Partnering Parents with Education

Education Week highlights a new publication, Promising Partnership Practices 2012, with 92 ways schools are partnering with parents and community.  The publication is for sale but individual stories are available as PDFs for free. 
  • "Me 2! Getting Parents into Middle School," explains how Park Middle School in Kennewick, Wash., created the expectation that parents would volunteer for two hours a year at the school. The campaign included tracking progress on the 1,800-hour goal and "talking up" the expectation with students.

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  • "The A.S.P.I.R.E. Survey" is used at Bassick High School in Bridgeport, Conn., to find out what talents volunteers can share with students. More than 160 parents and community partners have gone through the small-group sessions to identify their skills and talents, which are matched to the needs and requests of teachers, administrators, and students.

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  • At Scott Elementary School in Naperville, Ill., 350 students and their parents made it through a week without television—an experience that is detailed in "Survivor Week: National TV Turnoff Week."

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  • "Life Happens," a Norwich (Conn.) Technical High School program that offered a series of monthly teen-centric seminars, coupled with programs for parents at a different time. Students responded to surveys to see what subjects they wanted covered, then doctors, nurses and Ph.D.s from a local hospital presented information on concussions, nutrition, sexuality, anxiety and bullying.

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