Downer - Chicago tips for Elementary parent participation

[Spoonist]

What a complete downer.

CHICAGO – Today Chicago Public Schools (CPS) released “Engaging Parents: Effective Practices From Chicago Principals” to all CPS principals across the district. This booklet was developed for principals by principals in order to share effective strategies to engage parents in schools and in their children’s education.

More at link http://www.cps.edu/News/Press_releases/ ... 2_PR1.aspx
This is Elementary schools throughout Chicago, where the principals give their best practices as tips for other schools.
Some of the suggestions are nice while others are just downright depressing. Seems that one of the key things to parent participation is report card pickup day.

... in bringing parents to Drake’s report card pickup. ...offers a raffle prize for parents that attend and the classroom with the highest percentage of parent attendance gets a pizza party - a treat for teachers and students.

... In addition, her school host a book fair, a raffle, and has a pizza party for classrooms with 100% parent participation. This encourages students to encourage their parents to attend. ...

... for report card pickup last year. Businesses in the area came to the school to share information and support with parents. For example, a local organic restaurant brought food samples and information about healthy eating. Walgreens came and provided blood pressure screening and gave away free pedometers. A karate studio also gave free lessons for children. ...

...increasing parent participation during Report Card Pick Up night. ... a partnership ... is able to offer free tickets to events such as Disney on Ice and the Ringling Brother Barnum and Bailey Circus to all families who attend Report Card Pick-Up. The school utilizes the Robo-call system to notify parents of the ticket give away for special events. ...

... After attending the session with the teacher, parents were given raffle tickets for a horse ride on the school lawn. Finally, to conclude the event, the school held a raffle to give away prizes that were donated to ensure parents stayed throughout the night. ...

...the importance of incentivizing report card pickup with all stakeholders to ensure that a large percentage of parents attend. First, he works with the teachers offering a gift card ...

...attend report card pick-up, receive a “punch” on their PBIS incentive card. Filled out “punch” cards can be redeemed for prizes and rewards. ...

...Every parent who meets with their child’s teacher during Report Card Pick Up receives not only their child’s report card but also a raffle ticket .... attend Report Card Pick Up to provide parents with give-aways for the duration of the evening ...

... First, she works with local organizations to donate raffle items and has them available for parents to see before report card pickup. ...

... and a raffle held at the end of the conference ...

... Classes with the highest percentage of parent attendance can win a pizza or ice cream party, an out of uniform day, or an extra gym period. ...

... receives a raffle ticket for a turkey and another raffle ticket for prom tickets ....

... the prizes that can be earned by having their “passport” filled out. Parents receive a “passport” when they enter the school, for each area that the parents enter: attendance coordinator, pick-up the report card, parent info room, and treasurer. ...

... Prizes that have been donated and given away include: ipads, kindles and a TV! ...

So one of the most common tip between principals is to bribe the parents to show up at all, then more bribes if they stay the whole evening instead of just leaving directly. Another is peer pressure competitions for most or 100% parent participation. (Think it through, your class gets a treat if everyone's parent/custodian shows up. What do you think is a likely scenario when you are the one kid in class with deadbeat parents? Thats right, unless one of your deadbeat parents show up the rest of the class doesn't get their pizza and ice cream... I can't possibly see how that could go wrong...)

The depressing part isn't that this is so common. The depressing part is that it works. Schools that bribe the parents to show up for these events, will have more parent involvement, and also better grade point average. So the promise of pizza, a gift certificate and a raffle ticket actually makes a difference in how involved some parents are in their kids education.

That is the depressing part.

[Guardsman Bass]

I'd be curious to see what RedImperator's commentary on this would be.

I'm sad they have to do this, but it's not surprising (in many cases, one or both lower-wage parents are working and have a hard time getting there). I interned under a person handling education matters for the mayor here, and she told me about how it was often hard work to get parents involved in poorer school districts.

[Simon_Jester]

Given the proportion of parents in this district who probably work odd shifts, work two jobs, have ongoing poorly treated medical problems, and so on...

I'm not actually that surprised.

[Guardsman Bass]

I wonder if it would be possible to lower the impact on children of low parental involvement in their schooling. More tutoring and assistance on site, with less homework?

That won't help parents put more pressure on their kids to do well in school, but I wonder whether the above incentive programs are doing that either. Just getting the parents to show up isn't enough.

[ryacko]

I wonder if it would be possible to lower the impact on children of low parental involvement in their schooling. More tutoring and assistance on site, with less homework?

That won't help parents put more pressure on their kids to do well in school, but I wonder whether the above incentive programs are doing that either. Just getting the parents to show up isn't enough.

Consider this. Roughly 16 hours a day, a child would be at home.
Wouldn't the most significant improvement in grades be caused at the location they are present the most at?
Furthermore, children listen to their parents more then some stranger. If they parents learn how to help their child better, there is a good chance that they would be better at helping their child.

