Community Update

No. 23
April 1995
U.S. Department of Education

COMMUNITIES USE TOWN MEETINGS TO ENGAGE THE PUBLIC IN REFORM

In scores of cities and small towns across the country, the Satellite Town Meetings are now being broadcast on cable stations. In addition, many communities have found creative ways to use the Town Meetings to encourage local involvement with school improvement campaigns. Building their own programs around the Town Meetings, local groups extend the discussion of the national forum, focusing on the issues of highest priority to their communities and the specific challenges facing their schools.

In Savannah, Georgia, radio station WEAS has carried the Satellite Town Meetings live and has added its own programming to highlight local issues. The station's involvement with the Town Meetings grew into a full partnership with the community that now includes a wide range of activities. Led by general manager Rick Whitson, WEAS' efforts include conducting "on the air" campaigns at local schools several times weekly to encourage and increase attendance, recognizing outstanding teachers, holding essay and other educational contests for students, and matching young people with local employment opportunities. WEAS also teams with a local TV station for a program broadcast on both radio and television that is based on each month's feature story in COMMUNITY UPDATE.

In the north central Florida community of Alachua County, which includes Gainesville, an organized discussion is held after every Town Meeting, led by a school improvement facilitator. The event is publicized district-wide and is open to everyone. "After viewing the Town Meeting, people feel comfortable sharing the things they're doing at their school sites that are impacting students' lives," said facilitator Bill Herschleb.

In York, Pennsylvania, a local library has taken the lead to be not only a downlink site for viewing the Town Meetings but also the point from which the program is broadcast to the greater community. The Martin Library in York has teamed with York Community Access Television, Channel 16, so that the Town Meetings are now broadcast to 55,000 area homes. This way parents who have young children and cannot attend an evening meeting are still able to view the program. "Our idea is to provide this to people in their homes so they can see what's going on at the national level," said Martin Library business manager Frances Keller.

The Lake County Business Industry Education Consortium (BIEC) in Illinois downlinks the Town Meetings for their area, which includes the city of Waukegan. The Lake County BIEC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting partnerships between businesses and schools. A discussion is planned before and after the Town Meeting, led by a prominent community leader or another facilitator. The Lake County BIEC also makes videotapes of the Town Meetings available to the public.

Some communities have held special events in connection with a Town Meeting of particular interest to their local residents. The January 17 Town Meeting on school-to-work programs inspired a number of special events.

In Puyallup, Washington, the PTA at Ridgecrest Elementary School teamed with the chamber of commerce, business leaders, and other members of the community to arrange for a downlink site at a local high school. The group obtained a grant from the state PTA to help finance the event, and these funds were matched by Matsushita Semiconductor Corporation of America. The Matsushita Corporation also provided a satellite dish.

Judy Rearden led the efforts to downlink the School to Work Town Meeting. "Our kids are not just competing against the kids in New York City and the kids in this state; they're competing against the world," she said. "If we don't create partnerships to give them the best education, how can we expect the best out of them?"

In California, Kaiser Permanente sponsored downlink sites for the School to Work Town Meeting in four of their facilities. Two offices in Oakland participated, including the Northern California Regional Headquarters, along with offices in South San Francisco and Redwood City.

Kaiser is in partnership with the Oakland School District, contributing to a successful school-to-work program. Rita Sklar of Kaiser coordinated the downlink site at the regional headquarters office. "My intent was to give people involved in pieces of the school-to-work effort the big picture. I think people got that out of the program."

Does your community build its own programs around the Satellite Town Meetings? Please write to us about what you're doing at COMMUNITY UPDATE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, 600 INDEPENDENCE AVENUE, S.W., ROOM 3265, WASHINGTON, D.C., 20202-3521.

APRIL TOWN MEETING WILL DISCUSS PREPARING CHILDREN FOR SUCCESS IN SCHOOL

Recognizing that parents are children's first and continuing teachers, the April Satellite Town Meeting will focus on National Education Goal One -- that all children in America will start school ready to learn. Entitled "Ready to Learn: How Families and Communities Can Prepare Children for Success in School," the program will explore ways to help all children reach their full potential throughout their school careers, and beyond.

