In This Issue:

  1. Two kinds of school leaders: diminishers and multipliers

  2. How can leaders turn around resistant colleagues?

  3. Leadership 101

  4. An alternative to value-added data for improving teaching and learning

  5. Creating a “trauma-sensitive” learning environment for students

  6. Making summer reading less of a drag 

  7. The best way to improve the life trajectories of poor children?

  8. The half-life of “cultural literacy”

  9. A free, open-source survey on family-school relationships

10. Short item: Free, copyright-clear images, videos, and audio

 

Quotes of the Week

“When students graduate from my high school, I want them to be able to answer two key questions: What do I do well? And what do I love to do?”

            Edward Bouquillon, superintendent-director of Minuteman Regional Vocational

Technical School District in Massachusetts, in “Career Skills vs. Academics: Not An

Either/Or Proposition” in School Administrator, April 2015 (Vol. 4, #72, p. 31-33),

http://bit.ly/1Ev4Hr9; Bouquillon can be reached at [email protected].

 

“Giving someone time-management advice like ‘work smarter, not harder’ is the same as giving someone weight-loss advice like ‘eat fewer calories than you burn’ – accurate but useless. It’s not surprising, then, that in both weight loss and personal productivity we are prone to look for quick fixes, the ‘one weird trick’ that will make everything fall into place. But there are no quick fixes on either front. You just have to go back to the accurate but useless advice, figure out how to make it useful for you, and then do it.”

            Malanie Nelson in “Productivity Takes Work” in The Chronicle of Higher Education,

April 10, 2015 (Vol. LXI, #50, p. A54), http://bit.ly/1zalBFb

 

“[S]mart leaders don’t always bring out the smarts in others.”

            Elise Foster and Liz Wiseman (see item #1)

 

“Education researchers talk about ‘desirable difficulties,’ which force students to engage with material and process information deeply. Teachers’ goals… should be to find ‘zones of optimal confusion.’”

            Matthew Hutson quoting Sidney D’Mello (Notre Dame University) in “Beyond

Happiness: The Upside of Feeling Down” in Psychology Today, January/February

2015, http://bit.ly/1HjHau3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Two Kinds of School Leaders: Diminishers and Multipliers

            “[S]mart leaders don’t always bring out the smarts in others,” say Elise Foster and Liz Wiseman (The Wiseman Group) in this Kappan article. “Many leaders, having spent years being rewarded for their intelligence, never look beyond their own capability to see and use the full genius of their team.” An example: a principal dominates staff meetings with a monologue on the school’s priorities and doesn’t take the pulse of the staff. Such leaders, say Foster and Wiseman, are “diminishers” – they underutilize their colleagues and “leave talent on the table.” By micromanaging, they discourage initiative and lead underlings to play it safe.

            At the other end of the leadership spectrum are “multipliers” – they unleash creativity and energy, bring out the best in colleagues, and take their organizations to new heights. What are the key characteristics of multipliers? “If diminishers see the world of intelligence and capability in black and white,” say Foster and Wiseman, “multipliers see it as a rainbow; they think differently, and they operate differently, which causes people to respond differently – offering their full intelligence and discretionary effort.” Diminishers are profoundly elitist, believing, “People won’t figure it out without me.” Multipliers have a growth mindset and walk into their offices thinking, “People are smart and will figure it out.” Here are five ways multipliers get so much more out of their colleagues:

-   Managing people – They are talent finders, tapping into natural abilities at all levels of the organization, which inspires extraordinary loyalty;

-   Fostering a productive environment – The workplace is safe, challenging, and intense, and people feel they have permission to think and the space to do their best work.

-   Setting direction – Multipliers lay down challenges that stretch the organization, get people to go beyond what they thought possible, and generate belief that it can be done.

-   Deciding – “Multipliers make decisions in a way that informs and readies the organization to execute those decisions,” say Foster and Wiseman. “They build an organization that understands the issues and can quickly support and execute decisions.”

