Building Connections to Improve Student Learning

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Building Connections to Improve Student Learning

• A Presentation to
• PATL
• November 2001

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The State Boards Priority

• Strong Family, Community, and Business Support
• Comprehensive and aligned system of support for
  the academic success and general well-being of
  all children that promotes
• Meaningful involvement in schools
• Interagency collaboration for health, nutrition,
  and social services, and
• State and Local partnerships
• A system to build the capacity of local districts
  to create, respond to, and sustain meaningful
  partnerships

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Why Should You Care?

• The factors parents most control about schooling
• student absenteeism
• reading in the home
• amount of TV watching
• Accounts for 90 of the difference in 8th grade
  math scores on NAEP

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Why Should You Care?

• If every parent spent 5 hours a week reading to
  or with a child, or helped with schoolwork, that
  would equal to about 8.7 billion additional hours
  of academic support for children, equaling a
  dollar investment in excess of 230 billion
  additional dollars

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Why Should You Care?

• Lifetime earning differences for a high school
  graduate from a dropout is approximately
  200,000
• Lifetime earning differences for a college
  graduate from a high school graduate is
  approximately 1,000,000

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Research says...

• Family involvement matters. Efforts to improve
  student outcomes are much more effective if the
  efforts encompass the students family

• When parents are involved both at home and in the
  school, children do better in school, and they
  attend better, and they stay.

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Research says...

• When parents are involved in their childrens
  schools, the children end up attending better
  schools.
• Well-planned family/ school partnerships foster
  high student achievement

• Children function best when their parents are
  enabled to
• teach them
• support them
• advocate for them
• make decisions for them

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Research says...

• Families, schools, and community organizations
  all contribute to student achievement the best
  results come when all three work together.

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Three Things are Clear
Parents from all walks of life want their
children to succeed
Every principal and superintendent I know is
absolutely committed to making good educational
decisions on behalf of children. Ive NEVER heard
a single one say that their purpose that day was
to destroy the life of a single kid.
Every teacher Ive ever encountered, even the
mediocre ones, have a sense that they can break
through to most any kid, given enough time and
opportunity.
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So, if its so good...

• Schools often discourage involvement,
  participation, and meaningful engagement.
• People in schools are busy and dont have time
  to build these partnerships
• School people are not terribly public
  people. We dont even like another teacher in
  our rooms when were teaching.
• Most teachers and principals have
  little training on how to make parent
  involvement work positively, so they avoid it.
• Many of our actual experiences with
  parents has been negative or about negative
  things, so we like to avoid them as well.

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So, if its so good...

• School people and parents have different views of
  what involvement really means.
• Most teachers and administrators prefer
  a somewhat distant advisory role where the
  educators have the power to smile and ignore.
• We like our parents to be compliant.
  We dont like a lot of boat-rocking. After all,
  we are the professional educators.
• Parents get involved for other
  reasons, mostly to help their child, and as a
  frequent consequence, other children.
• They like to advocate positions, and
  even help make critical decisions. After all,
  thats what they do in the rest of their lives.

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So, if its so good...

• The school is not terribly invitational to
  parents, particularly as children get older.
• We constantly bemoan our inability to
  talk with the parents we most need to talk
  with, but we insist that this be done basically
  on our terms and within our time schedules.
• Sometimes, they are intimidated by us
  and the presence we bring. For many parents who
  were poor students themselves, the thought of a
  conversation with someone with a title like Dr.,
  or a reputation for toughness is not benign.
• Often, we act in condescending ways,
  thinking were bringing our knowledge base down
  to their level of understanding.

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So, if its so good...

• Changing demographics and employment patterns are
  complicating the development of these
  partnerships.
• Cultural diversity, for all the
  richness and value it provides, can place
  parents and teachers at crossed-cultural
  purposes. Often, the cultural barriers are
  roadblocks that neither the school or the
  parent has yet learned to overcome.
• The presence of dual-worker families
  is more commonplace than ever before. For the
  poor, dual working families are often
  accompanied by one or more parent working a
  second job. None of those conditions
  facilitates effective school-family partnering.

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So, what can you do?

• Make partnerships a priority
• We in schools cannot do it all we dont have the
  resources
• Include it in your mission statement, then train
  to make the mission statement real

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So, what can you do?

• Planning counts.
• Define what the partnership means.
• Define what roles and responsibilities will be
  assigned.
• Do assessments to determine where the parent
  resources can do the most good.
• Make sure everyone is doing worthwhile things.

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So, what can you do?

• Provide proactive and persistent communications.
  People want to know whats going on.
• Academic information
• Student progress
• Web Sites
• Web Portals
• Call for advice
• Show off

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So, what can you do?

• Be specific. Personalize communications
  occasionally. Parents like to know that you know
  their kid.
• Send good news
• Anticipate concerns before they become problems.
• Know your kids

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So, what can you do?

• Be positive about these partnerships. The
  alternative is just ugly.
• As leaders, you are the climate creators. When
  others see you embracing school-family
  partnerships, and when you speak about their
  value, others will listen.

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