A Checklist for Back to School Night is a useful post for every teacher.

It’s by Heather Wolpert-Gawron and appeared in Edutopia.

Fla. School Board Candidate: Allow Some Parents With Criminal Pasts to Volunteer is the title of a blog post over at Ed Week.

Here’s how it begins:

A candidate vying for a seat on the Pinellas County School Board in Largo, Fla., this November wants principals to have more control over how the district’s policy that bars most parents with criminal records from volunteering at schools is implemented.

Beverley Billiris, a former local elementary school teacher, believes the district should allow school principals to consider permitting parents who have “turned their lives around” after committing nonviolent or nonsexual crimes to volunteer.

It certainly makes sense to me!

You might also be interested in one of my previous posts: Charlotte Schools Say Undocumented Parents Can’t Volunteer In Schools — For Now, At Least.

I’ve written many posts about the destructive impact the organization Parent Revolution can have on schools, teachers, students and their families.

Their march of destruction continues as they are now threatening to sue the Los Angeles school district if they don’t allow the use of the “parent trigger” (see One Good Thing Comes Out Of Ill-Conceived CA District NCLB Waiver: LAUSD Not Subject To Parent Trigger).

To their credit, Parent Revolution has tempered their methods slightly from what they were doing originally. The main reason, though, why their work hasn’t been so damaging lately is because more and more people are seeing through their rhetoric, and few families want to have anything to do with them anymore.

If they really wanted to help families, though, their best move would be dissolution.

I’ve written so much about the ongoing disaster in Newark for parents and their children.

Here’s the latest — a post from Bob Braun titled Cami’s Newark enrollment plan collapses in the heat, with these being the first two paragraphs:

The implementation of the deeply flawed “One Newark” student-dispersal program all but collapsed Thursday as the state administration’s highly paid bureaucrats kept hundreds of angry and frustrated parents and children waiting in un-airconditioned school rooms or outside in 90+ heat to register their children for the few remaining public school seats. Just hours into the chaos, Newark school officials locked the doors to Newark Vocational and told the men, women, and children waiting outside to come back at 5 a.m. the next morning.

The people in line outside shouted angrily at the bureaucrats and demanded a “number”–as shoppers do at meat markets–and the chance to get inside so they could plan for their children’s education. Many said they could not return the next day because they had taken the day off from working and couldn’t take another day.

Geniene Delahunty writes a nice post describing a visit she made to a student family’s home.

It’s worth checking out….

It’s that time of year when you start seeing posts and articles about what teachers want parents to know.

I Want Parents to Know This… is a particularly good one by Matt Gomez (thanks to Sheila Stewart for the tip.

You might also be interested in these other ones in the “genre”:

My Advice To Parents In “USA Weekend” is something I wrote last summer.

5 Things Teachers Wish Parents Knew: Your Children Can Do More Than You Think is a good piece by Jessice Lahey in The New York Times.

10 things teachers wish parents knew before the school year begins is from The Today Show.

If you want to see a terrible example of this kind of list, check out one of my previous posts, Jeez, What Was Ron Clark Thinking?

Oklahoma PTA Unanimously Calls for End to High-Stakes Testing is from Diane Ravitch’s blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

Over 340 delegates at the Oklahoma PTA’s annual convention voted unanimously to adopt resolutions that call for a ban on policies that force the state’s public schools to rely on high-stakes testing and put an end to mass administration of field tests.

Wow! Wouldn’t it be nice if other state PTA’s viewed this as a model?

Here’s a potentially useful parent volunteer form posted at the Organized Classroom Blog.

Thanks to Joe Mazza and Pernille Ripp for the tip.

Importance of talking to infants now on TV is the headline of a blog post at Ed Source.

It talks about two recent TV shows that have featured the “Word Gap.”

Here’s a clip from one of them:

I’m adding this info to The Best Resources For Learning About The “Word Gap.”

Federal Data-Privacy Guidelines Urge Better Communication With Parents is a new post over at Education Week.

Here’s how it begins:

The tug-of-war over student data privacy continues.

Friday, the U.S. Department of Education released new, non-binding guidance containing suggestions for schools and districts to better inform parents about how their children’s sensitive educational data is being used.

Some privacy advocates, however, were less than enthusiastic.

You might also be interested in The Best Posts On The inBloom Data Fiasco.