-   Getting things done – These leaders demand excellence, give ownership, and provide the resources people need to be successful, which builds strong, trusting relationships.

In each of these areas, diminishers do the opposite, creating a negative work environment, poor morale, and low productivity.

“It is time to do the math and realize that school systems simply can’t afford the costs these leaders incur,” say Foster and Wiseman. When they interviewed people about each kind of manager and asked what percent of their capability was being used, those under diminishers said 20-50 percent while those under multipliers said 70-100 percent. In other words,

multipliers can more than double human potential.

            Foster and Wiseman studied hundreds of leaders and employees and found, sadly, that most leaders operate in the middle of the spectrum between multipliers and diminishers – they are “accidental diminishers.” These well-intentioned leaders were victims of two tendencies:

            • Rescuing – They don’t like to see people struggle, make mistakes, or fail so they protect their colleagues. We know that learning through struggle is often more effective, so when rescuers step in, they deprive people of vital learning opportunities and create a cycle of dependency.

            • Always on – These leaders are full of infectious energy, always present, always there with something to say. But others are shut out of the conversation and feel suffocated.

            Foster and Wiseman believe that with these insights in mind, a leader can begin to lead with intention and maximize the potential of those around them. They suggest that leaders take their “multiplier experiment” – http://multipliereffectbook.com – which includes two examples: leading a meeting using only questions; and dispensing opinions in small but intense doses. Leaders who have tried this reported “a sense of liberation… They noticed the burden of thinking shift away from themselves onto colleagues; more important, they saw the quality of the discussion and resulting solutions improve.”

            “What would transpire at a school if the principal learned to lead like a multiplier and found a way to give teachers, parents, and students greater ownership for the success of the school?” ask the authors. “What if students and teachers learned these principles together? Our studies suggest that aspiring multipliers can create genius around them, ensuring no leader is left behind, by creating more multiplier moments… The model presented here illustrates how one moves away from being a leader who knows, directs, and tells, and moves toward becoming a leader who sees, provokes, and unleashes the capability of others.”

 

“Multiplying Is More Than Math – It’s Also Good Management” by Elise Foster and Liz Wiseman in Phi Delta Kappan, April 2015 (Vol. 96, #7, p. 47-52), www.kappanmagazine.org; Foster can be reached at [email protected].

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2. How Can Leaders Turn Around Resistant Colleagues?

(Originally titled “Getting Genuine Commitment for Change”)

            “Resistance to change is a natural human tendency,” says leadership coach Marceta Reilly in this article in Educational Leadership. Some examples of teacher resistance: Most of my students are doing fine. I’d never have time to try that. Things were better the way they used to be. My low kids could never do that. Principals who are trying to improve their schools sometimes get frustrated and use less-than-effective approaches:

-   Logic – Leaders who suggest alternative teaching strategies for struggling students may not realize the underlying problem: teachers may believe their students aren’t very smart, come from dysfunctional homes, and are lazy.

-   Unfocused helpfulness – Some leaders try to build trust by picking up materials for teachers, doing copying for them, and bringing treats to meetings.

-   Negotiation – Another approach is cajoling a teacher into doing the first part of a new instructional strategy and the administrator finishes it off.

-   Coercion – “By golly, this is a district requirement and teachers don’t have a choice” – and noncompliance will show up in evaluations.

Reilly describes better approaches that she saw in three schools.

            • Connect to the heart. An assistant principal was frustrated with teachers who frequently sent “troublemakers” to the office. He decided to assume positive intent: all teachers basically wanted the best for their students, and students could change for the better. In one-on-one chats, he tried to connect with teachers’ underlying values – “Did you know that Antwon’s family has been sleeping in a car for two weeks?” He reframed students’ toughness as resilience: Think of Antwon as a survivor, not a troublemaker. What are his strengths? Let him know he’s wanted. If he messes up, show disappointment, not anger. Teachers began to rise to the call, says Reilly.

            • Reframe resistance. A veteran principal in a high-achieving elementary school got push-back when he urged teachers to address the needs of a small number of struggling students: “Hey, we just got Blue Ribbon status. Why do we have to change anything?” Upon reflection, he realized that teachers were proud of their teaching skills and afraid that if they tried something new, they might fail. So he reframed: “We are a Blue Ribbon school, but we don’t take our success for granted. We’re the kind of educators who are always looking for best practices and pushing to be continuous learners ourselves.” As teachers heard the principal boast about their prowess to parents, they changed the way they interpreted their work and stretched to meet the needs of low-achieving students.

            • Don’t be the expert. A beginning principal encountered resistance as she suggested new teaching ideas, and it became clear that, because the previous principal hadn’t been an instructional leader, teachers weren’t used to one who aspired to that role. She decided on a counterintuitive strategy: She stopped trying to be the expert and expressed curiosity about the strong points in teachers’ methods. She said things like, “I don’t really know the answer, but I bet together we can figure it out.” In one-on-one conversations and faculty meetings, she drew teachers out on successful practices, encouraging them to share them with colleagues. This spotlighted effective methods and got teachers to be more intentional about things they were intuitively doing well. It also enlisted a core team that was willing to try some “stretch” instructional ideas. As more people adopted the changes, the naysayers became less influential.

            “In the end,” says Reilly, “trust your staff and treat them as if you truly believe in their capacity. Listen, listen, listen – not only to the content, but also to the feelings beneath what they say. By understanding what people care about and speaking to them from that point of view, you can usually bring even the most reluctant teachers on board.”

 

“Getting Genuine Commitment for Change” by Marceta Reilly in Educational Leadership, April 2015 (Vol. 72, #7, p. 42-46), http://bit.ly/1CQhWwR; Reilly can be reached at [email protected].

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3. Leadership 101

            In this New York Times article, Duff McDonald traces the distinction between managers and leaders to a 1977 article by Abraham Zaleznik, who said leaders are the visionaries who get troops excited to march into battle and managers are the platoon sergeants who actually walk them into the fray.

            But can leadership be taught? Yes, say most business schools, attacking the task on three fronts: theory and knowledge; specific skills and techniques; and examining one’s own values and ideals, a “personal journey” aimed at becoming an “authentic” leader whom others will follow.

            Daniel Goleman, author of Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence (More Than Sound, 2011), believes that in addition to the usual characteristics, the key to successful leadership is the ability to manage relationships and identify and monitor emotions in oneself and others. Here’s his list of competencies:

• Self-awareness:

-   Realistic self-confidence – You understand your own strengths and limitations and know when you need to rely on others.

-   Emotional insight – You understand your feelings – for example, what makes you angry.

• Self-management:

-   Resilience – You stay calm under pressure and recover quickly from upsets; you don’t brood or panic.

-   Emotional balance – You keep distress in check and let others know what’s wrong and what the solution is, versus blowing up at them.

-   Self-motivation – You keep moving toward distant goals despite setbacks.

• Empathy:

-   Cognitive and emotional – You understand other perspectives and read others’ feelings accurately, which allows you to communicate in ways colleagues understand.

-   Good listening – You pay full attention to others and take time to understand what they are saying without talking over them or hijacking the agenda.

• Relationship skills:

-   Compelling communication – You state your points in persuasive, clear ways so people are motivated and understand your expectations.

-   Team playing – People feel relaxed working with you – they laugh around you.

 

“Can You Learn to Lead? Business Schools Say Yes – Because, Really, Who Just Wants to Manage?” by Duff McDonald in The New York Times Education Life Section, April 12, 2015,

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/12edl-12leadership.html?_r=0

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4. An Alternative to Value-Added for Improving Teaching and Learning

            “Researchers want their work to be used,” says Stephen Raudenbush (University of Chicago) in this article in Educational Researcher, “so we flirt with the idea that value-added research tells us how to improve schooling.” VAM studies have documented dramatic variations in the impact of different teachers on students’ test scores and life outcomes. It therefore seems logical to recommend to policy makers that they use the data to make decisions on hiring, PD, and retention of teachers.

