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Links -
Parental Involvement |
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Research shows that parent
involvement in their kids' lives and in the schools is often the key to
higher achievement and more successful schools and communities. It is at
least a component of many federal and state grant opportunities. Parent
involvement makes a difference. I hear from many concerned parents who are
doing great things at and for their children's schools. This page is
dedicated to those parents.
If you have favorite
online resources that are not listed here, please let me know!
Remember, all links on the
SchoolGrants site open in their own windows.
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Parents! Here's a
great way to help raise funds for your child's school!
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The
Funding Factory
The FundingFactory
helps schools can earn leading edge technology, sports and recreation
equipment (including playground equipment) by recycling empty printer
cartridges and used cell phones. It's simple! Schools collect empty
printer cartridges and used cell phones and send them to The
FundingFactory. Over 20% of US schools currently participate in the
program that is the recognized gold standard for innovative fundraising.
It's easy and FREE to get started! FundFactory provides all
the shipping cartons and labels you need at no cost at all. They
even provide posters to help get the word out about the program.
This is a wonderful opportunity for businesses and individuals and PTA/PTO
groups to help schools in the community and save the environment at the
same time. Sign up now by clicking
here!! |
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GIVEKIDSGOODSCHOOLS.COM
Having a good teacher in the classroom is the single most important factor
in kids' learning. But more than 20% of new teachers quit after only 3
years. And over 30% of teachers in high poverty schools aren't even
qualified to teach the subject they're assigned.
GiveKidsGoodSchools.com is a new campaign that aims to improve the quality
of public education for kids nationwide, starting with putting a good
teacher in every classroom. Please take 30 seconds and send an e-mail asking
your governor to make good teachers a top priority. Click on the
link above to access the GiveKidsGoodSchools.com
Web site.
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Building
Support for Better Schools
- Seven Steps to Engaging Hard to Reach Communities:
This step-by-step guide, published by Southwest Educational Development
Laboratory, is designed for community organizers—educators, civic leaders
and anyone else—interested in involving more parents and community members
from different socioeconomic and minority backgrounds in conversations about
improving public schools.
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Can
We Talk? Can We Talk? is a community program designed
to help parents talk with their children about healthy relationships and
sexuality, including the prevention of pregnancy, HIV/STDs, drug abuse and
violence.
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The
Achiever: The Achiever is the U.S.
Department of Education's biweekly newsletter for parents, educators and
community partners involved in efforts to improve education. Featuring model
programs from around the nation, The Achiever puts its readers in
touch with resources, services and publications for increasing student
learning. Each issue has contributing writers who discuss real life
successes and challenges they face in their schools and communities. The
newsletter also includes news about Department of Education initiatives.
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Connect
For Kids Weekly: "The Connect for Kids Weekly [published
by the Benton Foundation] is your source for the latest news on issues
affecting kids and families."
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Department
of Education: The Department of Education's Web site is full
of information for educators and parents. Check out the "Helping
Your Child..." series.
Parent
Involvement in Children's Education: Efforts by Public Elementary Schools:
A statistical analysis report.
Online
Resources for Parent/Family Involvement
A
New Understanding of Parent Involvement
Improving
the School-Home Connection for Low-Income Urban Parents
Family
Involvement in Children's Education: Successful local approaches
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Family
and Community Involvement: Reaching Out to Diverse Populations: This
free publication (if downloaded from SEDL's Web site) is geared toward
teachers, principals, and superintendents who want to develop meaningful
parent and community involvement from culturally and linguistically diverse
community members. It provides tips on how to communicate effectively with
parents and how to make parents comfortable in your school.
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The
No Child Left Behind Act stresses – and requires – parental involvement
in schools and programs. The task of involving parents is often easier
to talk about doing than to actually accomplish. Connect for Kids
provides a variety of resources to help schools involve parents and the
community in your school and in the lives of their youth.
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K-12
Newsletters: The goal of
K12 Newsletters is to combine in one place the best of the Internet's
various K12 newsletters. Check out the site to see what electronic
newsletters are currently sent to subscribers. Most of these
newsletters may be of more interest to teachers and other school personnel
than to parents.
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National
Parent Information Network: The mission of NPIN is to
provide access to research-based information about the process of parenting,
and about family involvement in education. We believe that well-informed
families are likely to make good decisions about raising and educating their
children.
