Fox 13, a TV station in Tampa, Fla., did a nice piece this week about a unique partnership that shows how much and how fast education is changing. It’s between Khan Academy and Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers Florida’s tax credit scholarship program for low-income kids (and, full disclosure, co-hosts this blog). The story focused on Gateway Christian Academy, one of 10 private schools that accept scholarship students and volunteered to join the effort.
Like other partnership schools, Gateway Christian is holding “Khan Nights” to show parents how Khan Academy works, how the school is incorporating it into its curriculum and how it can make a difference for their children. As you’ll see from the clip, it’s using this technology, and reeling in a diverse group of moms and dads, all so it can maximize the academic outcomes for its kids.
As we wrote a few months back, the Khan Academy/Step Up venture is only one of a handful that Khan Academy has established with school districts nationwide, and the only one outside of California that involves a network of private schools. The way we see it, it’s a beautiful marriage between school choice and the latest learning tools, with a heavy dose of parental engagement thrown in. Thanks, Fox 13, for giving your viewers a peek at the future.
If schools want parents and caregivers to chaperone field trips and cook hot dogs at the fall carnival, then a parental involvement plan should be their course of action. However, if schools want those same parents and caregivers to actively participate in decisions regarding their child’s success in school, then their best bet is a parental engagement plan.
Involvement vs. engagement. I have often been asked, “What’s the difference? Aren’t these two terms interchangeable?” To draw a comparison that resonates with many of my colleagues, I point to the time in our lives where a personal relationship moved from “being involved with a significant other” to becoming engaged. Being involved in a relationship usually meant we did things together, but steered away from “counting on each other” or the promise to share the ups and downs of life. With engagement came the commitment to making the relationship a success, with listening to each other critical and compromise inevitable.
So it is with parents in our schools. Schools with parent involvement plans direct their parents; they tell them what to do. Schools engaging their parents, on the other hand, establish two-way communication and believe compromise is essential.
At Step Up For Students, we’re focusing on engagement.
Over the last year, we’ve worked with 10 partner private schools, providing tools and strategies to help them better understand their responsibility for creating a culture that establishes and sustains parent-school partnerships. We know engaging families in all aspects of their children’s education yields positive results. So the staffs at these schools are actively engaged in learning with and from each other, sharing and reflecting as they identify and establish processes, conditions and structures needed to meet their goals.
Now in the second year of our work, we are supporting teachers and administrators as they learn how to engage in intentional study of their relationships. Educators identify significant elements of the partnership with parents, frame questions they want to study, consult relevant research, implement changes, collect and analyze both quantitate and qualitative data – and then codify their study to share with other educators. We’ve also expanded the effort this year and now have 28 schools on board.
The difference between “involvement” and “engagement” isn’t hair splitting. Quite simply, involvement is more of a “doing to” the parent while engagement is a “doing with.” Engagement establishes the need to listen first, asking thoughtful questions to better understand the assets and strengths of the family. (more…)
A few months ago, 13-year-old ninth-grader Giovanni Munnerlyn was in a public middle school in Tampa, Fla., being shuffled from one math class to another. He felt like giving up on the subject. His mom felt helpless. But last night, he and Mom (shown here) sat side by side in the computer lab at his new school, Gateway Christian Academy, taking on numbers that used to be his nemesis.
On the screen in front of him, math problems adding fractions were being served up by Khan Academy, the California-based phenomenon that is turning heads with its educational videos.
“Find the common denominator,” Giovanni said softly to himself before typing in an answer. The Khan Academy’s response: Smiley face. Giovanni squeezed his hand into a victory fist.
This little moment in a little school reflects a bigger project helping kids like Giovanni.
The new school year marks the beginning of a partnership between Khan Academy, which has drawn flattering coverage from “60 Minutes” and The New York Times, and Step Up For Students, the Florida nonprofit that administered 40,000 scholarships last year to low-income students. If I could narrate this story like Sal Khan narrates one of his videos, I’d say in his calming, authoritative voice, “Cutting-edge technology … plus school choice … equals more opportunity for low-income kids.” I’d use one of Khan's colored pens to underline the word “opportunity.”
The venture is one of only a handful that Khan Academy has forged with school systems nationwide. It’s the only one in the Tampa Bay area, and it’s the only one outside of California with a private school network. The pilot involves math instruction at 10 private schools in the Tampa area, all of which accept tax credit scholarships.
Khan Academy’s interactive tools, including thousands of short, engaging videos, are available for free to anyone who wishes to use them. But the partnership schools get additional materials so their teachers can even more effectively pinpoint where students are falling short – and then efficiently get them up to speed.
For schools in the Step Up partnership, there’s also a parental engagement piece. (more…)
