Community Support For Schools


 

In ‘Community Support’ Tops List of Public Education ‘Pluses,’ Michele Molnar over at Education Week writes about a recent article in the American School Board Journal that ranked “community support” for schools as the number one “good thing” for education.

The above quote is form that article. Check out Michele’s post and the article itself, 10 Good Things About Public Education.

“Want to Get Teens Interested in Math and Science? Target Their Parents”

Want to Get Teens Interested in Math and Science? Target Their Parents is from the Association Of Psychological Science and reports on a recent study.

Basically, they sent parents a couple of brochures on STEM and asked them to visit a website. The parents in a control group didn’t get any of that extra information.

Here is what the researchers found:

The results suggest that the intervention had a noticeable effect on the courses that the students enrolled in: students whose parents received all the materials as part of the experimental group took more science and math classes in the last two years of high school. The effect amounted to roughly an extra semester of advanced math or science, including courses such as algebra II, trigonometry, pre-calculus, calculus, statistics, chemistry, and physics.

Mothers in the intervention group viewed math and science courses as more useful than did mothers in the control group. And students with parents in the intervention group had more conversations with their parents about course choices, educational plans, and the importance of math and science during 12th grade. These two factors – having a mother who values STEM and having more conversations about STEM – seemed to enhance students’ own perceptions of the usefulness of STEM courses.

Teachers To Visit Homes Of 7,000 Students — In One Day!

The homes of all 7,000 students in Henderson County, Kentucky will be visited by the District’s 1,000 teachers (I assume that number also includes other staff) in one day. It sounds pretty impressive, and you can read more about it in this article.

Appointments won’t be made in advance, and, ordinarily, I don’t think that’s a good idea. However, it can work well in this type of situation where it’s a very well-publicized community event….

I’m adding this post to The Best Resources For Learning About Teacher Home Visits.

California PTA Makes Huge Political Mistake

As regular readers know, I’m a big supporter of the PTA and the role it plays, and the potential role it can play, in helping families, schools and neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, as I’ve written before (see Molly Munger, The PTA & The Shoe Button Complex), the California PTA has made a huge political miscalculation by becoming just about the only ally billionaire Molly Munger has in her doomed-to-fail state initiative to raise taxes to support schools.

And the PTA has continued its support of Munger even when she tries to torpedo Governor Brown’s competing initiative to support schools (which is supported by just about everyone else in the education community). Happily, today the courts ruled against Munger in her latest attack on the Governor’s plan.

Every poll shows the Governor’s initiative is holding a lead, though a tenuous one, though just today the consulting firm that led the successful fight last month to defeat a tobacco tax increase announced they would lead the campaign against the Governor’s initiative. And every poll shows that Munger’s initiative is losing and has absolutely no chance of winning.

Everyday the California PTA gives Munger political “cover” means that the PTA will lose political credibility for years to come.

If they dump Munger now, though, even though it’s unlikely someone like her would fold her tent and walk away, it would at least take the wind out of her sails and minimize the negative political impact her campaign will have on the Governor’s initiative.

What can the California PTA be thinking?

This Week’s Parent-Teacher Chat (#ptchat) on Twitter

Guest post  by Joe Mazza

This Week’s Parent-Teacher Chat (#ptchat) on Twitter

Creating a Bank of 2-Way Communication Offerings Between Home & School

On this week’s #ptchat our conversational goal is to provide educators with as many classroom and school-based two-way (home-school) communication offerings as possible. At the end of the chat, we’ll use those “tweets” to develop a shared Google Doc for schools to use/update throughout the 12-13 school year.

Communication is evident when educators and families “…communicate about school programs and student progress in varied, clear and productive ways. Create two-way communication channels from school to home and from home to school, so that families can easily keep in touch with teachers, administrators, counselors and other families” (Epstein, 2011). Below are the rest of Epstein’s Six Types of Involvement.

1. Parenting, in which schools help families with their parenting skills by providing information on children’s developmental stages and offering advice on learning-friendly home environments;

2. Communicating, or working to educate families about their child’s progress and school services and providing opportunities for parents to communicate with the school;

3. Volunteering, which ranges from offering opportunities for parents to visit their child’s school to finding ways to recruit and train them to work in the school or classroom;

4. Learning at home, in which schools and educators share ideas to promote at-home learning through high expectations and strategies so parents can monitor and help with homework.

5. Decision-making, in which schools include families as partners in school organizations, advisory panels, and similar committees.

6. Community collaboration, a two-way outreach strategy in which community or business groups are involved in education and schools encourage family participation in the community.

Communication can travel in a variety of ways. The two most common ways are one-way and two-way. One-way communication is limited because it is linear or occurs in a straight line from the sender to the receiver. This type of communication serves strictly to inform, persuade or command.

Two-way communication is different because it includes feedback from the receiver back to the sender. Two-way communication is negotiated, meaning that both the sender and receiver listen to each other and gather information they need before responding. They are also willing to make changes to work together.

Join us this Wednesday, July 11th at 9PM EDT / 6PM PST as parents and teacher build a working document to support two-way home-school communication efforts.

Feds Investigate North Carolina Schools For Not Translating Documents For Parents

OCR to Investigate Wake County Discrimination Claim is the title of a Learning The Language blog post at Education Week. Here’s how it begins:

The U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights (OCR) will investigate whether the Wake County public schools in North Carolina are discriminating against English-language learners and their parents by not providing adequate translations of important documents, according to a letter from OCR team leader Olabisi L. Okubadejo dated June 27 and addressed to representatives from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Legal Aid of North Carolina. The legal advocacy organizations announced the investigation today.

The investigation is in response to a complaint filed against the district last month by the SPLC and Legal Aid, as we reported. The civil rights groups allege that the school system does not always provide adequate translations of documents such as notices of long-term suspensions or special education materials to Spanish-speaking parents.

It’s definitely worth reading the entire post, which also includes important links.

This kind of practice doesn’t really encourage parent involvement/engagement…