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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Engaging Parents In School… - The Worst Parent Engagement Ideas

Engaging Parents In School… - The Worst Parent Engagement Ideas:

The Worst Parent Engagement Ideas

I’ve posted a lot about good parent engagement/involvement ideas, but sometimes you can learn just as much from looking at bad examples. You can see lots of good ideas at all my parent engagement-related “The Best” lists here.

Here are my choices for The Worst Parent Engagement Ideas:

Putting Parents in Charge is a condescending NY Times column on parent engagement that was written by Peg Tyre. Among other things, she talks about how parents aren’t “sophisticated” enough to truly know what a good school is because often times they will pick ones with “low academic achievement” — and that’s usually a code phrase for low test scores. Excuse me — perhaps many parents know that there is far more to getting a good education than being able to do well on a multiple choice standardized test! She calls for “substantive training