October 2008

Letter from the Editor

To start with, my apologies to Richard Williamson, whose website is located at www.truants.org. I included an incorrect address in last month’s newsletter.

I’m so glad I don’t watch T.V. Even if I were tempted in a moment of excruciating boredom, from what I have read about the presidential campaign ads I would rather scrub the toilet. Again. nonetheless, both candidates do have education plans that are full of meat, even if they are a little light on how to pay for all that protein. Here are some links to get you past being disgusted by the preposterous PR poison:

- Obama’s Education Page

- McCain’s Education Page

- Obama’s K-12 plan

- Obama’s School Reform Plan

- McCain’s Pre-K Plan

- McCain’s Education Policies

Jodi Heilbrunn,
Newsletter Editor

Invitation for Letters to the Editor

Do you have feedback regarding our feature article or strategy of the month? Would you like to submit a feature article on a topic of your choice? Send your commentary or ideas to info@schoolengagement.com for possible publication in our next issue. Please make the subject of your message “Newsletter commentary.” I would love to hear from you!

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Improving Educational Outcomes FAST
By:
Aubrey Johnson
National Training and Data Coordinator
Families and Schools Together, Inc.

Based on a consistent and long-standing body of evidence, researchers agree that children whose parents are involved in their education do better in school. When parents are involved, children have higher grades, better achievement test scores, more regular attendance, improved behavior, more positive attitudes about school, higher graduation rates, and higher rates of entrance into postsecondary institutions[1] Involved parents understand and provide input for school policies, feel supported and welcomed by the school, and are aware of community resources that enhance learning[2]. Teachers also believe that students with involved parents are more likely to perform up to their ability than are those with uninvolved parents[3]. These findings hold true regardless of the child’s age or grade, or of the parents’ race/ethnicity, level of educational attainment, and family type[4].

Yet almost one-third of parents in America are disengaged from their adolescent’s education. “Only about one-fifth of parents consistently attend school programs. Nearly one-third of students say their parents have no idea how they are doing in school. About one-sixth of all students report that their parents don’t care whether they earn good grades in school or not [5].” Researchers consistently document a decline in parent involvement as children progress through the school system[6].

Many schools make considerable efforts to increase communication between teachers and parents through open houses, parent-teacher conferences, or weekly reports. While these methods may help parents understand their children’s school performance, they may not actively involve parents. One proven example of a family-based program that increases parent involvement is the Families And Schools Together (FAST) program. FAST is a well-researched, theory-based program for children and their families. It is designed to build protective factors for children and empower parents to be the primary prevention agents for their children. To date, FAST has been implemented in over 700 communities around the world. FAST has reached preschoolers through 15-year-olds in rural, suburban, and urban communities.

FAST applies family stress theory, family systems theory, social ecological theory of child development, and adult education and community development theory to achieve its four goals:

  • Enhance family functioning
  • Prevent the target child from experiencing school failure
  • Prevent substance abuse by the child and other family members
  • Reduce the stress that parents and children experience from daily life situations

The FAST program supports development of relationships among parents, schools, and the community to enhance children's academic and social performance. By engaging stressed (usually low income), socially isolated families into program participation and eventually into shared governance of the FAST program, the strengths and connections of the family, school, and community are enhanced. During a home visit, a FAST parent graduate invites the child’s whole family to a meeting with other families from the same school. Ten to twelve families meet for eight weekly sessions for a family meal and a variety of social activities which include music, drawing, games and a parent group. The activities are fun, but are designed to facilitate communication to improve family functioning. Hopefully, after participating in FAST, students will have experienced fewer social or behavioral difficulties, which may also promote children's academic performance, and the FAST parents will have become friends and will offer social support for one another over time. Of those families that come once to FAST, 80% graduate in a formal ceremony.

Around the nation, parents report statistically significant improvements in parent school involvement, parent to school contact, school to parent contact, and total parent involvement, while teachers report statistically significant improvements in their relationships with parents, contact with parents, and parent involvement in school. After participating in a fun, family-based activity like FAST, parents consistently report higher rates of involvement in their children’s education. For more information about FAST, see our website at www.familiesandschools.org, and link to our January conference registration page listed in chronological order in the Conferences section below.


[1] Henderson, A. T., & Berla, N. (Eds.). (1995). A new generation of evidence: The family is critical to student achievement (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: Center for Law and Education.

[2] Epstein, J. L., Sanders, M. G., Simon, B. S., Salinas, K. C., Jansorn, N. R., & Van Voorhis, F. L. (2002). School, family, and community partnerships: Your handbook for action (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

[3] Stevenson, D. L., & Baker, D. P. (1987). The family-school relation and the child’s school performance. Child Development, 58, 1348-1357.

[4] Bogenschneider, K. (1997). Parental involvement in adolescent schooling: A proximal process with transcontextual validity. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 59(3), 718-733. Stevenson, D. L., & Baker, D. P. (1987). The family-school relation and the child’s school performance. Child Development, 58, 1348-1357.

[5] Steinberg, L. (1996). Beyond the classrom: Why school reform has failed and what parents need to do. New York: Simon & Schuster. (P. 187).

