District of Columbia Expands Family-Engagement Program is the title of an Education Week post.

Here’s an excerpt:

Twenty-one schools will participate in the parent partnership program during the 2014-15 school year. Each participating school receives a grant for up to $25,000, Melissa Salmanowitz, spokeswoman for the District’s school system, wrote in an email.

According to the release, the Family Engagement Partnership instructs school administrators and teachers how to develop trusting relationships with parents. Teachers conduct home visits and work with families to set higher academic expectations for their children. The program also includes a new approach to parent-teacher conferences. These Academic Parent Teacher Teams help families create supportive learning environments for students in their homes.

I’ve previously published short reports on last month’s National Family Engagement Conference. Today, Carrie Rose, Executive Director of the Parent-Teacher Home Visit Project, has written this guest post about it:

Parent-Teacher Home Visits Fit DOE’s Vision

Researcher Karen L. Mapp lifts up PTHVP in Family Engagement Framework

CINCINNATI- Back in the day, did your grandma help with costumes for the school play, or did your dad change a shift at work so he could attend your parent-teacher conference? These days, parent involvement is more important to schools than ever. New research shows that if schools are really going to meet the needs of 21^st Century students, they’ve got to form more meaningful relationships with families. But there’s been controversy over which activities make a difference. Will Johnny read at grade level if his dad brings cookies for the bake sale?

In order to provide answers, Dr. Karen L. Mapp of the Harvard Graduate School of Education stood on the stage two weeks ago at the first National Family and Community Engagement Conference, hosted in Cincinnati by the Institute for Educational Leadership. In front of her were a few hundred of the nation’s family engagement professionals, charged with involving parents, grandparents and other guardians in their child’s life at school. Dr. Mapp announced that just that morning the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, had released the graphic illustration “The Dual Capacity Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships.” With the official release, Dr. Mapp was able to take the audience through an outline of the framework, explaining the kind of relationships schools can build that make a lasting impact.

The Framework’s companion report,“Partners in Education: The Dual Capacity Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships,” also by Mapp and Kuttner, was released the next day by Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL).  The much-anticipated report has emerged at a time when the experts in family engagement are engaged themselves in debate. Books such as “Broken Compass: Parental Involvement with Children’s Education” by Keith Robinson and Angel L. Harris have inspired the media to issue provocative headlines, such as “Parental Involvement Is Overrated” in a recent New York Times (April 13, 2014). And the definition of parental involvement varies widely. In some programs, it has a social service bent, where adults are enticed to learn parenting skills with a free dinner, or giveaways of diapers or toys. Another family engagement approach is academic. If parents can be taught classroom subjects like long division, they can help their children be more successful.

The most effective programs, according to Dr. Mapp and the “Dual Capacity Building Framework,” have three main components: they 1) increase the capacity (skills, knowledge, and relationships) of the adults involved via a two-way street – families and staff learn from each other how best to meet the needs of the child;  2) build respect and trust using a relational approach, and 3) have activities tied to learning.

Looking for examples of programs that built trust and increased capacity in families and schools at the same time, Dr. Mapp lifted up home visits as a best practice in family engagement. The Parent Teacher Home Visit Project (PTHVP) method of home visits is described in the first of three case studies in the DOE report, which chronicles the turnaround of Stanton Elementary School in Southeast Washington DC.

In 2010, the school was in crisis, and a new principal came in with a new staff and myriad of reforms. But things got worse. Then in the summer of 2011, a partnership between local Flamboyan Foundation and DC Public Schools brought PTHVP in to train the staff to do home visits. And this, say Stanton teachers and parents, is what made the difference.

Trained teachers and other school staff visited their students’ families with the purpose of building relationships and trust. Participation, on the part of the teachers and the parents, was voluntary, and students were not targeted but picked randomly with the goal of visiting as many as possible. School staff entered the families’ homes and neighborhoods ready for the two-way learning and sharing process described by Dr. Mapp’s Framework as “Dual Capacity Building.”

“The visits are not designed to be assessments of families; rather, they are relational in nature and are specifically designed to be respectful of families’ assets and strengths and to build the capacity of both the educator and the family to support the academic and social success of every student.”

Parent Katrina Grant is quoted in the report as saying she was not initially open to school personnel coming to see her at home, but her feelings changed after the first visit.

“What made me more engaged was the home visit. When they first called about the home visit, first, I was skeptical. I thought it was a CPS (Child Protection Services) visit. For the teachers to take the initiative, to come to my area where I live and have no problem with it, to sit in my living room, and ask about me and my child, that really meant something to me. It meant that this person is going to be my partner, and we were going to work together, and she cares for my child. The whole time we discussed my child. For me, that was the first engagement that signaled a change for me.”

Both teachers and parents felt the higher levels of trust and respect at the school “immediately,” which is typical of the improved school culture that comes out of home visits. Independent evaluations have found improved attendance, decreased behavior issues, and improved student performance in schools that use the PTHVP model.

