Fall, 2001, No. 11 National Network of Partnership Schools
Parent Advisory Council Asks State Leaders to Explain Academic Standards to Families
Members of the Wisconsin State Superintendent’s Parent Advisory Council expressed concern that schools were not informing parents adequately about what and how their children were learning. Specifically, parents did not understand the new Wisconsin Academic Standards and how teaching, learning, and assessment would change as a result of the standards.
In the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), the School-Family-Community Partnership Team (SFCP), Student Assessment, and Equity staffs worked together to produce a brochure, A Parent’s Guide to Standards and Assessment. The brochure explains the connections of curriculum, standards, and student testing. It offers parents ideas about how to help their children succeed in school. More than 250,000 brochures, printed in English, Spanish, and Hmong, have been distributed free to families statewide.
The SFCP Team also produced and distributed the Guide to Developing Grade-Level Brochures for Parents to help parents understand what their children are learning. Because each local school board determines its schools’ curriculum, DPI created a template for districts and schools to develop their own grade-level brochures. DPI included easily reproducible developmental characteristics of children and other parent-friendly topics. The template for districts and the parent brochure on state standards described above, are downloadable from www.dpi.state.wi.us/dpi/dlcl/bbfcsp/bbhghlts.html.
DPI’s Parent Advisory Council is working to strengthen the parent-voice in important legislative fiscal decisions affecting schools. DPI sponsored a State Parent Forum in February 2001 for parents to react to the Governor’s education budget early in the legislative process. About 100 parents from communities statewide attended the day-long forum with legislators, and agreed on the top four education priorities the state budget should address:
Eliminate the state-imposed revenue caps on schools;
Stabilize funding for the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program for school improvement;
Meet the learning needs of all students; and
Continue family-school-community partnerships.
Copies of the final forum report were distributed to all participants, school district administrators, and legislators.
The State Superintendent’s Parent Advisory Council has raised important issues, resulting in better information to and from parents as part of Wisconsin’s state leadership on school, family, and community partnerships.
Adapted from: Promising Partnership Practices—2001, National Network of Partnership Schools at Johns Hopkins University.
