The Eight Ps of Parent Engagement - NEA Today

The Eight Ps of Parent Engagement - NEA Today

The Eight Ps of Parent Engagement

Big Education Ape: BACK TO SCHOOL: A parent’s guide to K-12 school success - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/08/back-to-school-parents-guide-to-k-12.html

Getting parents more engaged in school is a necessary variable in the equation of student success. In fact, parent engagement can have a direct impact on student engagement itself. Multiple studies prove that students whose parents are actively engaged in their schooling typically show the following:

• Higher grades
• Higher test scores
• Greater social skills
• Better reported behavior
• Easier adaptation to school
• Greater likelihood of continuing into post-graduate education

It’s only logical that involved parents positively impact student achievement. According to an NEA 2008 report, when schools, parents, and families work in partnership to support students, then those students succeed at a higher level. It’s also important to note that when a school engages more parents, all children benefit, according to a 1995 study called A Generation of Evidence: The Family is Critical to Student Achievement.

That’s great, Heather. You might be saying to yourself. But how? How do we engage parents in our schools when they themselves are busy and stressed and many are just struggling to get their students to school on time?

So I’ve developed what I’m calling The Eight Ps of Parent Engagement. These are meant to help guide a teacher or school or district in making outreach decisions to increase parent engagement.

Of course, it’s easy to know how to increase parent engagement, but it’s not as easy CONTINUE READING: The Eight Ps of Parent Engagement - NEA Today

John Thompson: OKCPS name conflicts do not help students

OKCPS name conflicts do not help students

OKCPS name conflicts do not help students

Only a couple of weeks before the scheduled start of its academic year, Oklahoma City Public Schools announced it was opening Putnam Heights Academy, the new home for the closed Seeworth alternative school program.

The same day, OKCPS board member Charles Henry, Rep. Ajay Pittman (D-OKC), Rep. Jason Lowe (D-OKC) and community leaders held a press conference condemning the school name change accompanying the closure of Northeast Academy and relocation of Classen SAS High School to the Northeast building. 

These conflicts come at the tail end of what Superintendent Sean McDaniel calls “an unbelievable lift to get schools ready so that our kids can enjoy that first day.” They also raise the question about what our community is really fighting over.

‘The culture and the name mean something’

It’s complicated, but these two battles boil down to a dispute over how patrons and communities express their love for their schools.

Given the challenges facing OKCPS, it makes no sense to argue over these deep emotional attachments for public schools. Such commitments should be seen as assets, not battlegrounds.

As the Oklahoman reported from Henry’s press conference, he argues: “It’s not fair for a CONTINUE READING: OKCPS name conflicts do not help students

The Great I Am | The Jose Vilson

The Great I Am | The Jose Vilson

THE GREAT I AM

The essential question: how can we reflect the changes we want to see in the world?

Because I don’t have students in front of me during the summer, I have time to ask myself existential questions that offer space for self-congratulations and self-flagellation. In Dominican culture, we laugh with friends and relatives about the accuracy of household weaponry like belts and sandals. It also taught me to be overly suspicious of where kudos come from and what vulnerability looks like. The crack and the slap call to ancestors in percussion and oppression, and my genes remember and remind, curdling my blood yet fortify my bones.

No more was this truer than two days ago at the NYC Panel for Education Policy meeting on July 31st, where dozens of attendees came to either support the Department of Education’s definition for culturally responsive / sustaining education or denounce Chancellor Richard Carranza’s very existence. Many of the supporters included an amalgam of citizens led by the Coalition for Educational Justice who proposed the definition as a first step towards interrogating our education system through the lens of our most marginalized and ignored citizens in our city.

While I won’t speak negatively about the detractors here, I felt it critical for me to be there. I sat with supporters in front of me, and with detractors filling up the rows behind me. As they began their “Fire Carranza” chants, I turned towards them and said, “We want textbooks in Cantonese, too! We want books in Mandarin, too! Don’t you think we should have characters that look like your children in the CONTINUE READING: The Great I Am | The Jose Vilson

What's New California Department of Education

California Department of Education

What's New California Department of Education

News Releases

• 
  
• New Media Literacy Resources Available Online
  Posted 07-Aug-2019
• New Multilingual Program Search on CDE Mobile App
  Posted 30-Jul-2019
• Closing the Achievement Gap Initiative Appointment
  Posted 15-Jul-2019
• New Report for College-Going Rates Announced
  Posted 11-Jul-2019
• Guide Educating English Learners with Disabilities
  Posted 03-Jul-2019

