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Evaluating Parent Involvement |
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Tuesday, 30 January 2007 |
The Florida Evaluation Working Group, a project facilitated by Arroyo Research Services with initial funding from the Regions III & IV NCLB Regional Technical Assistance Center at the University of South Florida and continuing support from the East Coast Technical Assistance Center in Osceola, Florida, released the initial version of their Parent Involvement Toolkit on September 30, 2006. Designed to assist schools and districts in conducting evaluations of parent involvement policies under Section 1118 of No Child Left Behind, the toolkit contains guidance, policy details, and evaluation instruments including a parent survey, teacher survey and focus group protocols.
The Florida Evaluation Working Group is composed of district-level evaluators, Title I program administrators, and others knowledgeable in educational measurement and evaluation. Although the Evaluation Working Group was convened to tackle a variety of NCLB-related evaluation issues and general challenges important to schools, the first issue it took on was developing guidelines and evaluation activities that address the parental involvement shortcomings identified by the U.S Department of Education in their federal monitoring report.
The evaluation instruments developed for the toolkit include: parent surveys, teacher surveys, interview protocols for parents and teachers, and systems for reviewing school and district artifacts as they relate to parental involvement. The instruments measure the extent of parental involvement using specific language and requirements from Section V of No Child Left Behind.
According to district officials, tools that schools and districts can use to measure parental involvement according to federal standards are sorely needed. "It's crucial, particularly for our schools where we are targeting students in the lowest percentile, to get parents to understand the significance of their involvement", said Vicki Brooks, Orange County Public Schools Title I Director. "The toolkit provides for the first time some common ground and consistency in our schools so as parents move from school to school there is a familiar philosophy and guidelines that will support schools."
Brooks said she expects that the Parental Involvement Evaluation Toolkit will be used throughout the state, including in non-Title I schools. "Since we are all starving for some type of tool to measure parental involvement, I can't see others not embracing it," Brooks said. Brooks said she plans on introducing it to school boards and to state and local PTAs. “Parental involvement has been identified through the Department of Education as the number one need and this is the instrument that shows we have something in place to make happen.â€
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