November 2007
Public Engagement Watch
A Resource for Municipal Leaders to Build Strong Connections with Local Public Schools
This month's issue of PE Watch highlights several articles that seek to shift the focus of education to a more whole child approach. The "News" section features a piece on ASCD's Healthy School Communities, which serves as a community-building resource for schools and communities. The "Research" section includes a Center on Education Policy study on the role parents play in students' academic success. Finally, this month's featured "Tool" is a four-part process for winning school referendums from MacroVision Associates.
In The News |
| > Healthy School Communities |
| > Reform in Washington, New Orleans |
| > Education at a Glance |
|
Findings From Research |
| > Parents Play Big Role in Academic Success |
| > A Literature Review: Resiliency Skills and Dropout Prevention |
|
Tools |
| > Get Yes Votes: A Process for Winning School Referendums |
| > How Much Do You and Your Community Do To Support Public Education? |
| > Meeting the High School Challenge: Making After-School Work for Older Students |
| > Empowering Parents School Box |
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In The News
| Healthy School Communities ASCD's Healthy School Communities is part of a multiyear plan to shift public dialogue about education from an academic focus to a whole child approach that encompasses all factors required for successful student outcomes. As a part of this mission, the Healthy School Communities effort serves as a community-building resource for schools and communities that work together to create healthy environments that support learning and teaching. It also provides a space for networking and sharing of resources, ideas, and practices that encourage the ongoing promotion of health education and policy within school communities. Read More |
| Reform in Washington, New Orleans In the first two reports on leaders in education who are trying to reform urban schools, correspondent John Merrow investigates improvement efforts in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, LA. In Washington, the new superintendent, who has never run a district before, is 37-year-old Michelle Rhee. Rhee, who comes to a city that has had six superintendents in the last 10 years, will have to overcome what she calls a "bloated and unresponsive" central office, dilapidated facilities and poor test scores. Paul Vallas, the superintendent of the Recovery School District in New Orleans, has had some success in running the Chicago and Philadelphia school systems. Vallas, sometimes called the "turnaround" superintendent, also is faced with dismal test scores, immense poverty and facilities that were crumbling even before Hurricane Katrina hit. Read More |
| Education at a Glance According to this annual report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, many other countries have caught up with and even surpassed the United States in nearly every relevant indicator. According to the report, American fifty-five- to sixty-four-year-olds -- those who typically would have graduated in the 1960s -- lead the world in percentage of high school graduates for their age group, whereas current twenty-five- to thirty-four-year-olds rank a distant tenth. And the nation’s 2005 graduation rate is even worse; it ranks a dismal eighteenth of twenty-three OECD countries. Read More |
Findings From Research
| Parents Play Big Role in Academic Success Apparently it doesn’t much matter whether low-income, urban students attend a public or private high school. The biggest factors determining a student’s academic success are whether their parents take part in their education, earn enough money to offer enriching experiences and have high aspirations for their kids, according to this study released by the Center on Education Policy. The findings, which examined 12 years of data from more than 1,000 young people, found that while SAT scores of students in private schools are higher than those of their public-school peers, their overall performance in math, reading, science and history was no better. Read More |
| A Literature Review: Resiliency Skills and Dropout Prevention According to this report, authored by Kelly Hupfeld, a research associate at the Center for Education Policy Analysis at the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, research shows that decreasing the dropout rate can only happen on a student-by-student basis. Hupfeld says that the focus must be turned to individuals, because students drop out for a myriad of personal reasons. Consequently, the best dropout prevention strategies lock on to students as individuals and engage them in school and teach them the skills they need to cope with difficult times. Download the report in PDF |
Tools
| Get Yes Votes: A Process for Winning School Referendums This four-segment referendum process has been developed by MacroVision Associates. Their process relies upon building and sustaining school/community partnerships, clarifying roles, building trust, gathering data, grassroots campaigning, and getting people out to vote. The authors show how school districts can lose elections by attempting to take shortcuts, and how inadequate planning reduces the opportunity to succeed. Download the report in PDF |
| How Much Do You and Your Community Do To Support Public Education? This Give Kids Good Schools quiz asks people five questions about how involved they are in supporting public education and five questions about how involved they think their communities are. Upon completion, respondents immediately see how they and their communities compare with those of others taking the quiz. The quiz is intended for a wide audience and should provide valuable insight into the level of care a public school system receives. Read More |
| Meeting the High School Challenge: Making After-School Work for Older Students Older students who participate in after-school programs significantly improve their chances for success, yet serving them effectively is one of the greatest challenges for the after-school field. This web site describes promising programmatic models, examines the situations in which they work best, and warns of possible pitfalls. Read More |
| Empowering Parents School Box This fall, the U.S. Department of Education released a tool kit to empower and support parents to be involved in their children's education. The tool kit provides information on No Child Left Behind and tips and tools parents can use to support learning at home and in school, as well as posters and brochures. Read More |
