One Delaware School District wants to use a portion of their Race To The Top monies to pay parents to come to certain school events. Bad idea. Very bad idea. New York City Mayor Bloomberg recently closed down an effort that including paying parents to do the same thing. New York City had started a […]
According to a recent article in the Madison, Wisconsin newspaper titled In Madison, an effort to get minority parents involved in their kids’ schools, one school has increased parent involvement by starting separate Hmong, Latino, and African-American groups. I applaud the school for recognizing the problem, and for putting time, energy, and resources into trying […]
I’ve been doing a lot of work this year on building parent engagement in schools, including having a book published (Building Parent Engagement In Schools) and starting a new blog called Engaging Parents In School. Plus, I continuing to do the usual work at our school of actually engaging parents, too! I thought readers of […]
Last week, the new Superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District, Jonathan Raymond, led a press conference highlighting examples of parent engagement in our district. He was kind enough to invite me and mention my book, and also to highlight the home computer project we do at our school, as well as our highly […]
“Parent Academies” appear to be “in” this week… TIME Magazine has just published an article titled Parent Academies: Helping Mom and Dad Face School Too. This follows on the heels of several other recent media articles on this topic (you can see the last few posts on this blog). Unfortunately, at least as far as […]
In Philadelphia, Reaching Kids by Teaching Parents is the title of an article in this week’s Education Week. It highlights efforts Philadelphia schools are making to connect with parents. It particularly talks about their “Parent University.” It’s unclear, though, how much parents participating in developing its content. One of the main things, I think, that […]
The Boston Globe ran an article today on a parent involvement effort begun by the Boston schools. It appears like a typical “Parent University” program that a lot of schools have begun to teach parents about how schools work. However, the article did mention one other focus: “Parent University will also help parents write résumés […]