            But there’s a problem, says Raudenbush. Value-added studies (including the Measures of Effective Teaching Project) randomly assign rosters of students to different teachers within schools. “This is a smart strategy for isolating teacher differences, the purpose of the study,” he says. “However, policy makers want to use value-added statistics and observations to compare teachers who work in different schools.” There are two concerns with this:

-   Comparing teachers working in different schools doesn’t take into account inter-school variations in organizational effectiveness, neighborhood characteristics, and student background.

-   VAM research compares teachers to other teachers, not with their students’ achievement on clearly stated outcomes.

Raudenbush contrasts these studies of individual teacher value-added to studies of the organizational characteristics of schools that are particularly effective in boosting student achievement. This kind of research is made possible by looking at oversubscribed charter schools and comparing the long-term achievement of students who were admitted versus those who weren’t. A number of specific schoolwide variables have emerged, among them: high expectations, strong leadership around schoolwide norms and procedures, high expectations, professional working conditions, frequent feedback to teachers, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and school safety. This research, says Raudenbush, shows the power of “well-conceived schoolwide regimes of instruction and social behavior [and]… a coherent school environment to reshape the life chances of disadvantaged children.” But these studies don’t measure the impact of individual teachers.

So here’s the situation: VAM research measures the relative effects of teachers working with similar students under similar conditions. School-impact research measures the environmental characteristics of schools that produce impressive student outcomes. “But the two strands of research are insufficient guides for action,” says Raudenbush. “To act, we need more-informative evidence and a theory to synthesize all the evidence.”

But wait a minute: isn’t it possible that an effective school is simply a collection of good teachers? If that’s the case, then school improvement could simply be a matter of hiring and firing well. To explore that question, Raudenbush turns to studies of successful attempts to improve teaching and learning. Several different approaches have produced results:

-   Innovative schoolwide instructional initiatives involving standards, curriculum, and professional working conditions;

-   Expert observation of and feedback to individual teachers – classroom improvement without organizational change;

-   Combinations of schoolwide organizational changes and frequent observation and feedback to teachers connected to evaluation.

So it’s complicated. What is the best theory of action for improving teaching and learning?

“The problem,” says Raudenbush, “is that the amount of information a district can collect on each teacher is small. If a district administrator uses VAM data, we can anticipate that an attempt to classify teachers for personnel decisions will be characterized by intolerably high error rates.” In addition, making high-stakes decisions on value-added data may lead some educators to “game” the indicators. For these reasons, he concludes, “A vision of educational improvement rooted solely in improving state and district use of measures of teacher effectiveness seems limited. This vision overstates what state and district officials can learn from data and fails to incorporate the lessons of a broad range of research on school effectiveness and instructional improvement.” Raudenbush believes state and district officials should focus on what they do best: Develop standards and assessments, put in place a coherent curriculum and PD to support it, and hold schools accountable for student results.

            The school level, he believes, is the best place for personnel decisions and instructional improvement. Principals should use a distributed leadership model, getting expert teachers involved in observing colleagues, giving feedback, and analyzing data from frequent student assessments to identify and spread the most-effective classroom practices. The local use of rich data on teacher effectiveness is much more likely to produce results – and be accepted by teachers as credible. “If schools are accountable for their outcomes,” says Raudenbush, “then expert teachers have an incentive to share their expertise with novice teachers, and school leaders (including expert teachers) will have an incentive to hire and retain a strong faculty. If all teachers have an interest in the overall quality of the school, teachers have an interest in holding themselves and their peers accountable for doing their best. This sense of collective efficacy seems to be a key feature of highly effective schools…”

            This strategy makes the principal the key actor – “Yet we must face the reality that school leadership is highly variable in quality,” says Raudenbush. “If the school is to become the locus of dense information and sound decisions, we must adopt a strategy for improving school leadership.”

 

“Value Added: A Case Study in the Mismatch Between Education Research and Policy” by Stephen Raudenbush in Educational Researcher, March 2015 (Vol. 44, #2, p. 138-141),

http://bit.ly/1amO6Ju; the author can be reached at [email protected].

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5. Creating a “Trauma-Sensitive” Learning Environment for Students

            In this article in Principal, Pete Hall and Kristin Souers say that many students walk into school feeling the effects of trauma. This can affect their own ability to learn, the climate of their classrooms, and the orderliness of the whole school. Trauma, in the words of Daniel Siegel of the UCLA School of Medicine, is “an experience that overwhelms our ability to cope” – perhaps including the death of a loved one, mental illness in the home, witnessing a crime, parental fighting or divorce, an incarcerated family member, homelessness, bullying.

“When children lose the ability to cope with the traumatic events in their lives,” say Hall and Souers, “they seek ways to regulate. They access whatever resources they have – healthy or unhealthy – to manage the intensity associated with the stress of these events.” Their school work and behavior often suffer. One study found that traumatized children are three times more likely to fail academically, five times more likely to have problems with attendance, and six times more likely to have behavior problems than peers who haven’t experienced trauma.

“We can’t always know what students have experienced, or even all the details about it,” continue Hall and Souers, who worked together in an elementary school in Spokane, Washington where half the students had a trauma history. “Neither can we erase traumatic experiences from students’ memories or stop trauma from happening again. But we can work diligently to create an atmosphere that is inviting, welcoming, peaceful, and safe for all our students” – one that is “trauma-sensitive.” Hall, who was principal of the school, brought in Souers, a local mental health therapist, to work with teachers, custodians, and other staff on understanding and supporting needy students. “Souers’s lessons,” they write, “centered on the one element of the equation that educators and school personnel can control: ourselves.” Here is what they worked on:

• Understanding motives – When students who have experienced trauma feel threatened, unsafe, or ill-at-ease, they often react by fleeing, fighting, or freezing. In the past, these actions often resulted in students being scolded or punished, but adults in the school began to see what was behind the actions, understood them as “normal reactions to not OK things,” and became more strategic in planning how to react when there were problems.

• Building positive relationships – Staff members were prompted to reach out to students, especially those with the most challenges, and get to know them better.

• Reacting strategically – Teachers and other staff worked on remaining calm, consistent, and caring in the face of provocative behaviors. Traumatized children sometimes create chaos – screaming, cursing, throwing papers, upending desks, tantruming, tormenting others.  “Just because a child has chosen a disruptive regulation strategy doesn’t mean we need to hop on board,” say Hall and Souers. “Educators should ask: What problem is this child attempting to solve?” Was there a trigger? “The key is to avoid reacting to these infringements with frustration, anger, or irritability because a trusted adult’s response to off-kilter behaviors can either escalate or mitigate the surrounding  environment… When we analyze the motivation, we can empathize with the student’s plight, talk the student down off the proverbial ledge, offer alternative strategies for self-regulation, and maintain order in the classroom… Our calmness serves as a model to students of how to self-regulate, reducing the need to remove students from our classrooms.” The teachers in Hall’s school adopted the mantra, Stay out of Oz, meaning don’t get swept away by the tornado.

• Keeping your footing – Educators have numerous demands and stresses themselves, say Hall and Souers, and it’s easy to slip. They advocate using affirmations of core values and professional purpose and aspirations – I believe… I love… I will always… I can… – to stay rooted in the most effective posture and strategies for helping all children thrive.

 

“Address Trauma with Calm, Consistent Care” by Pete Hall and Kristin Souers in Principal, March/April 2015 (Vol. 94, #4, p. 14-17), http://bit.ly/1GDsF55

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6. Making Summer Reading Less of a Drag

            In this School Library Journal article, Carly Okyle criticizes the approach some high schools take to summer reading – requiring students to read classics like The Scarlet Letter and A Farewell to Arms and write weekly journal entries. This approach is seen by some teachers as beneficial to academic achievement – or at the very least helpful test prep, since the vocabulary in classic literature tends to pop up in AP tests and the SAT. But avid readers tend to resent being forced to read, struggling readers find the classics too difficult to understand without help, and any student can fake the required paperwork by using literary cheat-sheets like SparkNotes. “As high schoolers,” says California student Heather Smith, 16, “we like to think we have some freedoms rather than have someone spoon-feed us what we’re supposed to know and what we’re supposed to think.”

