I’ve previously posted about an upcoming and apparently very misleading movie about the parent trigger. Caroline Grannan just fact-checked the trailer itself, which was full of inaccuracies. It doesn’t bode well for the whole flick. You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Learning Why The Parent Trigger Isn’t Good For Parents, Kids [...]
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The organization sponsoring the influential National Assessment of Educational Progress assessments has just announced an effort to reach-out and: increase awareness among parents about the urgency to improve overall student achievement and reduce achievement gaps by race, ethnicity, and income. I hope they include helping parents see the limitations of NAEP test results, too. You [...]
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Try parent visits, not parent takeovers of schools is a new column by Jay Mathews at The Washington Post. It’s a nice column, but it was a little weird to have a column on home visits without mentioning The Parent Teacher Home Visit Project. You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Learning [...]
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Research-based practices forge strong family and community partnerships is a new report from the organization Leaning Forward. It’s in their newsletter, Tools For Learning Schools. I wouldn’t say there’s anything particularly new in it to people with family engagement, but it does provide some good summaries, particularly on Joyce Epstein’s work.
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Guest Post by Joe Mazza Upcoming #PTchat: Parents & Teachers Discuss Ways to Combat Summer Learning Loss Wed., 5/30 9PM EDT As another school year comes to a close, we begin another summer. This week’s Parent-Teacher Chat (#PTchat) on Twitter takes a look at all the way we can keep the learning going through [...]
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Teaching Cases on Family Engagement: Early Learning (Ages 0–8) is from The Harvard Family Research Project. It seems like a strange name for a report, but it’s basically a list of links to a number of case histories the Project has done over the past several years. Here is how they describe it: Teaching cases [...]
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Steve Constantino, who is a “must-follow” on Twitter for anyone interested in parent engagement, sent a tweet today about a Karen Mapp-written study titled Having Their Say: Parents Describe Why and How They are Engaged in Their Children’s Learning. Here’s an excerpt: According to the parents, when school personnel initiate and engage in practices that [...]
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This is from Education Week: “On June 21st, at 2 p.m., Eastern time, Education Week is hosting a webinar designed to help school officials, parents, and others learn more about the challenges that come with parent engagement, and about strategies that can help schools overcome those barriers. You can register here. Karen L. Mapp, of [...]
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I’ve often published posts here and guest columns elsewhere criticizing the parent trigger. However, I hadn’t heard until today that Education Secretary Arne Duncan supposedly supports it. Alexander Russo tweeted out a Reuters article saying: “The Obama administration backs parent trigger.” Since that was new to me, I searched online to see if there were [...]
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Leonie Haimson, a parent leader from New York City, sent a tweet linking to a great 1950′s photo of demonstrating parent engagement. Here’s the link to the photo, and here’s her tweet: great foto in NYC archives of 1950′s Brooklyn moms calling for more schl construction in 1950′s… more things change goo.gl/WXmiH — leonie haimson [...]
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Guest Post by Joe Mazza Upcoming #PTchat: J.Michael Hall Joins #PTchat to Share Ideas on How to Engage Dads in Education Wed., 5/23 9PM EDT What Father Can Do at Home, School & In the Community Fathers can initiate or participate in activities that help their children succeed academically. Helping children learn can increase success in [...]
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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is in the news for once again insulting parents (you can read about his multiple previous efforts at New York City Mayor Insults Parents — Again). I learned about Boomberg’s newest comments from blogger Walt Gardner, with whom I usually agree. Not this time, though. Gardner supports the Mayor’s [...]
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“Parents sign petition against use of FCAT” is the headline of a Miami Herald article today. The article begins: The petition, gaining traction in parts of Florida and around the country, urges education administrators to rely less on standardized tests and use other measures to evaluate students, schools and teachers.
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Changing the Approach to Parent Involvement is a useful article appearing in Fox Latina. It’s a good reminder of the importance of looking at parents through the lens of “assets” and not “deficits” (which is something I recommend for ELL students,too). Here’s an excerpt: The same concept can be applied to a school by looking [...]
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Today, the Congressional Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education held a hearing on “Exploring State Success in Expanding Parent and Student Options.” In the midst of parent trigger and voucher advocates, Dr. Maria Fletcher, president of the New York State PTA, provided some important wisdom. Here’s an excerpt from her testimony: Perhaps we’re [...]
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Guest Post by Joe Mazza This Week’s #PTchat Preview It’s getting closer to June, which means summer vacation for many students will be here before we know it. Some schools require summer reading lists to be completed and others do not. Elementary schools and secondary schools oftentimes look very different in terms of the expectations [...]
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I was looking through the California Department of Education website to see their parent engagement resources, and found that they had “Parent Handbooks” for each class content area. Each one is full of ideas about how parents can help their children learn more in those specific content areas (Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, Math). It [...]
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Alfie Kohn and others are asking people to sign a petition: asking the National PTA to adopt recommendations on homework – guidelines that will help educators innovate and improve their approaches to designing and assigning homework in our classrooms. In June, the National PTA will meet at their annual convention. Join us today in urging [...]
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Source: shareasimage.com via Larry on Pinterest The above quote comes from a new “meta-analysis” of scores of studies that found that parent involvement in student learning was the most effective intervention in enhancing attitudes such as: the aspirations to do well at school and to aim for advanced education, the sense that one’s own actions [...]
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The New York City school district has had a very troubled recent history of not encouraging parent engagement. One example of those troubles is their talking for three years about starting a parent academy. The teachers union decided to take things in their own hands, though, and have just begun their own parent academy. Here’s [...]
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