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

"Better Education is Everybody's Business"

U.S. Secretary of Education, Richard W. Riley

The Partnership's mission is to promote children's learning through the development of family-school-community partnerships. More than 700 family, school, community, employer and religious groups comprise the Partnership. They have come together to support student learning to high standards. These Partners represent a growing grassroots movement across this country organized into four areas:

• "Family-School Partners for Learning" supporting home-school partnerships.
• Family partners strengthen schools through at-home activities including encouraging reading, monitoring homework, making sure their children are prepared and attend school; and through at-school activities including attending school conferences and asking for challenging coursework.
• School partners support families' expectations for their children's education, reach out to parents as partners, offer parents help, and are accessible when parents are available.
• "Employers for Learning" adopting family and student friendly business practices, such as providing leave time to attend parent conferences and volunteer in school, and providing parent training and child care.
• "Community Organizations for Learning" supporting learning communities through organized before and after school and summer activities, helping to make streets safe for children, and supporting supervised recreational activities.
• "Religious Organizations for Learning" providing parent education programs, sponsoring cultural programs, making their buildings available for organized activities and supporting out-of-school learning.

As the partnership grows, special projects support family involvement and student learning across communities:

• READ*WRITE*NOW!, a national initiative with an intensive summer component to encourage children's reading and writing with a reading partner 30 minutes a day.
• America Goes Back to School: Get Involved! encourages every American to go back to school each fall to share their talents and experiences. Taking the challenge means addressing local educational concerns on a continuous basis and making a year-long commitment to learning.
• Additional activities support the partnership through conferences, publications and on-going communication, including newsletters and the upcoming "Partners for Learning" Internet Home Page.

If your organization wants to join the Partnership, send a letter to: Partnership for Family Involvement in Education, 600 Independence Ave, SW, Washington, DC 20202-8173.

Golden Apple Awards 1996:

Last April, WORKING MOTHER magazine joined Teachers College at Columbia University and the Family Involvement Partnership for Learning as sponsor of the 1996 Golden Apple Awards for innovation in promoting parental involvement in education. These honors were presented at a two day conference called A New Understanding of Parent Involvement family-Work--School held at Teachers College, Columbia University, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education .

"The Golden Apple Awards gave us the chance to recognize the efforts of working moms, schools,organizations and corporations that understand how important parents are in their children's education," says Judson Culbreth, Editor-in-Chief of WORKING MOTHER. The recipients included working moms, schools, community organizations and companies:

• Winter Indoor Recess Program in Montclair, New Jersey, was founded by working mothers Barbara Taibi and Joann Scher.
• The Center for Family Involvement in Schools features Family Math, Family Science and Family Tools & Technology programs developed at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, by Arlene S. Chasek.
• Travis Middle School in McAllen, Texas, serves mostly low-income local and migrant Mexican-American children. It has established a program that sends teachers to visit parents in their homes and encourages them to participate in school projects.
• BE&K Engineering & Construction Company is headquartered in Birmingham Alabama. The firm invites employees to become involved in its Adopt-A-School program: BE&K staff act as tutors, mentors and skilled handymen, using their construction skills to repair plumbing, patch a roof or build a soccer field. In Columbus, Mississippi, BE&K staffers volunteered free time to help create a new school library. BE&K also offers on-site child care and time off to employees to attend school functions.
• Ridgeview, Inc., a hosiery and sock manufacturer, is located in semi- rural Catawba County, North Carolina, where the highest percentage of working mothers in the country is found. With assembly-line jobs, these moms (as well as the dads who work there ) find it difficult to take time off to visit their children's schools. So guidance counselors from the Newton-Conover City Schools come to the factory once a month, spending 15 minutes with each parent. Ridgeview also offers workers who have been with the company five years or more paid vacation days to go on school field trips with their kids. Since the plan went into effect, there have been no truancy or absentee problems because "if a child is absent we call the parents immediately," says Susan McGee, head of guidance for the Newton-Conover Middle School, and herself a working mother. "We have permission from the company to contact parents by phone anytime during the working day if a problem comes up. Another bonus has been the involvement of fathers. "When a parent comes to see a teacher at school, usually it's the mother," according to McGee. "But when we go to the plant, we get to see both parents." One father said that when he met with a counselor at the plant, it was the first time he had ever talked to anyone from his youngster's school.
• Mattel, Inc., a toy company that's been a national advocate for parental participation in education, offers its own employees 16 hours paid leave per year to spend time in schools. They also have invested $2 million in Hand in Hand, a national awareness campaign that promotes the benefits to children, parents, communities and companies of increased parental involvement in education. They sponsored the first "Take Our Parents to School Week," in November 1995, which included special parent-children activities, parent-information fairs and breakfasts for grandparents.
• The Allen County, Indiana, Mega-Skills Program: Parent Education from the Workplace to the Community offers workshops to parents on how to raise confident, responsible, caring children. Focusing on teaching parents how to spend time constructively with their children, it encourages parental involvement in homework, reading and other educational activities. The sponsor, the Workforce Development Division of the Greater Fort Wayne Area Chamber of Commerce, conducts parenting workshops in churches, social service agencies, businesses, schools, women's shelters and the local YWCAs.
• The ASPIRA Parents for Educational Excellence Program, directed by the national ASPIRA Association, teaches Puerto Rican and other Latino parents about the educational system so they can become better advocates for their kids.
• Project Parents, Inc., developed by Jeanne Belovitch in Boston, creates libraries in Boston housing projects and provides programs to strengthen the skills of economically disadvantaged families so they can take a meaningful role in their children's education. With the support of several corporations, including John Hancock Financial Services, trainers are preparing 30 volunteers to lead workshops that will teach Boston parents how to read with their children at home.

In addition, two special awards for outstanding service were presented.

Champions of the American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care (ABC)) for the Bridge Project. The companies who participated include Aetna, Allstate, American Express, Amoco, AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, Citibank, Deloitte & Touche LLP, Eastman Kodak, Exxon, GE Capital Services, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Mobil, NYNEX, Price Waterhouse LLP, Texaco, Texas Instruments, and Xerox.

Youth Guidance: Chicago Corner School Development Program, directed by Vivian Loseth, involves parents in 11 Chicago public elementary schools. Special recognition goes to James P. Comer, MD, Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale University Child Study Center, who originated the School Development Program for families in low-income urban areas

[Employers Promise]