I’ve gotten a chance to read more carefully a report on parent involvement and middle school that I’ve previously posted about. You can read the study here, though I suspect you won’t learn anything new from it. It suggests that schools should focus on building relationships with parents through programs like home visits. Sounds good [...]
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The summer issue of “School Community Journal” is now available online for free. It includes many articles, including: Six Years Later: Effect of Family Involvement Training on the Language Skills of Children From Migrant Families – Lisa St. Clair, Barbara Jackson, and Rose Zweiback Family–School Connections in Rural Educational Settings: A Systematic Review of the [...]
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Source: shareasimage.com via Larry on Pinterest That quote is from Parents’ group voices support for teachers in the Chicago Sun Times (thanks to Mike Klonsky for the tip). You might also be interested in The Best Reasons Why Parents Should Be Looked At As Allies & Not Targets Of Blame.
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White House Seeks PTA Members for ‘Champions of Change’ Honor is a new post over at Education Week. Here’s the beginning, and I’d encourage you to go over there to read the rest: If you had a few minutes with the President of the United States, what would you say to him about education? Twelve [...]
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Parent Involvement One of the Most Enduring Benefits of the Head Start Program is the headline of a post that begins: Recent research released by Alexander Gelber and Adam Isen at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania suggests that increased parent involvement in a child’s life is one of the most enduring benefits of the [...]
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Guest Post by Joe Mazza #PTchat 6/27/12 – Will the Karen Klein Bus Ride Fuel the Changes Needed on Today’s School Buses A few days ago, the world didn’t know much about who Karen Klein was. As I draft his post, the horrific video embedded below has almost a million views. The vulgar, disrespectful and inhumane behavior [...]
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Education Week hosted a parent engagement webinar last week with well-known researcher, writer, and speaker Karen L. Mapp, along with Steven Sheldon. Michele Molnar at Ed Week has written an excellent summary of the event. You can also view the Webinar for free here. Plus, you can download the PowerPoint presentation here.
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I usually just do a year-end list on parent engagement posts and many other topics, but it gets a little crazy having to review all of my zillion posts at once. So, to make it easier for me — and perhaps, to make it a little more useful to readers — I’m going to start [...]
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ASCD SmartBrief, a great way to get daily education news, just announced poll results to the question: What is the most effective way for a school to communicate with parents about potentially sensitive topics? As one would expect, the number one option was “communication from students’ teachers.” The very close number response, though, seems bizarre [...]
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Parent Cortical Mass seems like a good blog that’s worth recommending to parents. Here’s how it describes itself: The Parent Cortical Mass Blog is for parents striving to get more knowledgeable and skillful at managing kids’ learning and education. We focus on four questions: What does research in learning science have to say to parents? [...]
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As public financing for schools goes down, the issue of parent fundraising for schools — and equity issues connected to it — is getting more and more attention. I thought I’d at least get a start on bringing together a few resources on the topic. Additional suggestions are welcome: I’ve written a post titled The [...]
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Parents With Limited English Skills Say City Fails to Help Them is the headline of an article in the New York Times “Schoolbook” today. Boy, New York City has sure had problems with parent engagement.
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Upcoming #PTchat: Awards Assemblies – Good for Kids? Wed., 6/20/12 at 9PM EDT During this week’s Parent-Teacher Chat (#PTchat), we’ll discuss the “Awards Assembly,” as for many of us, this event is fresh in our minds. Our school has done an End of Year Awards Assembly for many years, but in recent years, my staff and [...]
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The U.S. Conference of Mayors has hitched their wagon to a dying horse, the parent trigger, in a vote on Saturday supporting the idea. Of course, the trigger idea has failed in every attempt. And, as the late Gerald Bracey detailed, mayoral control of schools has a record that is almost as bad.
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“Are Schools Meeting The Needs Of Parents?” is the title of a new post by Peter DeWitt at Education Week. Here’s an excerpt: Schools need to communicate with parents about events, curriculum, student progress, and budgetary issues, but is that communication one sided? There are principals who do not return phone calls to parents or [...]
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A Parent’s Advice to the Chicago Teachers Union was written by Diane Ravitch. She shares a comment left by a parent on her blog. Here’s part of the parent’s statement: For every irate, blustering, nasty parent you’ve encountered, I guarantee you there are 2 or 3 or even 9 who feel differently. And a lot [...]
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College Bound is a series of videos — both in English and Spanish — designed to help parents get ideas on how they can support their children academically. Parent have to register at the site in order to watch them, but it only takes a few seconds to do so. The videos are very accessible, [...]
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“Four Ways to Increase Parental Efficacy” is from The Family Linkages Project. It’s short, to the point, and helpful. It’s suggestions include: Promote successful personal experiences for family members. Help family members learn from others and each other. Always offer encouragement, Focus on emotional well-being and stress reduction. I’m adding it to The Best Sources [...]
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Though the idea of a parent trigger is clearly dying out, a similar proposal is under consideration in Michigan. The Michigan Association of School Boards, however, does not help the case to oppose the measure when their spokesperson makes comments like this in an email: “I would rather have the education professionals decide the plan, [...]
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At Two City Schools, Parents’ Money Leads to Two Very Different Experiences is a new article at The New York Times’ Schoolbook that certainly speaks to a post I wrote last week, The Nuances Of Parent Fundraising For Schools. Here’s how it begins: In February, when Ronnie Najjar, the principal of Public School 89 The [...]
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