Helping to Improve our Economically Disadvantaged student's scores

Title of Family-School-Community Partnership Project

Helping to improve our Economically Disadvantaged student’s scores

I. Data-Evidenced Student Need

At Helena Park Elementary our Economically Disadvantaged students are not performing well on state assessments.  This can attributed to lack of effective instruction, low parent involvement, and lack of mentoring.  We missed meeting AYP by one Economically Disadvantaged student this past year in reading.  This is a serious problem for many of our students.  They are not getting the support they need from home, school, and community.

II. Benefits for Student Achievement

The family-school-community partnership that I am proposing will help to foster the whole child, which in turn will help to improve student achievement.  I want to implement parent education classes, mentoring for our Economically Disadvantaged students by community members, and staff development for our teachers to improve instruction delivery.  These students are doing the best they can in the situation they are in, but as educators and good citizens it is our duty to make sure all their needs are being met.  This will allow these students to meet their full potential with a little hard work and dedication.

III. Proposed Activities/Strategies

The need for our school to sponsor parent education classes for our Economically Disadvantaged student’s parents is very important.  If our parents feel comfortable helping their children with school work, their child will understand that school is important to them. Also, I think we need to implement a mentoring program to help our students’ self-confidence.  If they have a mentor who comes to school a couple times a six weeks to check in with them and spend a little one-on-one time with that student building a rapport with them, the student’s self-confidence will improve and their scores will start to improve as well. I also want to implement some staff development to our staff about building better relationships with our students and effective teaching strategies.  I feel this will benefit not only our Economically Disadvantaged students, but all our students. Many studies have found that homework, combined with parental involvement, positively affects student achievement (e.g., Maertens & Johnston, 1972). In fact, Epstein's (1995) framework of the six types of parental involvement includes "learning at home" (Type 4) as an important component of school-family-community partnerships. Epstein suggests that schools should provide information and ideas to families "about how to help students at home with homework and other curriculum-related activities, decisions, and planning" (p. 704). Although the practice of parental support of their children's homework is "probably the most widespread and acceptable form of cooperation between school and home" (OECD, 1997), questions have been raised about who benefits from it. 1st goal – Through this partnership I would like to improve attendance by 15% in our Economically Disadvantaged students. 2nd goal - I would like to improve student performance on state assessments by 10% in reading during the initial year and every year after. 3rd goal – I would like to improve student performance on state assessments by 10% in math during the initial year and every year after. The Economically Disadvantaged students will increase student achievement through the support of parent education classes, mentoring program, and better instruction.  This will come from parents, teachers, administration, and community members.  This would increase the amount of support each student is currently receiving.  Support is vital for at-risk students.

IV. Proposed Process for Planning and Implementation

The first step would be to make sure we are not violating any confidentiality laws during the implementation of this partnership.  We would need to get enough personnel to implement the program.  We would also need to have some way of sharing the program with the entire staff and all stakeholders.  We could ask local business to help fund this partnership.  I could speak with the principal about extra funds in the budget.  We could look into grants to help subsidize this program.

V. What You Want from Your Audience

I want my audience to recognize the significance of this issue.  These at-risk students deserve to have all their needs met, so that they can reach their full potential.  I also want my stakeholders to know the most important resource will be the donation of stakeholder’s time.  I want my audience to walk out convicted to help these students become “all they can be.”