce Epstein, who says:
“That would not be first on our list of what we know should be done to engage families to support their students’ success,” said Johns Hopkins University professor Joyce Epstein, director of the National Network of Partnership Schools.
Epstein said legislation directing who can make choices is mechanical, while the “more difficult task” of creating programs that help families work with schools. Her organization’s research has found eight “essential elements” for effective leadership and programs of school, family, and community partnerships. These include: leadership, teamwork, action plans, implementation of plans, funding, collegial support, evaluation, and networking.
“We help district assist their schools in organized, equitable and goal-oriented family involvement programs, things families and schools can work on together positively,” Epstein said. “For immediate solutions, these are stronger approaches that engage families in ways to help children do better.”
Bad idea to grade parents is the headline on a Florida newspaper columnists piece published yesterday.
It refers to the….bad idea I posted about a couple of days ago.
4 Reasons Parents Should Speak Heritage Languages at Home is a very important article for teachers who have immigrant students.
I’m adding it to The Best Ideas On How Parents Can Help Their Kids Succeed Academically.
A Florida legislator’s terrible idea of having teachers grade parents was shot down last year, but now has just passed a legislative committee in its first vote.
You can read my previous posts on the topic here.
Should Parents Control What Kids Learn at School? is a New York Times forum on a New Hampshire law that I believe has gone way overboard and is another example of the wrong way to encourage parent involvement in schools.
It’s worth a visit…
Last month, Joe Mazza wrote a guest post about Parent Teacher Chat on Twitter. Joe has accepted my invitation to write a short post on this blog regularly to announce future topics for these chats:
The San Francisco Chronicle recently published an article about a series of “PTA School Smarts Parent Academies” that are being held at a local school and others around the state. The President of the California PTA also has written a column about this effort.
I’m sure it’s a good experience for the parents involved, but it again raises concerns in my mind about how these kinds of parent academies/universities are run and their purpose. As I’ve written in Some Of These “Parent Academies” Just Don’t Get It…., many of these programs come with a pre-packaged curriculum with little input from parents about what they would like to learn. In addition, the focus is usually totally on the school, with no effort to learn what’s going on in parent lives and to help them organize together to deal with some of those bigger issues.
Elisa Gonzalez, our school’s parent coordinator, has done a great job of engaging parents to create their own “parent university,” and I wish more schools would use that kind of model.
The Smart Academies sounds like an excellent example of parent “involvement,” and that’s good. I just wish there would be more of an emphasis on parent “engagement.”
Lightening the Load: A Look at Four Ways that Community Schools Can Support Effective Teaching is a new report from The Center For American Progress.
I’ve written a fair number of posts about community schools, which, simply speaking, are schools which provide a lot of community services to the broader community. I obviously think they are a good idea.
But, as I’ve mentioned before, they often — though not always — tend to be framed as the schools doing “to” the parents, instead of working “with” them. I think they might be surprised at the increased level of success if more community schools viewed parents as partners instead of social service clients.
New year brings new expectations for “parent trigger” law is a new article from Ed Source.
It’s worth a look….
NEA Today published a story today of how parent involvement in a school dealt with a tricky situation of gym uniforms for Muslim girls.
It’s nothing dramatic — just a nice, simple story. You can never get too many of those….
Parent Involvement is Smart. Don’t Turn it Into Something Stupid is a post by NEA leader Lily Eskelsen. It’s about Idaho’s plan to tie teacher pay to the number of parents who show up to school meetings.
I’m adding it to The Worst Parent Engagement Ideas.
Student-Led Parent Conferences: How They Work in My Primary Classroom is a nice post by teacher Kathy Cassidy.
I’m adding it to The Best Resources On Parent/Teacher Conferences.
I still feel very confident in saying that the “parent trigger” is pretty much dead in terms of having any kind of real influence in the education policy debate, but it does seem to appear to have some dying breathes left. You can read about them here:
Adelanto school is targeted in second test of ‘Parent Trigger’ law appeared in The Los Angeles Times.
Florida parent groups question origins of “parent empowerment” bill is from The Tampa Bay Times.
Parents give a thumbs down to NY-CAN and the “Parent Trigger” is from NYC Public School Parents.
The Flamboyan Foundation has developed a very accessible review of the most current parent engagement/involvement research. It includes some surprising info, particularly around issues related to homework.
They’ve published it in two parts, and the great thing about it is that both are only two pages long!
The first is called Setting the Stage: The Parent Engagement Field.
The second is titled What Kinds Of Parent Engagement Are Most Effective?
I’m adding both to “The Best Research Available On Parent Engagement.”
Thanks to Carrie Rose at the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project for the tip!
Jason Renshaw found this video, and I think it does a good job explaining the benefits that Hobbit teachers (and human ones) can gain from making home visits:
I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Teacher Home Visits.
Last month, Joe Mazza wrote a guest post about Parent Teacher Chat on Twitter. Joe has accepted my invitation to write a short post on this blog regularly to announce future topics for these chats:
As a school principal, I receive more bullying referrals from the school bus than anywhere else. Unfortunately, the school bus and bus stop are the two location where I cannot add adult supervision to prevent bullying from happening. However, by making bus drivers more a part of the school and bringing them in to meet with teachers and bus riders as “bus teams” several times per year, we can ensure that the same rules and expectations are instilled in students from the time they leave their house to the time they get back.
Study: Head Start Programs May Increase Parents’ Involvement is a short blog post at Education Week about a new….study.
It might be worth a look…
Large numbers of parents are organizing in Chicago against proposed school closings and “turnaround” plans.
You can read about it here, and watch a local news report here.