The Cobb County School Board is considering a member’s suggestion that if a parent doesn’t attend a teacher conference, then the parent could be banned from attending their child’s graduation.
Here’s a news report on the proposal:
This is a definite addition to The Worst Parent Engagement Ideas.
How Do We Increase Involvement Among Parents Who Are Already Overwhelmed? is the title of my newest ten minute BAM! Radio podcast.
I talk with Mai Xi Lee and Darcy Hutchins about the topic, and I’ll be publishing their written responses on Sunday at my Education Week Teacher blog.
A Sacramento TV news station did this great short segment on the Parent-Teacher Home Visit Project.
I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Teacher Home Visits and to The Best Videos On Parent Engagement.
21st Century School Libraries, Parent Engagement and Student Achievement is the title of an interactive video that the Ontario Library Association has created.
Here’s how they describe it:
[The video] empowers parents to support school libraries and thus encourage reading engagement and information literacy with their children. It contains information on how parents can support libraries in their child’s school, and resources that can help to plan literacy-based events for children, including lunchtime book clubs and family literacy events.
Here’s a video about a parent training program in Kentucky.
You can learn more about it in this short piece at Education Week.
Harvard’s Family Involvement Network Of Educators did a Webinar today on Using Leadership to Promote Strengths-Based Family Engagement, and they have made it available for free on-demand viewing.
Chicago Teachers Union urges parents to oppose standardized tests for young kids is an article in the Chicago Sun-Times about a teacher/parent campaign against the pressure of standardized tests:
I’m adding it to The Best Posts On Parents “Opting-Out” Of Standardized Tests For Their Children.
Hidden Causes of Low Parental Engagement in Urban Schools and What to Do About It is the topic of a new short episode at BAM Radio.
There’s a good discussion on the program, though I suspect that readers of this blog aren’t going to learn anything new. A couple of the positive comments about using charter schools as a model seem a bit simplistic and don’t recognize the “creaming” aspects of those schools. Nevertheless, I think it’s worth listening to….
By the way, I wasn’t able to get the site to play the audio in Firefox, but it worked fine in Chrome.
I’ve previously posted about Educate Our State, a parent organization here in California.
Though I’ve sometimes disagreed with them, I think it’s a good group with potential. Here’s their latest video:
I’m adding this video to The Best Posts On Parents “Opting-Out” Of Standardized Tests For Their Children:
The PBS News Hour has just done a segment titled Parents study up on how to improve college prospects for their children. I’ve embedded the video below, and you can also read the transcript at this link. In addition, they published a blog post about it.
This “Parent College” sounds fine, though it does seem to have the same shortcomings of other parent academies that I’ve pointed out at My Best Posts On Parent “Academies” & “Universities.”
What I find most useful about the PBS report, though, was their discussing a recent study on parent engagement that was new to me. It’s called Does capital at home matter more than capital at school? Social capital effects on academic achievement and I’m adding it to “The Best Research Available On Parent Engagement.”
One of the few good things that have come out of this year’s NBC Education Nation is a short segment on the work of the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project.
Here’s the video (you can find the transcript here):
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I’m adding it to:
Not content with having one movie about the parent trigger flop, proponents are now unveiling another.
We The Parents is a new documentary about the failed Parent Revolution effort to use the parent trigger in Compton, California. Thanks to Alexander Russo, I’ve embedded the video below. Here’s what Variety says about the movie:
“We the Parents” usefully focuses on a few impassionated mom-activists — who encounter surprising hostility from some other parents, as well as bureaucrats — while including input from various public office-holders, journalists and other outside viewpoints. Yet notably, no McKinley teachers are interviewed (were they really so incompetent? What systemic factors were they up against?), and the film doesn’t address the accusations of union busting that Parent Revolution stirred.
We The Parents – Trailer from James Takata on Vimeo.
You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Learning Why The Parent Trigger Isn’t Good For Parents, Kids Or Schools.
I’ve often posted about my concerns related to the parent “leadership” trainings many school districts offer. Today, Education Week ran an article about a parent university program in Middletown, Connecticut which certainly seems to get beyond they typical topics covered by programs of this kind (I wonder if it’s just a coincidence that there seems to be a similar program nearby in New Haven?).
You can read more about the Middlesex County Parent Leadership Training Institute here. And here’s a video about the program:
Here’s a short clip from what I believe is President Obama’s first State of The Union address. It could be a useful video to show at the beginning of parent meeting to initiate a discussion — perhaps parents could introduce themselves and share their experience of doing one of the things the President mentions.
I have the transcript below the video.
In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a parent — for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, read to their child. I speak to you not just as a President, but as a father, when I say that responsibility for our children’s education must begin at home. That is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. That’s an American issue.
I’ve previously posted about Debbie Pushor, who has developed her own perspective on the differences between parent “engagement” and “involvement” (you can see my descriptions of the two in chart form here).
Here’s a short video summary someone has done on one of her articles: