Behind every effective school campus, there is a strong parent involvement plan. Many of the special programs require a parental involvement component i.e. Title I, ESL, Special Education, Gifted. Your role as a classroom teacher is to develop a plan that will involve all of your parents. As a group, develop a grade level plan for involving your parents effectively. Read the information in the Parent Involvement Link below and use that as the basis for your planning.
Before beginning the project, decide on the grade level to be addressed, demographics of the campus, and the community resources and funding available.
Introduction
When schools work together with families to support learning, children are inclined to succeed not just in school, but throughout life. Three decades of research have shown that parental participation in schooling improves student learning. Such participation of parents and families is critical not only in the very beginning of the educational process, but throughout a child's entire academic career.
Under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Title I, Part A has been restructured to serve as a means for helping all students to achieve challenging academic standards. To accomplish this objective, the Act promotes the formation of new partnerships, particularly home-school partnerships, to help address more completely the full range of student needs that impact on their learning.
The parental participation provisions in Part A as well as those in the Goals 2000: Educate America Act (Goals 2000) reflect these research findings and emphasize the importance of parental involvement. Part A strengthens and builds on the requirements set forth in its predecessor, Chapter 1, with partnership provisions that are designed to benefit not only students and parents, but schools and communities, as well. Both pieces of legislation recognize the important roles that school, family, and community members play in helping our children to succeed in school, and both provide greater opportunity for these entities to participate directly in school governance and in the design and implementation of State school reform plans. Part A acknowledges the full range of roles that parents can play in their children's education.
Throughout this document, the words "parent" and "family" refer to all of the various configurations of primary caregiving units to which children belong, and are intended to have the broadest possible meaning.