I wanted to respond to this a while back, last week was tremendously busy and my kids were on the computor almost all evenings doing school work and projects. I do have the information Mr. Atherton requested about the study that quoted the numbers on student achievement and the most important factors that add to valuable educational experiences:
research shows that student acheivement can >> be accurrately measured as follows: 49% attributed to parent involvement, >> about 42% teacher quality, and about 8% to class size. > >Reference please! Ref. 1 Doing What matters Most: Investing in Quality Teaching, Prepared for the Natl. Commission on Teaching and America's Future, by Linda Darling Kurtz, Nov. 1977 Ref. 2 Ronald Ferguson, Paying for Public Education: New Evidence of How and Why Money Matters, Harvard Journal on Legislation 28 Summer 1991 pp 465-498 Also, about 2 1/2 years ago TIME magazine ran an article, which I do not have in front of me at this time. It highlighted several children in different parts of the country who came from challenging and diverse backgrounds that achieved at very high levels despite poverty, housing, health issues and other drawbacks to success. To a child, everyone of them listed the support of their parents and/or families as the number one reason they had achieved so much in education. I recall they had done an informal survey of many more children than they were able to interview and found parent involvment to be the number one factor in predicting student success. Parent Involvement takes many forms, the minimum is for parents to see to it that their children attend school everyday starting in the early years. Parents are encouraged to talk to their children everyday about school, to inquire about learning and to provide a suitable time and place for children to do homework. We have many programs and ways in which parents can get involved. Some schools keep track of parent involvment through attendance at conferences and school events. ECFE classes in parenting that are offered throughout the city encourage new moms and dads to get involved with their children's education. We have a great many parents who are involved in more school activites like volunteer work, committee work, PTOs and PTAs, other fundraising efforts such as atheletics, the list goes on and on. We had a very strong outpouring of help from hundreds of parents with the referendum last year as well as the grassroots effort to communicate with legislators on educational matters in the last session. We have very active parents in every part of the city. Every one of our Public Forums have been well attended by parents. There are some district and area parent advisory groups which I or other Board members attend such as the Special Education Advisory Council (SEAC). Chicago and some other school districts have started grading parents on involvment. I do not know if that is proving at all effective at this time. We currently have no plan I am aware of like this. A top priority of >> the district is currently to provide staff development in a way that is >> shown to raise teacher quality. In the past year, Dr. Johnson has worked >> to bring staff development to the classroom instead of remote course work >> that is not very effective. > >I'm a little confused here. Are you speaking of yourself in second person >or is there another Dr. Johnson? Or a guest author. This Dr. Johnson is our Superintendent, Dr. Carol R. Johnson. Sorry, I assumed everyone knew who she was. > >This sounds like a promising program are you recording data and do you have >a research design to analyze the results? We are tracking all the data and are fortunate to have one of the top researchers and evaluators in the country, Dr. David Heistad. This program is relativley new. We will be getting data further down the road. The pilot project results are very encouraging. You can contact our REA Dept. for more details about the pilots. League of Women Voters >> Middle School Study > >Where can this study be accessed? This study can be accessed through The League of Women Voters office. It was available on line, I don't seem to be able to access it now.> On class size: There are many children who are at risk of failing that benefit from small group learning. I have such a child who has learning challenges, so I have seen this first hand. The STAR Study, which Denny Schapiro wrote about in some detail, and work done in other circles show how class size affects learning and that minority students achieve faster and make more progress when class sizes are smaller. Also, I actually taught for a short while, (social studies and media literacy,) so I experienced this in the class room. In the March 22, 2001 issue of the New York Times it was reported that a survey was done to find out what teenagers attributed the higher drop out rates to; school officials thought it was tougher standards, the recent dropouts pointed to overcrowded classes, having to repeat classes with younger students, impersonal high schools and poor preparation in in earlier grades. Sorry it took so long to respond. Audrey Johnson 10th Ward MPS BOE _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