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National
Parent-Teacher Association (PTA):
Children First, National PTA's website, contains a wealth of information,
news, services, and resources about children, education, and parenting
issues. Children First is the one place to find PTA information, get in
touch with other parents, and find dependable parenting advice on a wide
variety of topics. Whether you're looking for information on helping
children with homework, discussing school violence, or boosting your child's
self-esteem, Children First contains dozens of libraries and hundreds of
free documents for parents and educators.
National
PTA's National Standards for Parent/Family Involvement Programs - standards
to guide parent involvement programs and evaluate their quality and
effectiveness
A recent update is that
the Checklist for Quality Indicators (for parent involvement) is now
available in Cambodian, Chinese, English, Korean, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
The standards are now part of federal education law, defining Parent
Involvement for all school-related programs, plus adding quality
involvement requirements across the spectrum of school functioning. You
can read about that here: · National
PTA Defines Parent Involvement in ESEA
This was the culmination of years of effort by every level of PTA to get
quality indicators defined in policy and connected to implementation and
teacher development.
Thanks to Eileen
Faucette for the information above regarding the Standards. Eileen
is the Coordinator of PTA Live Online at http://www.ptaconnection.org/
- check it out!
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Building
Successful Partnerships (BSP) is a great training program for
building parent and community involvement in education. Based on the
standards, the classes are presented by more than 200 PTA trainers nation
wide (with numbers growing monthly). The website has many details and tools,
including a class locator/ request interface.
The BSP program is outlined in a book by the same name. Building
Successful Partnerships: A Guide to Developing Parent and Family Involvement
Programs. The book incorporates the standards and offers
field-tested strategies for overcoming barriers, reaching out to key
participants, and developing an effective parent involvement program. It is
widely acclaimed as a superior resource.
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Partnership
for Family Involvement in Education:
Staff at the U.S. Department of Education established the Partnership for
Family Involvement in Education in September 1994. Because family
participation in children's learning is often influenced by work schedules
and time constraints, it is crucial that businesses, community and religious
organizations, and especially families and schools support parent and
employee involvement in education.
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PEN
Weekly Newsblast: Published by
The Public Education Network, a national association of 53 local education
funds nationwide, this free weekly electronic newsletter features funding
opportunities as well as other news for educators presented in a brief
synopsis format.
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PTO
Today: PTO Today is a multi-media company dedicated to
helping parent groups help their schools. Their magazine - PTOtoday - is
published 5 times each school year and is distributed to 80,000+ school
parent group leaders across the country. It focuses exclusively on
celebrating the important work of those groups and on providing valuable
content to make that work even more effective.
Their Web site - PTOtoday.com
- is the Internet home of America's 80,000 K-8 school parent groups. The
site offers unique and always practical PTO content, an interactive
Discussion Forum for PTO idea sharing and a comprehensive PTO Marketplace.
I encourage you to visit their site, stay awhile, and get to know other
parents from across the country who care about issues affecting their
children and the education they are receiving.
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Strong
Families, Strong Schools: This Web site provides:
- A review of the past 30 years of key
research findings on the importance of involving families in their
children's learning.
- Examples of family involvement efforts
that are working.
- Concrete ways in which different
participants in the family involvement partnership can help achieve
success.
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School
Board News, a national affiliate of NSBA, published an article
written by Dorothy Rich, founder and president of the Home and School
Institute and its MegaSkills Education Center in Washington, D.C., detailing
the kind of report cards parents want. According to the article,
parents want to know more than how the students in classrooms are faring on
their grades. They also want to know:
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Discipline records
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Attendance and
tardiness records
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Class size
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Strength of parental
involvement
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Experience of
educators
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Grading practices
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Student aspirations
and school support.
You can read the article,
"Guest Viewpoint: Report Cards for Parents: The Numbers Parents
Want," by clicking
here.
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The dynamic nature of the Internet means that links may be gone tomorrow.
Sometimes unscrupulous individuals and companies purchase popular links and
put pornographic materials on those sites. Please let me know ASAP if you
come across such a link. Please include the SchoolGrants Web page where you
found the bad link.
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| Your
comments, suggestions and questions are always welcome! Thank you for
taking the time to provide feedback! |
