Recently I attended the American Federation for Children’s policy summit in Washington, D.C. This event was an exciting, informative, two-day conference filled with panel discussions, keynote speakers such as Lisa Leslie and Mike McCurry, and networking opportunities with education reformers from all over the country. I left D.C. feeling similar to when I left the Foundation for Excellence in Education conference this past November. Invigorated. Energized. Hopeful.

But I also kept thinking these events should be experienced and enhanced, a thousand times over, by one very important, and missing, demographic.

Parents.

My background is important, but not necessarily the reason, why I want to see more parents at education conferences throughout the country. I have been a Democratic activist and community organizer for the last 25 years. I now organize parents for Step Up For Students. Perhaps that does influence my thoughts and opinions.

However, I remember suggesting more parental involvement after attending education conferences as a teacher. I simply expect more now. I expect parents to be included in every substantive event, conference, policy discussion, roundtable, and town hall meeting, and I’m routinely disappointed when they aren’t anywhere to be found.

Of course, many of the participants are parents as well as education reformers. We bring that passion for school choice from personal experiences. I can talk about years spent driving my children out of county to put them in a public school that worked for them and then utilizing scholarships a few years later when a private school better fit their needs.

But we should hear more stories from a diverse population of moms and dads.

At the AFC Conference, Dr. Alberta Wilson, president and CEO of Faith First Educational Assistance Corp. and consultant for Capstone Legacy Foundation, shared my concerns. At several sessions, she spoke from the audience to implore that more parents be included – at every level.

I caught up with her recently and asked her to elaborate. (more…)

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…)

One school made a calendar for parents, with a note like this one below every month’s Bible verse: Research says … the greater the parents’ involvement, the greater the academic achievement for the student.

Another organized a “scavenger hunt” for families, built around tips to help their kids succeed in school. The school usually considered an event a success if 10 parents showed up. The scavenger hunt drew more than 50.

These projects are small examples from a big effort – one fairly unique to both public and private schools, and which highlights an overlooked piece of the ed reform puzzle. For more than a year, Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that oversees Florida’s tax credit scholarship program for low-income students (and co-hosts the redefinED blog), has been quietly working with some of its partner schools to help them build better, deeper relationships with parents.

We're not talking about once-in-a-blue-moon spaghetti dinners. This effort is systematic and long term, led by each school and organically tailored to what it determines are its needs. The plan is for each school to constantly improve its ties with parents – and eventually, its student achievement - based on data the schools themselves will collect.

“Getting parents to be true partners is going to make the work (of teaching and learning) a whole lot easier,” said Carol Thomas, Step Up’s vice president of student learning. Schools in general have “put all of our eggs in one basket, trying to improve teachers and students. And we rarely looked at how we can improve partnerships with parents.”

There's a contrast here with the pitched battle over teacher quality in public schools. To maximize gains from teachers, the biggest in-school factor in student success, ed reformers are going at teachers unions over everything from pay and tenure to evaluations and seniority rights. The recent strike in Chicago, which paralyzed the nation’s third-largest school district for a week, was in large part over these issues. Meanwhile, the potential good that comes from energizing and engaging parents goes untapped.

The Step Up project began last year with 10 schools in Tampa. It’s expanding this year to include 16 more from Venice to Dunedin. Eventually, it will include Step Up partner schools anywhere in the state (more than 1,300 private schools accept tax credit scholarships) that are interested.

This week, the project took another step forward, with Step Up’s Office of Student Learning holding a two-day training session with about 40 representatives from two dozen schools. (more…)

Like other school choice programs where supply is overwhelmed by demand, the school district in Pinellas County, Fla. offers an option that causes plenty of joy and heartache. Some kids win the “fundamental school” lottery. Some kids lose. Some go on to the high-performing fundamentals, where they’re surrounded by peers with super-engaged parents. Others go to neighborhood schools that struggle mightily.

Are their outcomes different? Matthew Chingos, a respected researcher at the Brookings Institution, is aiming to find out.

Last week, the district agreed to give Chingos the data he requested so he could examine the impact of fundamental schools on math and reading scores. Once he gets the data, he expects to issue findings within a year, according to his research application.

His study is worth watching because it involves a school choice option offered by a school district, not by private schools or charter schools.

The fundamental schools in Pinellas stress parental involvement and student accountability. Students who fall short on academic, behavioral and dress code requirements can be reassigned to neighborhood schools. Ditto if their parents fail to meet requirements, including attending monthly meetings.

The 104,000-student Pinellas district created its first fundamental school in 1976, but expanded them rapidly in recent years. It now has more than 7,000 students in 10 full-fledged fundamental schools and two “school-within-a-school” fundamental high schools.

The schools boast some of the district’s highest test scores and lowest disciplinary rates. They also cause a fair amount of angst. (more…)

by Kelly Garcia

In early spring of my first year teaching at YES Prep West, a high-poverty charter school in Houston, my school director shocked me with a list. It contained the home addresses of more than 20 incoming students, and I had about three weeks to visit each one. The undertaking turned out to be massive – 30 hours, a couple tanks of gas, and a couple pit stops at McDonald’s to feed my student helpers.

Teacher visits to student homes are still rare. But in my case, it planted seeds for partnerships that helped my students succeed.