• Launch of Mobile App for CA School Dashboard
  Posted 02-Jul-2019
• New State Budget Increases to Education Funding
  Posted 01-Jul-2019
• Serving Nutritious Meals to Low-Income Families
  Posted 28-Jun-2019
• Thurmond Announces $1 Million Literacy Campaign
  Posted 25-Jun-2019
• Special Education Learning Award Winner
  Posted 21-Jun-2019

California Department of Education

First-Year Writing and the Gauntlet of Academic Citation | radical eyes for equity

First-Year Writing and the Gauntlet of Academic Citation | radical eyes for equity

First-Year Writing and the Gauntlet of Academic Citation

“How much we should emphasize academic citation in the first-year writing classroom has long been a matter of debate,” explains Jennie Young, director of the first-year writing program at University of Wisconsin at Green Bay. Then Young argues: “However, I’d like to take it one step further: I suggest that we stop teaching it entirely.”

I taught high school English for 18 years, much of that instruction focusing on teaching writing and preparing students for college. Since then, I have been a professor in higher education, including over a decade teaching (and briefly directing) first-year writing.

Photo by J. Kelly Brito on Unsplash

Young’s provocative and compelling proposal speaks to many of the problems I have experienced with teaching first-year writing as well as with providing faculty the guidance and support they need to teach first-year writing (and writing in general)—especially those faculty outside the CONTINUE READING: First-Year Writing and the Gauntlet of Academic Citation | radical eyes for equity

Pennsylvania Law Meant to Forbid Arming Teachers May Have Done Just the Opposite | gadflyonthewallblog

Pennsylvania Law Meant to Forbid Arming Teachers May Have Done Just the Opposite | gadflyonthewallblog

Pennsylvania Law Meant to Forbid Arming Teachers May Have Done Just the Opposite

Pennsylvania teachers, don’t forget to pack your Glock when returning to school this year.

A new law meant to close the door on arming teachers may have cracked it open.

Despite warnings from gun safety activists, the bill, SB 621, was approved by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Tom Wolf this summer.

The legislation explicitly allows security guards – independent contractors who are not members of law enforcement – to carry guns in schools if they go through special training.

And that’s bad enough.

Why you’d want glorified rent-a-cops with guns strapped to their hips running around schools full of children is beyond me.

That’s not going to make anyone safer. It’s going to do just the opposite.

But that’s not even the worst of it.

Commonwealth law already allowed for armed police and school resource officers in CONTINUE READING: Pennsylvania Law Meant to Forbid Arming Teachers May Have Done Just the Opposite | gadflyonthewallblog

CURMUDGUCATION: Ed Reform vs. Democracy

CURMUDGUCATION: Ed Reform vs. Democracy

Ed Reform vs. Democracy

It was not that long ago that I wrote a piece about how school choice, by shifting the locus of control for the education purse strings, tends to undermine democractic processes. After all, if only parents of school age children, or only rich folks who contribute to tax credit scholarships, get to decide which schools get paid, then the non-parent taxpayers who are footing the bills don't really have much say, and the duly-elected school board has nothing much to do or say, either. School choice is, often, literally taxation without representation (a topic that I could swear has come up before in US history).

Still, it's not always so subtle.

One of the most famously unsubtle incidents would be Reed Hastings (Netflix), who in 2014 told the California School Boards Association in fairly clear terms that elected school boards were a scourge and should be done away with. Hastings has been plenty active in the charter sector, managing to help push through the California law that not only did away with charter caps, but made it possible to run a chain of charters with just one (unelected) board.

But education reform has generally found democracy to be an obstruction. After all, if Bill Gates thinks he knows how to fix education, why should he have to run for some sort of public office when he can just grab power and finance cooperation? Much of ed reform has been powered by movers and shakers and corporate power guys who like (and undoubtedly feel justified by) the all-powerful CEO model. As Hastings once put it when discussing Netflix, "We’re like a pro sports team, not a kid’s recreational team. Netflix leaders hire, develop and cut smartly, so we have stars in every position."

These guys hate unions and government regulation for the same reason guys like Carnegie and Rockefeller hated them-- not just because they cost them money, but because they hampered their ability to be visionary leaders who could control all the elements of their business and make the corporation operate CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Ed Reform vs. Democracy

A Gift That Never Stops Giving–Being a Teacher* | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

A Gift That Never Stops Giving–Being a Teacher* | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

A Gift That Never Stops Giving–Being a Teacher*

I wrote this post five years ago and re-post it now as both children and youth get prepared for the next school year. And teachers –both rookies and veterans–gear up for 2019-2020.