The hour-long Town Meeting will be broadcast live on Tuesday, April 18, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time from the studios of PBS member station WLRN in Miami, Florida. The program is being produced with help from the National Health and Education Consortium, the Florida Health and Education Consortium, the Florida Parent Teacher Association, and USA TODAY. A simultaneous broadcast in Spanish will include the service of taking callers' questions and providing answers in Spanish.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Madeleine Kunin will host a panel of guests who are involving parents, school staff, businesses, and community groups in successful partnerships to improve learning readiness. Topics of discussion will include what "ready to learn" means; what roles parents, families, and communities have in getting children ready to learn; the connection between learning and health and nutrition; and the range of services and organizations that should be coordinated with schools in order to ensure learning readiness.

The Department of Education produces the Satellite Town Meeting series in partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Sponsors of the 1994-95 series include Miles, Inc., The Procter and Gamble Fund, SC Johnson Wax, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Satellite coordinates are as follows ....

C-BAND: Galaxy 3, Transponder/Channel 20; Vertical Polarization; Downlink Frequency 4100; Audio Subcarriers 6.2 (Spanish) and 6.8 (English); Orbital Location: 93.5 degrees West.

KU-BAND: SBS-6, Transponder 17H; Horizontal Polarization; Downlink Frequency 12110; Audio Subcarriers 6.2 (Spanish) and 6.8 (English); Orbital Location: 95 degrees West.

To participate in the Satellite Town Meeting, you can contact your local Public Broadcasting System (PBS) member station, Wal- Mart or Sam's Club, Chamber of Commerce, or Johnson Controls branch office and ask if your group can use the facility as a downlink site. Other possible sites are local schools, public libraries, community colleges, cable television stations, universities and technical schools, government offices, hospitals, businesses, hotels, or even private residences with satellite dishes. Call 1- 800-USA-LEARN for further information or to register your participation.

FAMILY INVOLVEMENT PARTNERSHIP FOR LEARNING

U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley was featured in the cover story of the March 19 issue of PARADE Magazine, which has a distribution of 66 million readers. "The beginning place of a child's education is a parent's expectations of a child's ability," Riley was quoted in the piece.

The following brochures, adapted from the Education Department report STRONG FAMILIES, STRONG SCHOOLS, give tips for parents, schools, businesses, and communities on how they can participate in and support family involvement in learning. Call 1-800-USA-LEARN to request copies of these materials.

• GET INVOLVED! HOW PARENTS AND FAMILIES CAN HELP THEIR CHILDREN DO BETTER IN SCHOOL
• TEAM UP FOR KIDS! HOW SCHOOLS CAN SUPPORT FAMILY INVOLVEMENT IN EDUCATION
• BE FAMILY-FRIENDLY: IT'S GOOD BUSINESS! HOW BUSINESSES CAN SUPPORT FAMILY INVOLVEMENT IN EDUCATION
• JOIN TOGETHER FOR KIDS! HOW COMMUNITIES CAN SUPPORT FAMILY INVOLVEMENT IN EDUCATION

THE FAMILY INVOLVEMENT PARTNERSHIP FOR LEARNING IS GROWING!

A Message from Sue Ferguson, Chair National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education

The national Family Involvement Partnership for Learning began as a cooperative effort between the U.S. Department of Education and the National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education (NCPIE). NCPIE, a coalition of over 50 national education and advocacy organizations, has been meeting for more than fifteen years to advocate the involvement of families in their children's education and to promote relationships among home, school and community that can enhance the education of all children and youth. Following Secretary Riley's State of American Education speech in February 1994, where he spoke of the value of family involvement in education, NCPIE and the U.S. Department of Education began a dialogue about ways to promote family involvement and the national Family Involvement Partnership for Learning emerged.

The Partnership now consists of more than one hundred groups. It represents parents, schools, communities, religious groups, and businesses and the number keeps growing. Whenever and wherever the Partnership is mentioned, there is always a genuine acknowledgment of its need.