[6] Epstein, J. L. (2001). School, family, and community partnerships: Preparing educators and improving schools. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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Diary of a Home Visitor

As a rule I don’t rely on links to “outside” postings in this column, but this month I can’t help it. If you only follow one link from this newsletter, follow this one. It is a moving and beautiful narrative of the value of the home visits conducted by every teacher to the home of every student at Mueller Charter School in San Diego. The title of the narrative is Store Bought Tamales posted on LeaderTalk by Kevin Riley. Need a tickler? Riley writes that:

“…there is something extraordinary about meeting a child's family in their own home; sitting on their couch to discuss the demands and the promises of the new academic year. Naming their pets. Enduring "show and tell" with a closet full of prized possessions while simultaneously talking about the relative importance of skills like adding fractions and identifying topic sentences. … We have long held that-- NCLB notwithstanding-- we are not in the business of raising test scores... we are in the business of raising children. And we notice that in the process of building strong relationships, meeting our families wherever they are, the test scores seem to take care of themselves.”

For those wanting to start a home visitation program, there are resources available. Education World posts an online article linking to various resources including Michigan's how-to guide for preschool teachers, which is easily applicable to teachers of older students.

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Check out the Education World Grant Center, there are fifteen grant categories you have time to apply for in the 2008-2009 school year.

The School Funding Center has a free newsletter that includes a limited number of grant announcements and grant writing tips. It also advertises a huge database of grants to which you may subscribe for various periods of time for different rates ranging from $99 for two months to $397 for a year. Grants are available for schools and non-profits.

Kids love field trips! Target will award 5,000 Field Trip Grants of up to $800 each during the 2008-2009 school year. Applications are due by November 1, 2008. Check out the rest of the education page on the Target website.

Sign up for education-related e-mail alerts from Grantsalert.com. The website also includes grant-seeking tips, a special page for sources of classroom funding for teachers (called GSFT), and a directory of grant writers to help you. Registering for funding alerts is free, but the grant writers, of course, are not.

Teachers, go to Donors Choose to make requests for classroom supplies.

Find and apply online for competitive grant opportunities from all Federal grant-making agencies.

RGK Foundation - The Foundation's programmatic areas of interest include Health, Education, Human Services, and Community Affairs. The Foundation's primary interests within education include formal K-12 education, literacy, and higher education.

The Dollar General offers annual or bi-annual grants in five literacy areas:
· Adult Literacy Grants
· Back-To-School Grants
· Beyond Words: The Dollar General School Library Relief Program
· Family Literacy Grants
· Youth Literacy Initiatives

Here’s a great webpage that lists endless grant opportunities for K-12 schools, and has a page on grant writing tips! They also offer a subscription to Schoolgrants Biweekly Newsletter for $45 a year.

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Chang, Hedy N., and Mariajosé Romero. (September 2008). Present, Engaged, and Accounted For: The Critical Importance of Addressing Chronic Absence in the Early Grades. New York: The National Center for Children in Poverty at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

This report describes how one in 10 kindergarten and first grade students are chronically absent (missing 10% or more of the school year); levels that can be even higher in particular schools and districts. However, it notes, schools and communities working together can significantly reduce chronic early absence by taking comprehensive approaches for ensuring schools and families understand attendance is a key to their children’s future - approaches described in the report.

Dynarski, M., Clarke, L., Cobb, B., Finn, J., Rumberger, R., and Smink, J. (2008). Dropout Prevention: A Practice Guide (NCEE 2008–4025). Washington, DC: National Center for

Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance within the Institute of Education Sciences has released a new practice guide from its What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). The Dropout Prevention Practice Guide formulates specific and coherent evidence-based recommendations that are intended to be useful to educators in high schools and middle schools, to superintendents and school boards, and to state policymakers in planning and executing dropout prevention strategies.

Kim, Christine. (September 22, 2008) Academic Success Begins at Home: How Children Can Succeed in School. Washington DC: The Heritage Foundation, Backgrounder #2185.


National Neighborhood Day

Since research shows that community has an independent effect on a child’s school success, it is fitting to link to the National Neighborhood Day website. Although National Neighborhood Day just passed on September 17, the organization sponsored a youth film contest about what neighborhood means to you. The three winning films, and all the finalists, are linked from the website. They’re well worth watching.

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Professional Practices that Work

ASCD’s conference on Teaching and Learning

Dates: October 24-26, 2008

Location: Los Angeles, CA
Founded in 1943, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development is a nonprofit membership organization that develops programs, products, and services essential to the way educators learn, teach, and lead. The (ASCD) addresses all aspects of effective teaching and learning—such as professional development, educational leadership, and capacity building. ASCD offers broad, multiple perspectives—across all education professions—in reporting key policies and practices. The ASDC hosts three annual conferences. Learning Beyond Boundaries will be held in March, 2009.

20th Annual National Dropout Prevention Network Conference
Location: Atlanta, GA
Dates: November 16-19, 2008
Conference registration

International Families and Schools Together (FAST) Conference

Dates: Monday, Jan. 26 - Friday, Jan. 30, 2009

Location: Crowne Royal Plaza, San Diego, CA

National Conference on Education

Conference of the American Association of School Administrators

Location: San Francisco, CA

Dates: February 19-21, 2009

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NCSE is an initiative of the
Colorado Foundation for
Families and Children

www.schoolengagement.org




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