Maybe, just maybe, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel might be learning he can’t unilaterally make major decisions about schools without engaging with stakeholders like parents and teachers. He certainly doesn’t have a history of listening to them. Last week, though, he blinked. See Emanuel backs 7-hour school day after parents protest longer plan.
As most readers know, Rahm Emanuel is favored to become the next Mayor of Chicago, where there is mayoral control of public schools. In his response to the question “Please explain how you would encourage more parental involvement in the public schools. Do you support tying parental involvement to school funding or what schools should […]
Rahm Emanuel gave an interview with the Chicago Tribune on Monday and spoke a lot about his plans for schools. They were all pretty bad, including his idea about parent engagement: The city could reward schools with greater parental involvement by giving them more money, he said. Chicago Public Schools could track how many parents […]
Yesterday, I posted about the unwise response by administrators in Chicago and Colorado to parents who want to opt-out their children from standardized testing. Today, Esther Cepeda, with whom I usually disagree, came out with a column condemning that administrative response. Here are a couple of excerpts: But though I believe standardized testing is essential, […]
Thanks to Alexander Russo, I learned about a recent interview with the former Superintendent of Chicago Schools, Jean-Claude Brizard. He lost his job after the major Chicago teachers strike. Here’s an excerpt: We severely underestimated the ability of the Chicago Teachers’ Union to lead a massive grassroots campaign against our administration. It’s a lesson for […]
Readers might remember the posts I wrote a couple of years ago about the campaign by Chicago parents to turn a building on their local school site’s property so that their kids could have access to a library. Well, in Mayor Emanual’s latest in a long line of tone-deaf parent engagement moves, the building was […]
Even though Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel had shown a brief glimmer of understanding about parent engagement at one point last year, it appears he has reverted to previous cluelessness. In a rant blaming parents for student learning difficulties, he states his newest idea: Emanuel wants to tie after-school program enrollment to parents picking up report […]
The headline for this post comes from a quote by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who just announced with great fanfare a plan to give parents $25 gift certificates for parents who participate in conferences with their child’s teachers. I’d like to suggest that he might be better served if he tried to empty his mind […]
Program to Bridge the Gap With Parents Draws Fire is the headline on a New York Times article today about issues in Chicago. It’s not surprising, considering Mayor Emanuel’s perspective on parent engagement. See: Schools, And Parent Engagement, Don’t Seem To Be Rahm Emanuel’s Strong Suit Rahm Emanuel’s “Transactional” Perspective On Parent Involvement/Engagement
I’ve posted a lot about good parent engagement/involvement ideas, but sometimes you can learn just as much from looking at bad examples. You can see lots of good ideas at all my parent engagement-related “The Best” lists here. Here are my choices for The Worst Parent Engagement Ideas: Putting Parents in Charge is a condescending […]
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 […]
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 […]
Over the past two years, I have posted: My Best Posts On Building Parent Engagement In Schools — 2010 My Best Posts On Parent Engagement Over The Past Six Months My Best Posts & Articles About Building Parent Engagement In Schools — 2009 My Best Posts On Parent Engagement So Far This Year It’s been […]