Ed Source reports on a recent visit by Hillary Clinton to Oakland:

Hillary Clinton spoke to a friendly crowd at Oakland’s UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital on Wednesday about her new campaign (no, not that one) to get parents to spend more time talking, singing and reading to their young children.

“Brain research is showing us how important the first years of life are,” Clinton said, “and how much a simple activity can help build brains.”

Oakland will be the second city – the first was Tulsa, Oklahoma – to receive a concentrated dose of messaging about the importance of verbally engaging infants and toddlers. As part of the “Talking is Teaching: Talk Read Sing” campaign, residents can expect a multimedia campaign featuring television commercials, a radio spot, billboards and bus station ads. Local retailer Oaklandish will also be launching a new clothing line for babies that includes onesies that read, “Let’s talk about hands and feet,” and baby blankets proclaiming, “Let’s talk about bedtime.” For every item purchased, Oaklandish will donate one item to a family in need.

I’m adding this info to The Best Resources For Learning About The “Word Gap.”

Want More Kids to Graduate? Report Suggests Starting with Mom and Dad is the headline of a post over at Education Week.

Here are a some excerpts:

A new report released today by the Foundation for Child Development and CLASP, a Washington think tank, finds that although parents’ education has a huge effect on their children’s future health and educational attainment, there are very few programs focused on improving education for the entire family….

The report called for policymakers and education officials to look for ways to develop more-holistic “dual generation” anti-poverty programs to educate parents and children at the same time.

Engaging Immigrant Parents with Improved Systems of Interpretation & Translation is a useful short explanation of how and why one school district makes it a priority to offer several different types of translation services available.

The article includes research references and links for more details on how the system operates.

Thanks to Edublogs for the tip!

Teacher Repents for Going ‘Ghetto’ on a Parent is post by Marilyn Rhames over at Ed Week.

It’s a reminder that all of us, including teachers, are just human….

Learning Walks…More Than a Tour of the School is the title of a post at Edutopia by Gwen Pescatore, where she offers an idea for parent involvement called “Learning Walks.”

Here’s an excerpt:

What is a Learning Walk?

It is an invitation to parents to come to the school for a set period of time (an hour or two), to go on a guided tour of the school/classrooms during the school day. Not to look at the decor – but to learn more about the learning happening or explore other topics revolving around education and the school. Each tour/learning walk, would have a topic or theme to guide the discussion and help with selection of which classrooms to visit. The thought is more about giving parents an opportunity to witness what a “real” lesson looks like and not a “dog and pony show” lesson. These are also not about a parent sitting in on and observing THEIR child…but to learn more about a topic or the school through observing in them in action. Following the Learning Walk, the group would sit down to talk more in depth about what they’ve observed and answer questions.

California PTA urges sane homework loads is the headline of a Washington Post piece.

Here’s an excerpt:

The effort began at Burbank’s John Burroughs High School, where PTA members took action after seeing our film, Race to Nowhere. Suzanne Weerts and Tina McDermott, both mothers at the high school, delved into the education research and drafted a resolution titled “Homework: Quality over Quantity,” urging schools to get the homework madness under control. This month, the California PTA adopted their resolution statewide. State representatives aim to take it to the National PTA next year.

“We know from the research that too much homework can have a negative impact on learning,” said Tina McDermott, who also teaches at a community college. “We also know that family stress can skyrocket from the relentless pressure every day to get it done. It can impact the entire family.”

Education Week has a post about three different parent groups organizing in Buffalo, New York, and how it sounds like the School Board doesn’t seem to like what they’re saying…

It’s worth a read.

Parents Form Partnership With LAUSD, Avoid Using Parent-Trigger Law is an interest post over at Education Week sharing an agreement that the District made with parents for increased services and resources.

The suggestion is that the deal wouldn’t have been made if the District didn’t have a threat of parents using the parent trigger hanging over their head.

Are any readers familiar with what happened? Does that analysis hold water?

A New Teacher Union Movement is Rising is an article by Bob Peterson, head of the Milwaukee Teachers Union.

Here’s how he concludes the piece:

It is no longer sufficient to just critique and criticize those who are attempting to destroy public education. Teacher unions must unite with parents, students and the community to improve our schools—to demand social justice and democracy so that we have strong public schools, healthy communities, and a vibrant democracy.

I’m adding it to The Best Reasons Why Parents Should Be Looked At As Allies & Not Targets Of Blame.

More non-profits teaching parents to read with children is a post at Ed Source describing programs helping parents to get their children reading early and the research behind the efforts.

I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The “Word Gap.”