SPOTLIGHT: A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY INVOLVES FAMILIES IN LEARNING

EDITOR'S NOTE: LEADERS OF MORE THAN 30 RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS, REPRESENTING SOME 75 PERCENT OF RELIGIOUSLY AFFILIATED AMERICANS, RECENTLY ISSUED A "STATEMENT OF COMMON PURPOSE," DECLARING THEIR SUPPORT FOR THE NATIONAL FAMILY INVOLVEMENT PARTNERSHIP FOR LEARNING. BELOW IS AN EXAMPLE OF ONE CONGREGATION'S EFFORTS.

Rabbi Bruce Aft of Congregation Adat Reyim in Springfield, Va., has introduced a program to the synagogue membership that aims to strengthen communication between parents and teens around issues related to children's learning. Through the Parent-Teen Dialogue program of the B'nai B'rith Center for Jewish Family Life, parents and teens come together in a family's home for a series of meetings to discuss important issues with educational significance, such as honesty, community service, and the Holocaust. Through this learning process, participants gain knowledge about a topic and are encouraged to study more about it.

Rabbi Aft serves as facilitator. "What has occurred with this program is an increased opportunity for parents and teens to talk to each other," he said. "We have opened doors which may have been closed for a long time. After a recent session, a parent commented, 'thank you for reintroducing me to my daughter!'"

Ofra Fisher, Director for the B'nai B'rith Center for Jewish Family Life, notes that the Parent-Teen Dialogue program has resulted in parents being more engaged in their children's learning at school. "The aim of the Parent-Teen Dialogue program is to create a safe environment for conversation, so that a student's confidence is strengthened at home and at school. The more confident students are, the more they will achieve at school, and the better prepared their homework and other assignments will be."

Other topics in the Bnai Brith Parent-Teen Dialogue program address values and ethics such as charity, intergenerational concerns and violence. The material can be adapted for use in a non-denominational setting.

For additional information, contact: Rabbi Bruce Aft, Congregation Adat Reyim, 6500 Westbury Oaks Court, Springfield, Va. 22152.

Does your religious community have a family involvement in learning program that you could share with us? Write the Family Involvement Partnership for Learning, 600 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20202-8173.

RILEY'S BASICS

EDUCATION SECRETARY RICHARD RILEY HAS OUTILINED THE FOLLOWING GOOD PRACTICES FOR FAMILIES:

• Find time to learn together with your children.
• Commit yourself and your children to challenging standards--help children reach their full potential.
• Limit TV viewing to no more than two hours on school nights.
• Read together. It's the starting point of all learning.
• Encourage your children to take the tougher courses at school and check their homework every day.
• Make sure your children go to school every day and support community efforts to keep children safe and off the streets late at night.
• Set a good example for your children, and talk directly to them about the dangers of drugs and alcohol and the values you want them to have. Listen to them, too.

"(We need) to help parents understand, in layman's terms, exactly what their children must know and be able to do in order to meet 21st century standards of competency."

--Hugh B. Price, President National Urban League

TOWN MEETING AUDIENCE SEES FIRSTHAND HOW MATH AND SCIENCE CAN COME ALIVE

Exploring how math and science education need to change to prepare students for the 21st century, the March Satellite Town Meeting discussed innovative teaching strategies and ways to reach out to parents and the community for their support.

Actively engaging students in hands-on math and science learning was a theme throughout the program, exemplified by a look at the Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP). Developed by San Francisco State University, this four-year high school curriculum has been adopted by schools in 12 states.

The audience got another look at hands-on learning with an in- studio demonstration. The experiment used lasers to show that sound waves have their own vibrations and wave lengths, and was performed by Solomon Burnett, a ninth-grade student volunteer at the museum of Life and Science in Durham, North Carolina. Solomon explained the experiment to a group of middle school students from Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Arlington, Virginia.

In a live satellite uplink from Los Angeles, California, an innovative distance learning project called TEAMS was introduced, which also utilizes hands-on learning. TEAMS provides math and science instruction to students, teachers, and parents via satellite, and is being used in 20 states. TEAMS instruction proceeds in a step-by-step format, so that participants can turn off the television at different intervals and perform the experiments themselves.