The PTHVP model fits other aspects of the DOE Framework, including recommendations for making the program systemic, embedded in curriculum, and sustainable.

Dr. Mapp, from Harvard, standing on the stage, spent a year working as a consultant to the Department of Education refining her research on what makes family engagement effective. The professionals, in the audience, came to the conference to be better at engaging families.  Each engagement program, with their very diverse goals and strategies, has some self-reflection in store. How close do their programs come to the DOE’s recommended framework? Do they build capacity in both families and schools? Do they mutually build trust and respect? And are they linked to learning? How will our answers to the above questions change our ideas of what is effective family engagement? Will it change what we fund and what we do? With time and funds in short supply, schools and districts, as well as parents and communities, must address these questions in light of the research.

For more information

Partners in Education: The Dual Capacity Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships at the Department of Education, www.ed.gov

The Parent Teacher Home Visit Project www.pthvp.org

Carrie Rose, Executive Director, Parent Teacher Home Visit Project, carrie@pthvp.org, (916) 448-5290

Where to Turn When the School Wants to Have Your Child ‘Tested’ is a useful New York Times post by Jessica Lahey.

I’m adding it to The Best Resources To Help Engage Parents Of Children With Special Needs.

Parental involvement overrated? Don’t buy it is a very, very impressive response to the “Broken Compass” authors dismissal of most types of parent involvement.

It’s written by three college professors — By Todd Rogers, Lucas Coffman and Peter Bergman — and appeared on the CNN website.

I can’t emphasize enough that people should read the entire post, but here’s an excerpt:

Citing their research, the authors of the Times piece, Keith Robinson and Angel L. Harris, describe provocative findings that show that students of parents who are very involved in their children’s education perform worse than students of parents who are less involved.

While the authors control for certain variables, their research only implies there is a relationship between parental involvement and student performance. This caveat is important; the existence of a relationship does not tell us what causes what.

Think of it this way: If you had two children, and one was getting A’s and the other C’s, which of them would you help more? The C student. An outsider, noticing that you’ve spent the school year helping only one of your children, might infer that parental help caused that child to earn lower grades. This of course would not be the case, and inferring causation here would be a mistake.

I’m adding this to The Best Commentaries On The “Broken Compass” Parent Involvement Book.

How to be an advocate for your (special needs) child by Jovan Miles could be a very useful post to share with parents.

It’s a great additions to The Best Resources To Help Engage Parents Of Children With Special Needs.

Education Week reports on a new survey that finds most teachers want more involvement from the parents of their students (see Survey: Most Teachers Want Involved Parents But Don’t Have Them).

Unfortunately, it didn’t really define what “parent involvement” was and it doesn’t appear they broke down the responses by income-level of the schools where the teachers worked.

Which leads me to put this info in the category of “interesting, but not very useful.”

You might also be interested in The Best Sources Of Parent Engagement Advice For Teachers.

The Middle Ground Between Opt Out And All In is a very thoughtful post by Matthew Di Carlo at The Shanker Blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

when it comes to “opting out,” what’s important to me is the idea that you don’t have to agree with its proponents’ solution to acknowledge that they may be correct about the existence of a problem. There are good and bad policy applications happening right now, and it’s important to address the bad ones and build on the good ones.

I’m adding it to The Best Posts On Parents “Opting-Out” Of Standardized Tests For Their Children.

I’ve written a couple of posts skeptical of claims made by authors of a new book on parent involvement called The Broken Compass, with the most recent one about their op-ed piece in The New York Times on Sunday.

Inflated Research Claims Can Harm Children: Why “parental involvement” is not a “broken compass.” is a post by Marilyn Price-Mitchell that is similarly skeptical.

And respected parent engagement expert Karen Mapp recently sent out this tweet:

Broken Compass authors have a piece in today's NYTimes. Data is not new, conclusions are misleading. Will be writing a response.

— Karen Mapp (@karen_mapp) April 14, 2014

I’ve previously posted about the idea of a “parent camp,” and now have learned that there is a site full of resources to help people organize their own.

The site is called #PARENTCAMP: An Unconference For Parents & Educators, and here’s how it describes itself:

The ParentCamp experience, by design, is a hybrid “un-conference” opportunity for parents and teachers to come together and model the four core beliefs highlighted in Beyond the Bakesale. The experience levels the playing field, putting all stakeholders in a circle for actual, face-to-face discussion about what is best for kids. It’s important to understand the difference between a traditional conference and the un-conference feel we worked to bring to ParentCamp.

On Saturday, April 27, 2013, @KnappElementary hosted the first Parent Camp “unconference” for parents and educators. It’s called an unconference because the event relies upon the expertise and perspective of the entire room, not just the main presenter like the typical stand and deliver conference. Every adult within the session brings an important and unique perspective to contribute to sharing strategies and ideas to benefit student learning, teaching and parenting.

There are “discussion leaders” in each session who set the tone for collaborative dialogue led by teachers, parents, school and community leaders. Sessions are geared toward elementary, middle and/or high school parents.

