Keeping Parent and Student Voices at the Forefront of Reform

Keeping Parent and Student Voices at the Forefront of Reform
Author: Sara McAlister
Publisher:
Total Pages: 38
Release: 2009
Genre: Community and school
ISBN:
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Challenges and change have been the constants defining the Philadelphia public school system. Successive waves of districtwide reform, takeover, privatization efforts, and ongoing reorganization strained an already thin civic and educational infrastructure. In this context, two community organizations - Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project (EPOP) and Youth United for Change (YUC) - emerged as key voices in the struggle to ensure that low-income neighborhoods would benefit from reform. EPOP's and YUC's education campaigns succeeded in keeping the voices of parents and students at the forefront of reform. School campaigns pushed district officials to respond to concrete and immediate needs: old facilities, violence in and surrounding schools, outdated and insufficient library materials. Both organizations also pushed for districtwide reform: EPOP raised the visibility of parents' and teachers' concerns about transparency in the wake of the state takeover of the district, and YUC's extensive research on small schools and ongoing surveys of high school students positioned the group to influence the district's high school reform strategy. This report shares findings from a six-year research study on the impact of EPOP's and YUC's education organizing on district policy, increased school capacity, and improved student outcomes.

Critical Voices in School Reform

Critical Voices in School Reform
Author: Beth Rubin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2003-12-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 113441465X
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This is the first book to look at school reform from the persepectives of those most affected by it - the students.

Schools and Urban Revitalization

Schools and Urban Revitalization
Author: Kelly L. Patterson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2013-10-08
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1136161384
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New research in community development shows that institutions matter. Where the private sector disinvests from the inner city, public and nonprofit institutions step in and provide engines to economic revitalization and promote greater equity in society. Schools and Urban Revitalization collects emerging research in this field, with special interest in new school-neighborhood partnerships that lead today’s most vibrant policy responses to urban blight.

Student Voice in School Reform

Student Voice in School Reform
Author: Dana L. Mitra
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2014-03-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0791478947
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High schools continue to be places that isolate, alienate, and disengage students. But what would happen if students were viewed as part of the solution in schools rather than part of the problem? This book examines the emergence of "student voice" at one high school in the San Francisco Bay area where educators went straight to the source and asked the students to help. Struggling, like many high schools, with how to improve student outcomes, educators at Whitman High School decided to invite students to participate in the reform process. Dana L. Mitra describes the evolution of student voice at Whitman, showing that the students enthusiastically created partnerships with teachers and administrators, engaged in meaningful discussion about why so many failed or dropped out, and partnered with teachers and principals to improve learning for themselves and their peers. In documenting the difference that student voice made, this book helps expand ideas of distributed leadership, professional learning communities, and collaboration. The book also contributes much needed research on what student voice initiatives look like in practice and provides powerful evidence of ways in which young people can increase their sense of agency and their sense of belonging in school.

Live to See the Day

Live to See the Day
Author: Nikhil Goyal
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2023-08-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 125085007X
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An indelible portrait of three children struggling to survive in the poorest neighborhood of the poorest large city in America Kensington, Philadelphia, is distinguished only by its poverty. It is home to Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel, three Puerto Rican children who live among the most marginalized families in the United States. This is the story of their coming-of-age, which is beset by violence—the violence of homelessness, hunger, incarceration, stray bullets, sexual and physical assault, the hypermasculine logic of the streets, and the drug trade. In Kensington, eighteenth birthdays are not rites of passage but statistical miracles. One mistake drives Ryan out of middle school and into the juvenile justice pipeline. For Emmanuel, his queerness means his mother’s rejection and sleeping in shelters. School closures and budget cuts inspire Giancarlos to lead walkouts, which get him kicked out of the system. Although all three are high school dropouts, they are on a quest to defy their fate and their neighborhood and get high school diplomas. In a triumph of empathy and drawing on nearly a decade of reporting, sociologist and policymaker Nikhil Goyal follows Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel on their mission, plunging deep into their lives as they strive to resist their designated place in the social hierarchy. In the process, Live to See the Day confronts a new age of American poverty, after the end of “welfare as we know it,” after “zero tolerance” in schools criminalized a generation of students, after the odds of making it out are ever slighter.

Lift Us Up, Don't Push Us Out!

Lift Us Up, Don't Push Us Out!
Author: Mark R. Warren
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2018-08-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0807015806
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Parents, young people, community organizers, and educators describe how they are fighting systemic racism in schools by building a new intersectional educational justice movement. Illuminating the struggles and triumphs of the emerging educational justice movement, this anthology tells the stories of how black and brown parents, students, educators, and their allies are fighting back against systemic inequities and the mistreatment of children of color in low-income communities. It offers a social justice alternative to the corporate reform movement that seeks to privatize public education through expanding charter schools and voucher programs. To address the systemic racism in our education system and in the broader society, the contributors argue that what is needed is a movement led by those most affected by injustice--students of color and their parents--that builds alliances across sectors and with other social justice movements addressing immigration, LGBTQ rights, labor rights, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Representing a diverse range of social justice organizations from across the US, including the Chicago Teachers Union and the Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network, the essayists recount their journeys to movement building and offer practical organizing strategies and community-based alternatives to traditional education reform and privatization schemes. Lift Us Up! will outrage, inform, and mobilize parents, educators, and concerned citizens about what is wrong in American schools today and how activists are fighting for and achieving change.

Inventing Better Schools

Inventing Better Schools
Author: Phillip C. Schlechty
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2003-04-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0787959065
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Schlechty shows both educators and parents how to envision reform and design quality educational systems. He explains how the visioning process must be rooted in real shared beliefs, how mission statements must unpack visions into concrete goals that are connected to action, and how the results of reform can be usefully assessed. Drawing on the author's vast experience in the day-to-day work of implementing school reform, Inventing Better Schools offers new approaches for setting standards and ensuring accountability--and includes samples of actual mission statements and strategic plans of successful school districts.

Student Voice

Student Voice
Author: Russell J. Quaglia
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2014-08-06
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1483379787
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Meaningful school reform starts with your most powerful partner—your students! When you take time to listen, you’ll find that students’ aspirations can drive your school toward exciting new goals—and when students know they’re being heard, they engage meaningfully in their own academic success. Using examples drawn from student surveys, focus groups, observations, and interviews, this groundbreaking book presents a blueprint for a successful partnership between educators and students. You’ll discover how to: Ask the right questions—and understand how to build from the answers Engage students in decision-making and improvement-related processes Implement the Aspirations Framework to guide students toward their full potential

Urgent Message

Urgent Message
Author: Anne Chambers Lewis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 140
Release: 1997
Genre: Community and school
ISBN:
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This report contends that the school reform movement--seemingly well-constructed from a distance--is failing to change in a significant way what and how students learn. This is because it lacks a solid foundation built from the ground up and an informed and active school community, including parents. Using case studies the report examines various reform strategies and presents ways to include parents in change. The key ways parents and families are engaged in school reform are: 1) pushing the system, e.g., pressing for higher standards and an effective system of accountability, insisting on high quality public schools, and creating alternative public schools if the local schools fail; 2) helping design local school improvement, e.g., sitting on school improvement committees, monitoring results, and checking student work to ensure it reflects both high standards and high performance; and 3) taking part in the parent involvement opportunities created by the reforms, e.g., participating in school governance councils that set policy, helping more parents to become actively engaged in the school, and attending staff development sessions. Appendices include research and reference material, and a table of parent-involvement provisions. (RJM)

School, Family, and Community Partnerships

School, Family, and Community Partnerships
Author: Joyce L. Epstein
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2018-07-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1483320014
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Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.