08.03.10 A Proposal to Strengthen Family and Community Engagement within the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
For the past four years, Chicago Appleseed has been researching and writing about parent and community involvement in schools and the community school model. We have now created a legislative vehicle to bring the ideas we've accumulated to fruition. It is clear that family and community engagement has a vital role to play in the academic success of students. Now, with so many schools in a state of transformation, it is more important than ever to ensure that the school, family, and community form a team to collaborate for students' success.
Community schools are the most comprehensive and effective way of engaging families and communities within the school. Because community schools allow for efficient pooling of resources and funds among the school and various community-based organizations, they are frequently able to stretch dollars further than schools and organizations in isolation can. However, there is a fiscal barrier to becoming a community school because of the effort and money required to transform a school into a community center, usually the core of the community school model. In addition, some communities may lack the political will to initiate an effective community school. Thus the legislative language proposed within is not a push towards community school implementation. Rather, we propose language that supports community school development while recognizing that community schools are not feasible for many schools and districts and that smaller-scale partnerships are still beneficial to students. Our proposed language is designed to also support these schools and districts as they foster less extensive partnerships with families and communities.
Family and community engagement benefits all parties involved. It increases attendance and graduation rates, improves academic achievement, and creates a more cohesive culture within the school. When parents are empowered to engage with the school in meaningful ways, they can be a driving force for change, holding schools accountable for providing effective instruction and lobbying for additional resources, for example. In addition, community partnerships can help schools engage parents, leverage existing resources, and attract additional resources while improving the organization's social capital and providing more services to residents.
Meaningful family and community engagement is not a simple task. It requires schools to step back from their traditional role as master of the education domain to share responsibility and power with families and community members. Meaningful engagement requires schoolwide structures to encourage and respond to parent initiatives. Rather than viewing parental involvement as an attempt to solve deficits, schools need to provide positive channels for support such as peer networks, activities that promote positive family interaction, and access to social services.
Community and family engagement complements Race to the Top and promotes the Obama administration's goals for American education. The Department of Education's Blueprint for Reform and several of Secretary Duncan's recent speeches have explicitly called for increased family and community engagement, especially in our lowest-performing schools. However, the current Elementary and Secondary Education Act does not adequately promote community and family engagement. The definition of “parent involvement” it offers is elusive, and it does not provide any specific or enforceable expectations for how and to what extent schools should engage parents. In addition, ESEA pays no attention to the benefits that can result from schools partnering with community-based organizations.
In reauthorizing ESEA, we propose that Congress should add specific language to Section 1118 making the expectations of parental engagement clear to schools and districts and giving state educational agencies more power to enforce those expectations. These additions should include:
-More precise standards for notifying parents of policies and policy changes using communication methods that are active and directed at parents, such as text messaging and publishing notices in local foreign language newspapers;
-Doubling the minimum of the amount of Title I funds that must be spent on family engagement initiatives (from 1% to 2%);
-Additional funding or competitive grant programs for schools that partner with community organizations to provide health services, after-school programs, or other needed resources within the school;
-Creation of advisory councils, at the school and district levels, composed of family members, high school students, and community stakeholders to collaborate on family engagement plans and other policy issues;
-Requirements for schools and districts to create specific plans for how to draw families into the school and engage them in meaningful ways. State educational agencies should issue a standard, comprehensive parent survey to ensure that schools and districts fully implement these plans and to collect data they will use to improve existing engagement policies;
-Professional development to improve teachers' and principals' skills and knowledge surrounding family engagement, and the inclusion of successful parent engagement as a component of teacher and principal evaluation frameworks; and
-Creation of state recognition programs to exemplify schools with model parent engagement and support those schools' capabilities to host trainings for other schools.
Parent engagement is not the entire answer to closing the achievement gap or boosting performance of failing schools, but it is an essential part of the answer, especially in turnaround schools where community buy-in is crucial. In this proposal, we hope to provide strong language and concrete guidelines to create a framework for schools to incorporate meaningful family and community engagement and to provide structure for states to enforce family and community engagement plans. We hope the Department of Education will stand behind its appeals for increased family and community engagement in education by pushing to strengthen Section 1118 when Congress reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
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