Resources
A Community Action Guide
to Teacher Quality. The Public Education Network,
an association developed to coordinate reform efforts
for low-income school districts, offers this guide to
help parents and community leaders better understand teachers
and teaching. Eight local education funds were highlighted
for their work improving public schools and building citizen
support. The guide details best practices for engaging
communities and using data to assess teacher quality.
June 2003. Details
From Governance to Accountability:
Building Relationships That Make Schools Work. Kavitha
Mediratta and Norm Fruchter, of the Institute for Education
and Social Policy at NYU, have developed an important
concept paper for the Drum Major Institute for Public
Policy.
They argue that previous governance reforms in NYC have
failed to improve local schools, and will never succeed
in improving student achievement without creating new
relationships between schools and communities that lead
to real accountability. |
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They focus on four accountability
indicators that would give parents useful and timely information,
expanded representation, more power to evaluate administrators,
and independent oversight authority. March 2003. A free PDF of the
report is available from the institute.
Senior Consultant Anne Henderson’s book,
A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family and
Community Connections on Student Achievement, reviews
more than 50 research studies. The findings: If parent
involvement is to have an impact on achievement, schools
must tie parent activities to student learning goals and
respect differences among families. January 2003. A free PDF is available from the National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools, Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. |