[Spoonist]

Consider this. Roughly 16 hours a day, a child would be at home.
Wouldn't the most significant improvement in grades be caused at the location they are present the most at?
Furthermore, children listen to their parents more then some stranger. If they parents learn how to help their child better, there is a good chance that they would be better at helping their child.

That is completely the opposite of how it is, consider your own reality how much time did your parents spend on your education? (Please, please don't tell me you are home schooled).

I'd say the only time that poor working parents actually might have time for their kids is weekends.
The 16 hour that you say a parent have includes Sleeping 8h, commuting 2-3h, eating 1-2h. Then you have all things a parent must do like shopping, cleaning, washing etc where the parent is not directly available for the kid. Top that of with both child and parent having a social life and hobbies.
So if you are looking at educational matters parents usually have 5-20 hours per week to all their kids, while a school typically have 35-40. That ends up being a 1 to 4-6 ratio kinda deal. And that is averages, when it comes to minimum wage slaves you are down to 1-10 hours per week and a ratio of 1 to ~10.
So when it comes to education and normal poor working families then the opposite would be true - the schools will have more "quality time" with any given kid than their parents do. So GB's suggestion is much more effective in a poor US context.

Then normally (home schooling being an obvious exemption) kids don't listen to their parents as much as they do strangers. This because there is so much stuff that a parent tries to impart versus the kid that most get lost in everything else. Also lots of low-education parents don't have the knowledge to teach the kids even basic stuff like math/grammar etc. This is why we have recognized from antiquity onwards that having specialized mentors is much much much much much much better than parents.
However a positive attitude to learning and studying from the parents is a very big thing. Also some time with peace and quit in the household devoted to studying etc helps a lot.

[Simon_Jester]

Consider this. Roughly 16 hours a day, a child would be at home.
Wouldn't the most significant improvement in grades be caused at the location they are present the most at?
Furthermore, children listen to their parents more then some stranger. If they parents learn how to help their child better, there is a good chance that they would be better at helping their child.

That is completely the opposite of how it is, consider your own reality how much time did your parents spend on your education? (Please, please don't tell me you are home schooled).

I'd say the only time that poor working parents actually might have time for their kids is weekends.
The 16 hour that you say a parent have includes Sleeping 8h, commuting 2-3h, eating 1-2h. Then you have all things a parent must do like shopping, cleaning, washing etc where the parent is not directly available for the kid. Top that of with both child and parent having a social life and hobbies.
So if you are looking at educational matters parents usually have 5-20 hours per week to all their kids, while a school typically have 35-40. That ends up being a 1 to 4-6 ratio kinda deal. And that is averages, when it comes to minimum wage slaves you are down to 1-10 hours per week and a ratio of 1 to ~10.
So when it comes to education and normal poor working families then the opposite would be true - the schools will have more "quality time" with any given kid than their parents do. So GB's suggestion is much more effective in a poor US context.

And behold, children from normal poor working families don't do so well in school, because the parents spend little time with their kids, have a hard time disciplining the kids, and so on.

There are exceptions; I could name a few parents who work madly at this. But really, that's probably the single biggest source of the gap in educational outcomes from socioeconomic status: parental involvement. Too many of the parents don't own books, don't know how to help high-school age children with their work because of their own education, don't have the time to enforce a work ethic on the child, and otherwise are too busy trying to keep the family alive to ensure that it is educated.

So, yes, the schools are willing to fight dirty to get parents involved. More power to them.

Then normally (home schooling being an obvious exemption) kids don't listen to their parents as much as they do strangers. This because there is so much stuff that a parent tries to impart versus the kid that most get lost in everything else.

[laughs]

And an algebra teacher's stuff doesn't get lost?

[Spoonist]

Then normally (home schooling being an obvious exemption) kids don't listen to their parents as much as they do strangers. This because there is so much stuff that a parent tries to impart versus the kid that most get lost in everything else.

[laughs]
And an algebra teacher's stuff doesn't get lost?

Don't get me started on how we teach kids math. Or how we in US+europe culturally approach math.

[conswift]

Parent involvement can make a difference in a child’s education. Two-thirds of teachers surveyed (Public Agenda, 2003) believed that their students would perform better in school if their parents were more involved in their child’s education, while 72% of parents say children of uninvolved parents sometimes “fall through the cracks” in schools because of this reason most of the school are using
parent notification system to notify the events and the activities of the school to the parent.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

*blink*

Why the heck aren't your child's report cards available online? This sounds like being stuck in the 1980s.

[Simon_Jester]

*blink*

Why the heck aren't your child's report cards available online? This sounds like being stuck in the 1980s.

In my system they are... and yet a significant fraction of the parents are stuck in the 1980s, or don't read their email, or get so much email that the stuff from school gets lost in the shuffle.