District Administration - January 2011 - (Page 65)

Holding On to Parent Voices the PIRCs shows widespread and deep satisfaction with their services—but doesn’t establish direct links with student achievement, which would be very diﬃcult to measure given that they’re involved to widely varying degrees in diﬀerent places, and that achievement is impacted by so many variables, Ferguson adds. “We don’t have the data yet to support that,” she says. “It’s one of those ambiguous things. … It’s not as concrete as you and I would like. Do they want to look at that? I would say yes.” Anne Henderson, author of Beyond the Bake Sale and other books and research reviews on parent involvement in schools, says the administration paints with a broad brush in deeming the PIRCs no longer worthy of dedicated support. “ e strong PIRCs have been very, very good and have strengthened capacity at the state and local level,” she says. Strong PIRCs stand out for their ability to form partnerships with state and local education agencies, tackle issues that aﬀect a wide variety of districts rather than narrowly targeted issues, and have targeted school personnel and parents, Henderson says. For example, Nevada’s PIRC collaborated with the United Way to address the dropout rate, and Indiana’s PIRC built a strong working relationship with the Indianapolis Public Schools for the same issue. locally at Middlesex Public Schools, which is the administrative agency. e institute conducts training and brings in experts like Henderson, sometimes with help from the state PIRC, to give parents background on the big picture of how schools work within the context of city and state government. ey learn how to marshal facts and ﬁgures to go along “If we lose them, I feel like we’re going backward. They help to create a level of advocacy.” —Sue Ferguson, chair, National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education In Middlesex County, Conn., where Henderson says schools stand out for their aggressive and thoughtful parental involvement, the state’s PIRC has helped parents garner facts to make their cases to administrators, says Donna Marino, partnership coordinator for the county’s Parent Leadership Training Institute. e institute is one of 12 in the state, based with their emotions and passion, which are needed to gain the respect and serious attention of administrators, Marino says. For example, a parent concerned about class size in her child’s school who appears before the school board to simply vent about it might have little impact, she says, while one who arrives armed with data on class sizes in comparable districts and of continuous refinement that makes such a Is it the ten years difference America’s Premier Formative Assessment Program Introducing AC3 – Now Available for the fall of 2010 New Online Test Engine & Test Creation Interface New Reporting Features & Expanded Test Banks CORE K12 Education | 888-778-7737 www.corek12.com | discovery@corek12.com www.DistrictAdministration.com CoreK12_ad_090810.indd 1 January 2011 65 9/9/10 11:15 AM http://www.corek12.com http://www.corek12.com http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - January 2011

District Administration - January 2011
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Administrator Profile
District Profile
Conversations
Crisis Response
Going Mobile
Online Edge
Professional Opinion
K12 Guide to Audio/Visual Solutions
Product Focus
What’s the Value in Value-Added?
The Politicization of Bullying
Holding On to Parent Voices
Tough New Issues Refocus Health Education
New Products
Books

District Administration - January 2011