The first step was to call each family and request a meeting when the parents and incoming student were both available. I learned quickly that the language barrier was going to make this challenging. Most of the parents spoke only Spanish. With some conversational Spanish skills, I struggled through several calls, unsure of whether I had translated the meeting date correctly.

I weaved through Houston with another teacher in the passenger seat and two current students in the back. At each stop, we were offered a treat: tamarindo sodas, homemade tamales, even fresh tortillas. Families gathered with nervous excitement over the journey they were committing to. At most stops, my students guided the meeting, translating my words from English to Spanish. We explained what made YES Prep so special - that every student, faculty member and administrator is working towards ensuring that each student is accepted to a four-college upon high school graduation. We promised the incoming sixth graders and their families that we would work tirelessly toward that goal for all seven years. Just this short introduction was often enough to make some parents tear up.

Once the parents internalized the extent of their child’s journey, they were excited and motivated to commit to a list of responsibilities they had to agree to in order for their child to attend. This list wasn’t a breeze. The school had mandatory Saturday classes. It also required students who did not complete their homework to stay after 6 p.m. the next day to finish it. The parents would have to provide transportation even though many of them were working two jobs and caring for small children. And yet, I never met with a parent who did not sign off on their responsibilities list. Any cynic who says parents – especially low-income parents - don’t care about their child’s education has never been to one of these meetings. (more…)

From redefinED host Doug Tuthill: Today we begin a new feature at redefinED – an ongoing dialogue between myself (that's me pictured on the right) and John Wilson, who writes the Unleashed blog at Education Week. For the last 25 years, I’ve been one of Wilson’s biggest fans. I worked hard for John when he ran for president of the National Education Association in the late 1980s (we lost), and I’ve always respected the sincerity and dignity with which he conducts himself.  John is a passionate and intelligent advocate for children, teachers and public education - and he’s a gentlemen. So I was thrilled when John accepted my invitation to dialogue with me on redefinED about how best to improve public education. I’m looking forward to learning from John, and I’m hoping our exchanges will inject some more civility into our public discourse.  Our first installment is below.

Doug Tuthill: John, I was pleased to read your endorsement of customization on your blog recently. For readers who missed it, you wrote, “our citizens want choice. Parents want to choose the school that best fits their children. Let's not stifle this customization, but embrace it.” But I was especially intrigued when you wrote that we need to “stop the fragmentation and welcome charter schools back into the community and the conversation.” The charter school folks I know think they are in the community and think they are part of the conversation. So I was hoping you’d elaborate on what you meant.

John Wilson: Doug, I always start with my strong support for the institution of public schools. I believe public schools are the foundation of our democracy, best prepared to educate the masses, and the most strategic driver of the American economy. Public schools deserve necessary funding to accomplish their mission, and they must be relevant to the needs of that public. For the 21st century, that means customization to assure every child receives an education that prepares them for success. That means a willingness to collaborate with more appropriate providers that serve children but within the public school institution. Creating a hodgepodge of providers outside the public schools causes fragmentation and weakens our public schools. We have tried division; I want us to try addition.

Doug Tuthill: John, I share your belief that public education lies at the foundation of our democracy. Public education is responsible for helping ensure every child, regardless of economic class, ethnicity, disability or race, has an equal opportunity to succeed. This promise is what holds our democracy together, and while I doubt we’ll ever achieve full equality of opportunity, this ideal should always guide our work. (more…)

Editor’s note: Kelly Garcia, who is interning this summer with Step Up For Students, began teaching middle school last year in the Hillsborough school district.

One of my favorite responsibilities as a teacher at the YES Prep West charter school in Houston was the requirement to take small groups of students on field trips of my choice twice each year.

I fondly remember driving Ivan, Javier, Citlaly, Mercy and Frances to one of Houston’s most famous chocolate shops, The Chocolate Bar, where they indulged in gigantic pieces of chocolate cake and foot-long chocolate bars. These trips allowed me to expose my students to a piece of their home city that they had never experienced, and allowed them to show me a piece of themselves that I had never seen. The outings fueled my dedication to them.

Ninety-five percent of the students in the 10-school YES Prep system are Hispanic or African-American. Eighty percent are economically disadvantaged. And yet last month, YES Prep won the first-ever Broad Prize for public charter schools with the best academic performance.

I was not surprised. I was fortunate to have launched my career in education as a founding teacher at YES Prep West, then a brand-new school in the YES chain. (That's me and my class in the photo.) Here are some of the ways its system is different from traditional public schools – and, in my view, more successful.

Choosing the right people. YES has perfected the art of choosing the right people to put in their classrooms. In part because of the system’s reputation for success, thousands of applicants apply each year for a small number of teaching positions.

Applicants are weeded out by phone interviews with instructional leaders from various campuses, and by a sample lesson they teach to actual YES Prep students. School directors often invite the students to weigh in with their impression of a potential teacher, too. By the end of the application process, school leaders are left with high-caliber, hard-working, mission-driven people. YES teachers are committed to working incredibly long hours (usually 12-hour days without a true lunch break), answering cell phones in the evening to help students with homework, teaching Saturday school at least once a month and even conducting home visits for incoming students. (more…)