A dear friend and I exchanged emails recently and she mentioned that she had heard from a student she had in 1960. She had taught in the New York area for a number of years before returning to graduate school but recalled with much warmth how fine a group of sixth graders she had that particular year. The then 11 year-old, now a grandma, had stayed in touch with my friend over the years. She had become a teacher and had just retired and was now writing about the adult lives of classmates.

I began thinking of the often unspoken psychic rewards that accrue (in business terms, I would call it: the return on investment) to experienced teachers who have had many groups of students pass through their classroom over the years and how some of those students (such as Steven Strogatz) make a point of visiting, writing, and staying in touch with their former teachers. Fortunately, that has happened to me when a few former students at Glenville High School in Cleveland and from Cardozo High School in Washington, D.C. have stayed in touch. Ditto from some former Stanford graduates. When letters or pop- in visits occur, I get such a rush of memories of the particular student and the class and the mixed emotions that accompany the memories. Teaching is, indeed, the gift that never stops giving.

Those former students who stay in touch over the years, I have found, attribute far too much to my teaching and semester- or year-long relationship with them. Often I am stunned by their recollections of what I said and did. In most cases, I cannot remember the incidents that remain so fresh in their memories. Nor had I tried to predict which of the few thousand high school students I have taught would have reached out to contact me, I would have been wrong 75 percent of CONTINUE READING: A Gift That Never Stops Giving–Being a Teacher* | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Jersey journalist roughed up at session sponsored by charter school groups |

Jersey journalist roughed up at session sponsored by charter school groups |

Jersey journalist roughed up at session sponsored by charter school groups

An independent New Jersey journalist was roughed up, his video camera was seized, and he was ejected from a New Brunswick conference sponsored by a number of pro-charter school organizations.

The incident involving Charles Kratovil of New Brunswick Today at last Saturday’s session of what was billed the “Fourth Annual New Jersey Parents Summit” was caught on tape. Kratovil said he was injured during the scuffle and will file criminal charges against a security guard for radio journalist April Ryan, a speaker at the conference. The tape shows Ryan assenting to the guard’s action against Kratovil shortly after she began to speak.

Charlie Kratovil

Another internet-based news organization– news franchise TAPInto–apparently did not consider interfering with the work of a journalist at a public event newsworthy. TAPInto reported on the speech that was interrupted by the incident involving Kratovill but did not mention the scuffle.

TAPInto has refused comment on its role (or lack of one) in the incident, apparently witnessed by its New Brunswick editor Chuck O’Donnell whose byline CONTINUE READING: Jersey journalist roughed up at session sponsored by charter school groups |

New Orleans’ Kennedy High School Grading Fiasco and Perforated Accountability | deutsch29

New Orleans’ Kennedy High School Grading Fiasco and Perforated Accountability | deutsch29

New Orleans’ Kennedy High School Grading Fiasco and Perforated Accountability

In all-charter New Orleans, New Beginnings Schools Foundation (NBSF) operates three charter schools in New Orleans, one of which is John F. Kennedy High School.

Kennedy is in the throes of an astounding fraud which resulted in almost 50 percent of its Class of 2019 being found to not have actually met state requirements for graduation. As a result, 87 out of 177 students who were allowed to participate in a graduation ceremony and who thought that they would receive diplomas discovered that they would not be receiving diplomas after all. In an effort to mop up this mess, the NBSF board offered post-haste summer school as an option that 53 of the affected seniors participated in. Mind you, this last-minute, thrown-together clean up effort put students who had been offered scholarships at a critical disadvantage because official, complete, state-approved high school transcripts were not available in May 2019, when the students supposedly/legitimately graduated.

It is now August 2019;  college/universty fall classes will soon begin, and the Kennedy seniors who participated in the alleged summer-school fixer still have not received copies of their transcripts. (For the extensive backstory and continuing saga, see here and here and here and here and here and here.)

On August 06, 2019, Nola.com reported on Kennedy student and parent efforts to require release of student transcripts via court order.

