“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 teachers that take a long time to call parents back. On the other side there are parents who have disconnected phones or do not return phone calls.

The first step for schools is to reflect on the methods they use to communicate. They need to be able to put messages out there and be open to parents who will tell them when they do not. For full disclosure, I do not always communicate well. As hard as I may try, I do not put out messages as quickly as some would like. I often ask myself the following questions.

Do we only communicate when they need something?
Do principals and teachers know what parents really want out of their schools?
Do they care what parents want?
Do we come off as the experts who only tell and never listen?
Do parents know what they want out of their public school system?