Gary Widdison, a TEAMS studio teacher, and Zelda Fisher, a classroom teacher from Clifford Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, spoke about their involvement with TEAMS. "Children learn that there's more than one right answer," said Fisher. "They're given an opportunity to explore and reach conclusions and make decisions for themselves. All of a sudden, instead of feeling like a failure, they're allowed an opportunity to feel like a success."

The need to have challenging math and science standards emerged as another theme in the program. In-studio guest Patricia Hoben spoke of her efforts in Minneapolis, Minnesota to rally the entire community around improved science standards. She is coordinator of the Minneapolis Regional Initiative in Science Education called RISE. RISE is a national project with the goal of creating local partnerships of teachers, scientists, and others who want to improve science education in their communities.

"What we're trying to do with RISE in Minneapolis is bring the whole community together in the process of developing standards for the children in our schools," Hoben said. "Hopefully, by being at the table, they will be able to make known their resources, and those resources will be built into the program from the beginning."

Secretary of Education Richard Riley clarified that the foundation for high standards is a solid grounding in basic math and science education. "It's so important for people to realize that we still have to have basic knowledge to have higher level thinking on subject matter," he said.

The question arose of whether the use of calculators, computers, and related technology interfered with students' getting a foundation in the basics in math and science. Joel Albright, a high school teacher and head of the math department at Douglas High School in South Dakota, uses a computer program in his geometry classroom to help students discover theorems for themselves. "If used right, technology can help students not only become better math students, but become more intuitive math students," he said. "The students get an ownership of math concepts."

Several panelists spoke of their programs to link math and science learning to the real world. Robert Powell is a youth program specialist at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science in Durham. Powell's program helped to train Solomon Burnett who performed the in-studio demonstration. "Young people like Solomon do real work at the museum," Powell said. "They work as explainers on the exhibit floor and help the animal department with its daily tasks. That in turn lets them know that they can be positive contributors to the community."

Gertrude Clarke is executive director of the New Jersey Business/Industry/Science/Education Consortium in Whippany, New Jersey. The consortium is a nonprofit partnership that works to improve the teaching and learning of science, math, computer science, and technology for K-12 students. "We think it's important that scientists and engineers and others on all aspects of the career ladders in the real world get to assist the schools," Clarke said.

Virginia Thompson focuses on creating partnerships with parents as the director of Family Math, based at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, California. "Parents probably exert the major influence in their children's learning," Thompson said. "Family values and expectations are what's going to carry through in the children's lives. We expect children to learn to read outside the school as well as inside the school. We need that same kind of experience in math and science."

At the Town Meeting's close, Deputy Secretary Madeleine Kunin summed up the main points of the program. She said the most effective math and science programs encourage all students to take math and science courses, including higher level courses such as algebra; use calculators, computers, and related technology as tools for teaching and learning; link math and science to the real world and job skills required in the workplace; set challenging standards; and involve school staff, parents, higher education, businesses and other community groups.

"Hopefully we'll see a whole generation of students who aren't afraid of math and science and who enjoy it," Kunin said.

"No one disagrees with the fact that education is largely a state matter when it comes to funding, and a local matter when it comes to teaching and learning. But global education and global competition will go hand in hand. There must be some idea in our country of the world-class standards of excellence we need to really meet the challenges of the future."

President Clinton Remarks to the National PTA Legislative Conference Washington, D.C. March 14, 1995

GOALS 2000 STATE PLANNING PROCESS UPDATE

Forty-five states have now received funding under the Goals 2000 Act: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. In addition, American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Guam, the Mariana Islands, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands have received grants.

For more information on your state's planning process, or to find out how you can get involved, contact your chief state school officer.

SCHEDULE FOR MIND EXTENSION UNIVERSITY REBROADCASTS OF TOWN MEETINGS

Mind Extension University rebroadcasts each GOALS 2000 Satellite Town Meeting, reaching more than 25 million cable homes. The rebroadcasts occur on Sunday from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Here is the schedule for the remainder of the school year:

     April 23       "Ready to Learn:  How Families and Communities
                    Can Prepare Children for Success in School"

     May 21         "Teaching and Learning in Diverse Classrooms: 
                    High Standards and Accountability"

     June 25        "Learning to Read:  Community Strategies for
                    Creating More Literate Students and Adults"

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