Two recent posts by parents at other blogs both made the point that they are tired of having the focus of their conversations on measuring their children by numbers.

In What parents don’t want to hear at parent-teacher conferences, Journo Adviser says:

When my wife and I sat down at our daughter’s 5th grade parent-teacher conference last week, we hoped to get a sense that the teacher understood our daughter and her strengths and weaknesses. But we didn’t.

Instead, the teacher provided us with a litany of numbers and test results the school and the education-testing industry use to define our daughter and her education.

And, in EduSanity: The No Number Parent-Teacher Conference Challenge, Jason Endacott begins this way:

I met with my sons’ teachers yesterday for parent teacher conferences. Both of their teachers are amazing in their own unique ways, but they share a common love for young people that long ago convinced me that my boys were in good hands.

I started with Cooper’s second grade teacher and after exchanging the usual pleasantries, we sat down at the little table where my adult knees didn’t quite fit and I told her I wanted to issue a friendly challenge.

“Let’s discuss Cooper’s progress in your class without using a single number that you did not generate.”

I’m adding both to The Best Resources On Parent/Teacher Conferences.

A Recipe for Home Visits: 1 Afternoon, 2 Neighborhoods, 4 Families & Frijoles is a nice post by Jessica Cuthbertson.

Here’s an excerpt:

With the help of a multilingual colleague, a teacher workday, and a few phone calls, we visited four families in two different neighborhoods over the course of an afternoon. We intentionally selected families who were unable to make the last round of parent/teacher conferences; families we don’t see at school functions, not because they don’t care, but because of complicated work schedules or graveyard shifts, transportation issues, language barriers, or a combination of obstacles.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Learning About Teacher Home Visits.

Schools central to Promise Zone anti-poverty strategy is a good overview written up at Ed Source.

It also reflects the questions I have about how seriously the role of parent – and community — engagement has played — both at the original Harlem Children’s Zone and in the expansion program. As I’ve written before (you can see those posts in My Best Posts On The Harlem Children’s Zone & Other “Promise Zones”) they seem to often view families as “clients,” and not “partners.”

Here’s an excerpt from Valerie Strauss’ piece at The Washington Post:

The editorial board of a big-city newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, has gone on record as not only supporting the right of parents to have their children opt out of high-stakes standardized tests but also saying they are “right to protest” in this manner.

I’m adding it to The Best Posts On Parents “Opting-Out” Of Standardized Tests For Their Children.

3 Things Parents Wish Teachers Knew: We Can Handle the Truth is an interesting post at The New York Times by Jessica Lahey.

It’s worth a “read.”

Cartoons about Families and Schools is a fun collection over at Larry Cuban’s blog.

If you could use a laugh — and who can’t? — check them out!

Questioning Parental Involvement is an excellent short post by Walt Gardner at Education Week.

He provides some very good critiques of a new book and research about parent involvement that I posted about a few days ago — New Book & Research On Parent Involvement, & It’s Potentially Very Unhelpful.

Here’s an excerpt from his post:

Yet I wonder if using test scores as the primary basis for the study’s counterintuitive conclusion is misleading. Test scores certainly matter, but they do not allow valid inferences to be made about non-cognitive outcomes, which are every bit as important in the final analysis. For example, students may not perform well on standardized tests for a particular subject and yet still retain a lifelong love of the subject because of the attitude instilled in them by their parents. Conversely, students can post impressive test scores for a particular subject and hate the subject because of the excessive meddling by their parents.

8 Tips for Reaching Out to Parents is a very good list of suggestions by educator David Cutler that has been published by Edutopia.

Here is one of his suggestions:

6. Call Home to Report Good News

Parents rarely receive a positive call home. Twice a semester, I make a point to call and tell them how impressed I am with something their student did or said. It surprises me when parents nervously answer the phone, as if a student did something wrong. They are all the more relieved and proud when I have just good news to report. These calls let parents know that I care as much about recognizing success and improvement as I do about spotting struggle and weakness. These calls also reassure parents that I’m not out to make life more difficult for their child, that I’m fair in my assessments and feedback, and that I genuinely want to see students succeed.

I’m adding the entire post to The Best Sources Of Parent Engagement Advice For Teachers.

Anti-Bullying from the Parent’s Perspective is a useful post from Think Inclusive.

I’m adding it to The Best Resources — Specifically For Parents — On Bullying.

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.

You might also be interested in My Advice To Parents In “USA Weekend.”

Last week, I wrote about a Well-Intentioned, But Odd & Unworkable Effort To Incorporate Parent Involvement In New Jersey Teacher Evaluations.

Now, Education Week has written a piece on the same issue titled N.J. Lawmaker Wants Parent Involvement Included in Teachers’ Reviews.

Here’s a short excerpt that describe its possible impact:

It isn’t clear how (or whether) this information would affect the student-achievement component of students’ scores; the bill itself doesn’t say. But presumably, a teacher who had to deal with very uninvolved parents might get some kind of protection from a bad evaluation score.