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VII. We believe:
Parents and guardians are an untapped powerhouse poised
to help schools, according to the SALT Survey.
SALT SURVEY FINDINGS ABOUT PARENT CONTACT
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Teacher
Responses from the SALT Survey |
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Few schools have invested in creating a strong
home-school connection The pattern of parental involvement stair-stepping down
from elementary to the high schools indicates increasing
parental disengagement as children proceed through their
schooling. Though research is unequivocal about the
positive impact of parental involvement on student
achievement, RI schools, for the most part, have not
been very creative about tapping into this stakeholder
resource.
In some cases, the relationship between the schools and
home is distinctly strained. Parents often express
feeling unwelcome at schools, and schools often express
exasperation with parents who are sometimes demanding,
unreasonable or uninformed about education’s protocols.
Some schools only contact the parents when the child is
in trouble academically or has done something wrong. The
hurried parent-teacher conferences or annual Open Houses
are not nearly enough either to give parents a clear
idea of what’s happening with their children at school
or to engage their support or help for the school more
generally.
In the 2000 SALT survey, almost 90% of the parents who
responded reported that they could spend more than 15
minutes a night helping their child with homework, if
they knew what to do.
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The
Commissioner emphasizes: |
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Many parents need clear guidance as to what the school
needs from them – reasonable bedtime, a place to study,
monitoring homework completion – and schools need to be
clear with parents about what can and cannot be expected
of them. |
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We
recommend: |
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Work with the parents to create clear mutual
expectations. Some schools have begun to sit down with parent
representatives to draft a home-school contract in which
basic expectations are laid out, for both the parents
and the school. If and when problems arise regarding the
child coming to school not full ready to learn – she’s
under-slept, anxious, consistently without completed
homework – these “contracts” give the parents warning
and the school some ground on which to stand while
inquiring into the reasons for this lack of readiness. |
By the same token, districts need to support the
schools, the children and their families by organizing
some system of social-service referrals – for health
care, employment, conflict management, etc. See page 28
for examples of how Child Opportunity Zones (COZs) have
been helpful to the larger school community. Lately the
United Way is initiating “Community Schools,” which are
like COZs in many respects, but use the school buildings
themselves as a community center open beyond school
hours for services and activities of interest to the
larger community as well as the students and their
families. The Newport Family Partnership has over a
decade of experience organizing a wide variety of social
services into ‘one-stop-shops’ in their Human Services
Mall (middle school), Student Activities Center (high
school) and now the COZ at Sullivan Elementary School.
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We
recommend: |
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Creating robust home-school communication is a critical
first step.
Clear, regular communication – not merely report cards
and complaints when the child is a problem – harness
both the child and the family’s motivation to succeed
academically.
That most teachers do not have easy access to a phone is
a significant barrier to fluid home-school contact.
Schools need to make sure their teachers are equipped,
somehow, to contact the home at the first signs of
problems – missed homework, change in mood – as well as
hopeful signs of improvement or engagement. All teachers
need easy access to phones, e-mail or both.
Computer technology is an invaluable tool for enhancing
home-school connections.
Some schools have collected their parents’ e-mail
addresses to put out announcements that would otherwise
get lost in the bottom of backpacks. Especially as
children move to secondary school and are not faithful
about handing their parents notices and communications
from the teacher, parents lose touch with both the
activities of the school and their child’s progress.
Increasingly, schools and teachers are using e-mail and
public web sites to communicate with parents about
student issues, but even more should. Low-income parents
whose schools are using e-mail or web-based homework
postings are more inclined to sign up for one of the
many free e-mail services and use the public library
computers, if necessary.
