Research consistently shows that family engagement in learning positively affects a range of student outcomes, including grades, behavior, enrollment in higher level programs, graduation, and college attendance. Families and teachers want children to succeed, and working together, they can provide the supports necessary for student success. In this month’s issue brief, Core Education focuses on Read more about March Issue Brief: Family Engagement[…]
Learning Heroes’ sixth annual national survey dives deeply into the beliefs and perceptions of parents, teachers, and principals. Some of its findings: Parents want to be as involved or even more involved in their children’s education. Safety should be a top priority in school, followed by academic progress, mental health, and emotional well-being. And what Read more about What Parents Are Thinking[…]
During the 2020-21 school year, schools and families learned in particularly dramatic ways that they can’t effectively support students without being in partnership with one another. Every family faced its own unique challenges navigating distance learning, and many schools had to create new family communication strategies on the fly. While school-driven efforts have been Herculean, Read more about Family Engagement Reimagined: Innovations Strengthening Family-School Connections to Help Students Thrive[…]
Most existing school accountability systems do not give leaders—especially those at the local level—a recipe to follow that leads to better outcomes for students. That is, accountability systems are too often designed without critical information about the component parts and the most effective step-by-step process for education stakeholders to follow in order to reach the Read more about The Education Data that Matter Most to Parents and School Stakeholders[…]
Community, collaboration, and relationships have become more important than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the country, many school districts have embraced this opportunity to rethink how to engage with families and the surrounding community. We know that family and community engagement is critical for lasting improvement in schools and school systems; it is linked Read more about Rising Together: How Four Districts are Building Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic[…]
Writing for Brookings, Rebecca Winthrop explores the power of parent engagement in the transformation of schools. Excerpts from the piece appear below: School closures and remote learning have propelled children’s ability to learn independently to the forefront of every busy and stressed out parent’s wish list. This ability, often described by education experts as “student Read more about New forms of parent engagement as an education game changer post-COVID-19[…]
What may be possible for education on the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic? It is hard to imagine there will be another moment in history when the central role of education in the economic, social, and political prosperity and stability of nations is so obvious and well understood by the general population. Now is Read more about Beyond reopening schools: How education can emerge stronger than before COVID-19[…]
Building trust is a major theme of Stand for Children’s free, new guidebook, Preventing a Lost School Year, which was created to help district leaders plan for academic and social-emotional learning in the coming school year. The 2019-2020 school year was severely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and, without the right preparation and intervention, the Read more about Preventing a Lost School Year[…]
When teachers visit families at home and ask, “What are your hopes and dreams for your child,” chronic absenteeism goes down, test scores go up, and teachers change their own mindsets. Studies from Johns Hopkins University and RTI International evaluated Parent Teacher Home Visits model in use in 700 communities in 27 states & D.C. Read more about Trio of Studies Confirms Benefits from Teachers’ Visits to Students’ Homes[…]
Imagine this: A community comes together to set a vision for its public schools. In local libraries, neighborhood associations, school cafeterias, and places of worship, families sit down together and share their hopes and dreams for their children. They think about what schools need to do to better equip students for college, career, entrepreneurship, and Read more about Walking Together: A Practical Guide for Strengthening Partnerships Between Schools, Families, and Communities[…]
Recently, in Fordham’s Flypaper, Michael Petrilli reflects on the outcomes we should be seeking as a result of school reform. He asks if parental satisfaction is really enough. Excerpts from the article appear below: If parental satisfaction is all we’re after, it shouldn’t be terribly hard to achieve. Polls find that most parents are already Read more about Is parental satisfaction enough?[…]
There is a communication gap that creates a significant disconnect in how parents think their children are doing in school versus reality. In its second national survey, Learning Heroes found that 9 in 10 parents think their children are performing at or above grade level in math and reading — but results from the National Read more about 90% of Parents Think Their Kids Are on Track in Math & Reading[…]
The stakeholder engagement provisions in ESSA (the Every Student Succeeds Act) will fundamentally alter how education policy is made. If implemented as intended, it will ensure that the expertise of the parents, educators and other leaders working with, and on behalf of, students every day informs the development of state and local policies and practices. Read more about Stakeholder Engagement: Challenges and New Practices[…]
The Education Trust-West has launched a new tool for advocates to use when discussing educational equity with parents, educators, students, and other community members. This new tool provides presentation materials, a video, logistical recommendations, and a facilitation guide so that advocates across the country can lead Data Equity Walks. Data Equity Walks are 45-90 minute Read more about Data Equity Walk Toolkit: A New Approach to Community Engagement[…]
Robin Lake of the Center on Reinventing Public Education has offered six education policy ideas that just may get us through the presidential transition. Excerpts of her piece appear below: Polarization was the theme of 2016, and we’d be kidding ourselves to think that will be much different in 2017. Still, there has rarely been Read more about Six Unifying Education Policy Ideas for 2017[…]
A new national survey reveals large disconnects between how well parents believe their children perform academically and their actual performance. It also finds that parental aspirations for their child to go to college are much higher than data on the percentage of children who get to and through college. Results from the survey, which was Read more about Disconnect Between Parents’ Perceptions of Child’s Performance Versus Achievement Data[…]