What is of particular importance in this all-charter arrangement is the fact that the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) (ironically renamed NOLA Public Schools) has no direct authority over those “public” schools to require the schools to release the transcripts. In this “portfolio model,” the school board is left out of any authority over ensuring school data integrity; the charter school deals directly with the state in delivering data, which is part of the problem since CONTINUE READING: New Orleans’ Kennedy High School Grading Fiasco and Perforated Accountability | deutsch29

BACK TO SCHOOL: A parent’s guide to K-12 school success

Big Education Ape: BACK TO SCHOOL: A parent’s guide to K-12 school success

BACK TO SCHOOL: A parent’s guide to K-12 school success

A parent’s guide to K-12 school success

click on picture

What Schools Can Do To Support Parents

• Recognize that all parents, regardless of income, education or cultural background, are involved in their children's learning and want their children to do well.

• Design programs that will support families to guide their children's learning,from preschool through high school.

• Develop the capacity of school staff and families to work together.

• Link activities and programs for families to improving student learning.

• Focus on developing trusting and respectful relationships among staff and families.

• Build families' social and political connections.

• Embrace a philosophy of partnership and be willing to share power.

• Make sure that parents, school staff, and community members understand that the responsibility for children's educational development is a collaborative enterprise.

• Build strong connections between schools and community organizations.

• Include families in all strategies to reduce the achievement gap between white, middle-class students and low-income students and students of color.

Everyone Loves Lists

Below you will find a couple of lists of things parents can do to "help" at school. Not all schools offer some of the things on the list, you can ask your child's teacher or principal if your school offers these opportunities to support your child at school. 

SUPPORT ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
• Read to students
• Serve as a guest speaker
• Donate newspapers for instructional programs
• Provide feedback on writing projects
• Assist in literacy programs
• Share science demonstrations
• Provide computer workshops
• Judge science fairs
• Share math in the workplace and the connection to school work
• Teach music
• Guide instrumental music practice sessions
• Provide choral music support
• Share dance skills and techniques
• Assist with choreography
• Design and coordinate murals
• Assist with set design
• Assist with costume design and production
• Provide apprentice programs
• Share photography expertise
• Support art and music appreciation
• Provide physical education coaching
• Assist with curriculum development to relate to life after high school
• Support student service learning and community service projects

SUPPORT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• Share industry and personal expertise
• Provide computer support
• Sponsor school retreats
• Sponsor health/CPR certification classes and clinics
• Provide venues and food for professional development meetings

JUMP START STUDENT CAREERS
• Conduct job seeker workshops – from resume writing to mock interviews
• Offer work place problem-solving skills
• Serve as consultants to students operating school-based enterprises
• Provide educational fieldtrips to your facility for students and staff
• Provide on the job training, mentorships and job training for students
• Create and support job shadow days
• Provide “job skills” workshops and seminars
• Provide entrepreneurial seminars and workshops

ENCOURAGE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT
• Display student art work in offices and lobbies
• Provide gift certificates, complimentary tickets, etc for academic success and improvement
• Establish attendance incentives
• Provide scholarships

TUTOR AND MENTOR
• Volunteer as tutors in all areas of the curriculum
• Provide assembly programs stressing good health, safety and character-building
• Provide mentors and tutors for specific students
• Provide personnel to facilitate “dialogue” for various student groups
• Develop apprentice programs
• Serve as a mentor in physical education
• Support study skill development
• Provide supportive services and personalization of the educational experience for students and parents
• Serve as model for life-long recreation, health and wellness

SUPPORT AND DONATE
• Sponsor uniforms and costumes, (Sports, Cheerleading, Drill Team, Theater, etc.)
• Donate audiovisual equipment and sound systems
• Donate books to the library
• Donate math, science, and language materials to laboratories
• Donate new curtains for school auditoriums
• Donate office supplies and surplus equipment
• Provide technical support to students and school staff
• Provide bus transportation or donate entrance fees for educational field trips
• Provide eyeglasses and doctor’s care for identified students
• Provide financial support to the PTSA or Booster Club
• Provide holiday enhancements including educational toys, books, or gift baskets
• Provide printing services for school newspapers, yearbooks, parent handbooks, and programs for special events
• Assist with organizing special school events
• Assist with organization/management  of  mandatory health exams
• Assist with Back-to-School programs
• Assist with year-end projects
• Provide shop tools
• Provide sewing machines
• Donate fabrics
• Serve  on a school Advisory Board
• Sponsor student “clubs” to develop leadership skills and promote interest in your industry
• Provide ongoing support for existing programs including Advancement Via Individual Determination –AVID, Math Engineering Science Achievement-MESA, College Ready
• Assist with field trips
• Commit to at least one hour per week for your employees to assist at schools

