I want to thank Michael Franklin and the PTA Council for inviting me to speak before you. I am looking forward to working with you to ensure that all of our children are receiving the highest possible quality of education. Education is a priority, and I will need your advice and your help over the next four years.
Tonight I would like to talk to you about how we can renew and reinvigorate the partnership between teachers and parents. I believe that a strong parent-teacher partnership is essential if we are to improve student achievement across the entire County.
Over the past decade, research has provided more and more hard evidence of two things. First, student achievement is significantly higher when parents are involved in their children's education. And, second, teachers can make a major difference in whether parents are involved and how they are involved. This is particularly true for parents of low-performing students.
Effective teachers understand that parents are critical allies in ensuring that children come to school ready to learn, attend school regularly, do their homework, don't watch too much TV, read for pleasure and plan for college.
Parents want their children to do well in school, and they want to help their children do well. But fewer and fewer parents know what to do. This is particularly true for parents of middle and high school students. They need and want advice from teachers. They need and want ideas on what they can and should do.
In other words, teachers and parents understand that they are partners in the educational process but they need help in making this partnership as strong and effective as possible.
This is one of the reasons I was so excited to read the Blueprint for Progress, recently approved by the Board of Education, and to see how much it focuses on parent participation. Let me mention a few of the ideas included in the Blueprint that I was particularly excited to see.
One strategy is "providing parents/guardians with concrete strategies to use at home to help their children achieve high standards."
I think that this is an excellent idea. As one recent study concluded, "To be effective, the form of [parental] involvement should be focused on improving achievement and be designed to engage families and students in developing specific knowledge and skills."
In fact, some of the groundbreaking research on this issue took place in our own Pikesville Middle School, where Johns Hopkins developed part of its TIPS program - Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork. In TIPS, teachers regularly give homework assignments that involve family members.
I believe that every teacher in each school should implement something like this. I was excited to learn recently that the County is participating in the Maryland State Department of Education's Family Reading Plan that encourages parents to help their children learn to read at home.
We need to make sure that every school improvement plan addresses this Blueprint strategy.
To help schools do this, we need to do something else included in the Blueprint - provide additional training to principals and teachers on how to encourage parent participation. This summer I had the pleasure of seeing the County's Parentmobile that provides support to individual schools. This program received a prestigious national award in 2001. We need to build on this foundation.
Another strategy in the Blueprint is providing parents with reports on how their children are doing. The research shows that this kind of two-way communication is very important.
We need to make sure that all parents receive the results from the standardized tests their children take, including the new Maryland School Assessments and High School Assessments. They also need to know what the results mean. It is not enough to simply say that your child scored in the 60th percentile. Parents need to know whether there are particular skill areas where their children need additional help, and they need to play a part in determining how to best to provide that help.
Finally, let me mention one other excellent strategy in the Blueprint--providing families with integrated services. Too often, many different agencies are providing services to the same child or to a sibling or parent without any coordination or collaboration.
I am asking all of the agencies that make up County government to work more closely with the Board of Education so that our services focus on the whole child and the entire family. I also strongly support the use of multi-disciplinary, interagency teams to address the needs of our more troubled youth. One program in our schools - Project Attend - uses these teams with very impressive results, and I hope that this program is expanded.
I look forward to working in partnership with Superintendent Hairston and the Board of Education as they begin to translate the Blueprint into an action plan for our schools. This year, the County schools will have to prepare its first five-year Master Plan for submission to the State. This Master Plan is an excellent opportunity to set priorities and encourage interagency collaboration.
I know that the Blueprint is building on a good track record of the Baltimore County Public Schools. Many schools are doing incredibly creative and effective things to encourage parental participation. I recently heard that Randallstown Elementary achieved 100 percent PTA participation. Congratulations! Woodmoor Elementary is holding weekly workshops on how parents can help improve the math skills of their children. That's fantastic.
It is important for schools to share these ideas. That's why I was excited to learn that the school system is stepping up its participation in the National Network of Partnership Schools so that schools can learn about what other schools across the County and across the country are doing.
I hope that the school system pays particular attention to parents of middle and high school students. Traditionally, parent participation drops off when children leave elementary school. We must do everything in our power to keep parents involved with their teenagers.
As parent leaders I believe that you have an increasingly important role in encouraging parental participation. There are many parents who are not involved enough in their children's education. Other parents can help these parents get more involved.
For example, at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax, Virginia, parents have formed a Parent Phone Buddy program where two parents team together to share information and advice.
As I am sure you know, the National PTA has established excellent standards for parent involvement programs. You can help ensure that every school and every PTA in Baltimore County adopts these standards.
There are many challenges facing our schools and our students. The federal No Child Left Behind is going to raise the bar for all students and draw attention to schools and groups of students are not doing well.
I believe that a renewed and reinvigorated partnership between parents and teachers will play a critical role in determining how well Baltimore County will face these challenges. I pledge to do my part to strengthen this partnership and to support the school system as it implements the parent participation strategies in the Blueprint for Progress. I know that the PTA Council will also do its part and thank you for your past efforts and future help in ensuring that every child in Baltimore County benefits from a strong parent-teacher partnership.
Thank you again for this opportunity to speak.
Revised February 3, 2003
Courthouse 