But nothing will replace face-to-face contact with
parents, and schools need to strategize how best to use
the parents’ skills as volunteers in the building, as
community spokespersons and, most important, as partners
in a team approach to both the child’s learning and the
overall improvement of the school. |
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The
Commissioner recommends: |
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Every home should be contacted sometime between August
15th and Columbus Day. The school should take the
responsibility to establish a contact person at the
school for every child and begin early in the year
forging the home-school connection. In secondary
schools, the obvious point of contact would be the
child’s advisor. |
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We
recommend: |
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Getting active, non-token parent involvement in school
governance requires creativity and flexibility regarding
the time of the SIT meetings. Too often parents are invited to sit on School
Improvement Teams (SIT) but are unable to participate
fully because meetings are held in the middle of most
people’s work days. Some schools have substantially
increased active parental involvement by shifting the
meeting times to the late afternoon or early evening.
While parents do come and go as their children grow
older and move on, a strong parent presence in school
governance tightens the connection with the school’s
larger community, helps the school to be responsive to
its unique population, and often creates access to
resources only members of the community would know
about. |
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We
recommend: |
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Engage more parents with choice.
Since the introduction of RI’s public charter school law
in 1995, the ability for parents to shop among several
schools and choose the one they feel is right for their
children has expanded slightly each year. The growing
awareness and desire for school choice might also be
responsible for districts’ creating more alternatives to
traditional school settings for those students who do
not thrive in conventional schools. The charters have
long waiting lists, and the participation in both
home-schooling and private schooling is growing
modestly. The parents appear to be waking to the need or
desire to find “best fits” between their children and
particular schools.
For quite some time, research has not supported
“cookie-cutter” education that provides the same program
to all children. Offering parents choices for how to
school their children, whether in different settings or
in alternative programs housed in a mainstream school
building, engages parents around the quality of their
child’s education at the outset. The development of
alternatives and choices honors the fact that different
children thrive in different settings and maximizes the
possibilities of success for all children. |
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The
Commissioner concludes: |
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We know how to improve schools.
Examples of significantly improved schools are right
here in RI. But in the coming years, all school
stakeholders need to accept responsibility for seeing
that improvements are implemented throughout the state –
no more blame, no more asserting that it can’t be done,
no more acting as if the work is someone else’s
obligation.
RI has a long, strong tradition of local control, which
is underscored by RI’s heavy reliance on property taxes
to finance education. Only four states are more reliant
on local dollars – New Hampshire, Illinois, Nevada and
New Jersey – three of which are often in court over
inequities in school funding. As a state, RI has
asserted itself with the locals by setting proficiency
standards and mandating assessments; except in two urban
districts, the locals still pay the lion’s share of the
per pupil expenditure. He who pays the piper calls the
tune, so some locals have not wholeheartedly embraced
the state goals for their own children.
Using RI’s now-mature data, the state is making
precisely the kinds of judgment calls it was asked to
make by the 1997 school-reform legislation, creating a
new tension with local districts. The information system
has revealed specific breakdowns in certain schools’ and
districts’ functioning. Lack of personalization,
structures that weaken leadership, inflexibilities,
inadequate training and so on can no longer be written
off to the challenges of the children themselves. We
know that certain schools are more effective with some
subgroups of children than others. They do business
differently and while the data do not tell us fully what
they do – what math program, remedial support or
literacy initiative – the information does have the
power to point us to specific successes as well as
failures.
If we know what works, who is responsible to see that
we’re doing what works much more often? The state, the
district, the community, the parents, the unions?
We know, for example, that certain children are getting
adult attention in school and some aren’t, and we know
that the availability of such attention is largely due
to how the schools are structured. Scheduling or
room-assignment practices can get in the way of
organizing ‘personalized’ education. Who is responsible
for making the changes? Who is responsible if they are
not made?
Even if all stakeholders train their attention on
improving student achievement, reaching RI’s goal of
100% proficiency for all students will be plenty
challenging. From the State House to the classroom, the
truth is that everyone is responsible. Going forward we
can brook no excuses.
We know how to improve schools. We have excellent data
to help schools improve themselves. Now we have to
muster the will.
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