BEAUTIFY OUR CAMPUSES
• Paint identified areas of the school
• Plant and maintain school gardens
• Assist in setting up family school work days
• Design and paint school murals
• Commission artists for school beautification designs

ENGAGE OUR PARENTS
• Provide busses for family field trips
• Sponsor museum memberships
• Provide support to school site parent centers
• Provide tickets to museums, games, special events
• Provide leadership workshops
• Support English as a Second Language classes on the school site
• Provide parenting workshops
• Provide event planning workshops and professional development
• Fund parent newsletters
• Supply parent centers with desks, copiers, and supplies
• Donate food for parent meetings
• Provide direct event planning support
• Present at parent nights, speaking about the importance of education and the specific skills required in your industry

SUPPORT LITERACY
• Purchase new books or computers for school libraries
• Purchase shelving
• Volunteer as a librarian
• Assist students with research
• Provide support for or  matching funds for Wonder of Reading Libraries
• Sponsor school reading/literacy events

1. Share information with a student or class about a hobby.
2. Share information with a student or a class about a career.
3. Share information with students about a country you visited or lived in.
4. Tutor one or a small group of students in reading, math, or other area.
5. Help coach an athletic team.
6. Help check a student's written work.
7. Help put out a school or classroom newsletter (can also be done at home).
8. Help sew or paint a display.
9. Help build something (such as a loft in a classroom or new playground).
10. Help students work on a finalexhibition or project (can also be done at home or workplace).
11. Help answer the schools' phone.
12. Help plan a new playground for the school.*
13. Help plan a theme-based presentation for students.*
14. Help present a theme-based program for students.*
15. Demonstrate cooking from a particular country or culture to students.*
16. Share a particular expertise with faculty (such as use of computers, dealing with disruptive students).
17. Help students plan and build an outdoor garden or other project to beautify the outside of the school.
18. Help coach students competing in an academic competition (such as Odyssey of the Mind, Future Problem Solving, Math Masters).
19. Help bring senior citizens to school to watch a student production.
Help arrange learning opportunities in the community.


1. Help set up an internship or apprenticeship for a student at your business, organization, or agency.*
2. Host a one-day 'shadow study' for one or a small group of students about your career in business or some other organization.
3. Go on a local field trip with a teacher and a group of students.
4. Go on an extended (3-5 day) cross-country field trip with a teacher & students.*
5. Contact a particular local business or organization regarding possible cooperation.*
6. Help to create a natural area outside the building where students can learn.
Serve on an advisory or decision-making committee.
7. Serve on the school-wide site council.
8. Serve on a school committee that reports to the site council.
9. Serve on a district committee representing the school.
10. Serve as an officer in the school's PTA.
11. Help organize a parent organization for the school.
12. Help design a parent and or student survey for the school.
13. Help conduct and or tabulate results of a parent survey regarding the school.
Share information or advocate for the school.
14. Serve as a member of a 'telephone tree' to distribute information quickly.
15. Write a letter to legislators about the school.
16. Write a letter to school board members about the school.
17. Go to a school board meeting to advocate for the school.
18. Go to another school to provide information about this school.
19. Help design a brochure or booklet about the school.
20. Help translate information from the school into a language other than English.
21. Help translate at a parent-teacher conference for people who don't speak English well.
22. Provide transportation to a parent-teacher conference for a parent who needs a ride.
23. Write an article for publication in a magazine about the school's activities.
24. Help arrange for a political leader (mayor, city council, state representative, member of Congress) to visit the school.
Increase financial resources available to the school.
25. Help write a proposal that would bring new resources to the school.
26. Donate materials to the school.
27. Arrange for a business or other organization to donate materials to the school.
28. Help with a fundraiser for the school.
Help other parents develop their parenting skills.
29. Help teach a class for parents on ways they can be stronger parents.
30. Help produce a videotape for parents on ways they can be more effective parents.
31. Help write, publish, and distribute a list of parenting tips."

BE CREATIVE AND PROVIDE YOUR UNIQUE SUGGESTIONS!
These lists are not copyrighted; readers may reproduce them for their own use.

On The Web a Wonderful Resource: 


Engaging Parents In School… | Going Beyond Parent "Involvement" - http://engagingparentsinschool.edublogs.org/

Big Education Ape: BACK TO SCHOOL: A parent’s guide to K-12 school success