Archived:Strengthen Your Compact

A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

A Compact for Learning - December 1997

5: Strengthen Your Compact

Parents, teachers, school staff, educators, students, community members--we all need to work together every day to reach the goals we have for our children. The compact is about striving to improve student achievement. A continuous assessment of how well all partners are doing in this effort will allow you to improve and strengthen your compact.

At least once a year, your school team needs to review and revise your compact. But don't wait for formal revisions. Your school team can meet several times a year in order to use the information available to identify opportunities for improvement and to focus your efforts.

Build on your success

Within each compact area, some aspects will be working better than others. For those parts of your compact that seem to be working, what are the reasons? What can you learn from your effective practices that may help improve other areas?

Think about how you can use your success to gain greater support for your school, for family involvement in your school, and for the compact itself. Publicize your achievements as a fulfillment of the compact.

As you reward yourself for good work, you will create greater interest in and enthusiasm for the compact.

Identify areas in need of improvement

Are the different partners to your compact doing things right?

That is, is your compact being followed? Are resources being allocated as intended? Are appropriate training and time being made available for family and community involvement to work?

Are you doing the right things?

Does your compact include appropriate responsibilities and strategies? Does it address the needs of your school and your school community? Have your needs changed at all?

Develop solutions

Brainstorm as a team.

Talk to other schools to see what's working for them.

Conduct a focus group with members of your school community.
To find out more about what's going on in the school, use the Education Excellence Partnership's questions related to standards found in Activity Sheet A: Taking Stock of Standards as a framework for discussion.
To find out more about what's happening with your compact, use the questions in Activity Sheet C: Check Your Pulse.
Consider using research-based approaches.
Look at whole school models, such as New American Schools, a nonprofit corporation that has tested seven models in communities and states across the nation. Consider other programs, such as the programs of the National Center for Family Literacy, MegaSkills by the Home and School Institute, Accelerated Schools, Family Math, and Reading Recovery.
Learn about the latest research. The U.S. Department of Education has new research on student performance in math and science available in the TIMMS Tool Kit.
Contact professional organizations for guidance in particular areas of concern.
Search the Web for more information and resources.
The Partnership for Family Involvement in Education Web page at www.ed.gov/PFIE is a great place to begin. Look in Appendix C for other resources on the Internet and elsewhere.

Brainstorming session

In this section, you will find some ideas on how to overcome barriers that may arise as you implement your compact. In each example, schools, families, and communities joined together to develop an effective solution to a specific problem at the school. The solutions touch on all three areas of shared responsibility: student learning, communication, and building capacity through training and volunteering. What makes these solutions so effective is the initiative taken by the partners at the schools. Take a look at how a strong family-school-community partnership can help turn obstacles into opportunities.

Shared responsibility for student learning and high achievement

Problem: Students lose three to four months of reading skills over the summer.

Solution: Kansas City, Missouri, uses READ*WRITE*NOW!, the summer reading component of the America Reads Challenge, in its three Rs project, Reinforcing Reading and Writing, which pairs Title I staff, local Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., and middle school volunteers with students as reading partners while providing the students with daily reading activities and experiences, such as visiting the library.

Problem: School experiences disruptive and sometimes delinquent student behavior at school-sponsored events.

Solution: At Beech Grove City Schools in Indiana, a group of fathers formed the "security dads" to ensure proper behavior through their presence at school-sponsored events. As a result of this effort, paternal involvement in school and in children's activities has increased, and student behavior at events has improved.

Problem: Families are not sure what specific help their children may need to achieve to high academic standards.

Solution: Parents at the Wendall Phillips Magnet School in Kansas City asked for and received weekly student progress reports to help them keep track of those areas in which their children needed to improve. One parent commented, "If I know what my child is studying, I can help him at home and can see what progress he is making."

Shared responsibility for communication

Problem: Families of Hispanic students are not involved at the school because of a language barrier.

Solution: Hueco Elementary School in El Paso, Texas, conducts all family-school communications, parent workshops, and meetings in both Spanish and English.

To ensure that all parents can participate actively in these events, the district purchased translation equipment with Title I funds.

Problem: Teachers, school staff, and families are "too busy" to communicate.

Solution: The Carter Lawrence Middle School in Nashville, Tennessee, added a telephone number for parents that provides a recorded message informing them of classroom and school activities. Parents can receive targeted voice messages about their own children's progress and can leave messages detailing their reactions and concerns.

Problem: Parent-teacher conferences and other school meetings have low attendance.

Solution: Buhrer Elementary School in Cleveland, Ohio, rejects the assumption that parents who don't show up at school are not interested. Instead, the school makes it easy for families to get involved in their children's education. Teachers hold parent conferences off campus in places closer to students' homes. The school also holds "block parent meetings" for those families who cannot attend school events because they live on the outskirts of the community and lack transportation. Block meetings, which take place every few months in a parent's home or a nearby library, address parents' concerns and offer an opportunity to discuss school-related information.

Shared responsibility for building capacity through training and volunteering

Problem: Students must pass the state assessment test to graduate from high school.

Solution: Roosevelt High School in Dallas, Texas, enlists the help of parents to ensure that all students pass the test. They invited parents to an evening class to review the state assessment instrument and to discuss the skills their children are expected to demonstrate on the test. The school plans to hold workshops on a variety of topics that concern parents and students, such as getting ready for college.

Problem: Teachers and school staff aren't sure how to work with families.

Solution: In Stockton, California, "mentor parents"--trained at the district's parent resource center--spent 5,000 hours in the schools helping school staff improve family-school communication and parents' involvement in their children's learning. Among other activities, mentor parents conducted four workshops on obstacles to family involvement in schools, including parents' own negative experiences with school and teacher bias, which may result from cultural or language differences between teacher and parent.

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Conclusion

As you use Activity Sheet F: Take Action to create your action plan, remember that your compact is an action plan. It focuses the action of your partners on a goal of improved student learning and effective school performance, and it clarifies the specific responsibilities of each of your partners to help meet this goal. The compact process is not just five steps; it is a cycle of continuous improvement. Each step requires thinking, collaborating, action, and reflection. Continuous improvement means that you are constantly reviewing where you've been and looking ahead to determine where to go next.

Making your compact work will be a challenge, but it will be a rewarding challenge as you begin to see more and more students learning to high academic standards. Use the challenge to strengthen your family-school-community partnership for learning. The compact will help your school become a true learning community with standards of excellence for all partners.
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[Activity Sheet E: Key Indicators]

[Activity Sheet F: Take Action]