            Jennifer Frantz, supervisor of language arts in a New Jersey district, joins others in arguing that having a required summer reading list is an unproven strategy and it’s better to give students free choice of what they read. “Reading is best and most effective when you create a positive experience around it,” says Ellen Riordan of the American Library Association. “Reading for pleasure improves stress levels and test scores,” says California librarian Faythe Arredondo. “A lot of teens coming into the library are only there to read what they have to. They take no enjoyment in the offerings, and I feel it kills their love of reading.”

            Kiera Parrott of School Library Journal has ten suggestions for escaping dreary book assignments and “flipping” summer reading. Students choose a book and then do one or more of the following:

-   Draw a map of the setting.

-   Write a short story about what the character(s) would be doing one year later.

-   Imagine you could interview the protagonist. What three questions would you ask?

-   Redesign the cover.

-   Write a letter to the author or illustrator.

-   Write a short book review remembering to include a few sentences describing the book as well as a few sentences about why you liked it – or didn’t.

-   Choose two people or characters from two different books who you think would be great friends, explaining why.

-   Choose one book location or setting to live in for a week – it can be fiction or nonfiction. Which book would you choose and why?

-   Take a photo of the cover of each book you read. Create a photo collage or animated trailer (perhaps using Animoto).

-   Recommend a book to a friend or family member. Which title did you choose and why?

 

“Flip Summer Reading: What to Do About Those Tired, Required Reading Lists” by Carly Okyle in School Library Journal, April 2015 (Vol. 61, #4, p 32-34), no e-link available

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7. The Best Way to Improve the Life Trajectories of Poor Children?

            “What’s the policy shift with the most power to make children’s lives better?” asks Emily Bazelon in this article in The Atlantic:

-   High-quality preschool and parenting education to ensure early cognitive growth?

-   Stable homes and safe neighborhoods to minimize childhood stress?

-   Parents with good, steady jobs?

-   Couples marrying and sticking together?

-   Character education in schools to build social-emotional skills?

“There’s another answer,” says Bazelon. “… [F]or children to thrive in all of the above ways, their best bet is to be born to mothers and fathers who didn’t just slip up but intended to have them.”

What distinguishes drifters, who slide into having children, from planners, who make a conscious choice? “All kinds of complicated, intangible factors,” says Bazelon, “and one basic, concrete variable: reliance on long-acting birth control.” According to Isabel Sawhill in her book, Generation Unbound: Drifting Into Sex and Parenthood Without Marriage (Brookings, 2014), IUDs and implants are uniquely “forgiving of human frailty” and “have been found, in practice, to be about forty times more effective than condoms and twenty times more effective than the pill at reducing the incidence of unplanned pregnancies.” Over a ten-year period, says Sawhill, in realistic, everyday-use conditions:

-   80 of 100 women relying on condoms will get pregnant;

-   60 of 100 using the pill;

-   8 of 100 using a copper IUD;

-   2 of 100 with a hormonal IUD;

-   1 of 100 using implants.

Behavioral economics is one explanation for these dramatic and little-known differences. Long-acting contraceptives change the default setting: rather than having to take action to prevent pregnancy, women have to take action to become pregnant. Long-acting contraceptives, says Sawhill, “help poorer and less-educated women align their behavior with their intentions.”

            “Framed in those terms,” concludes Bazelon, “increasing access to IUDs and implants is a way to avoid the paternalistic policing of poor women’s reproductive choices – and the abortion fight.”

 

“Pregnancy and the Single Woman: Why Unplanned Births Are a Bigger Problem Than Unmarried Parents” by Emily Bazelon in The Atlantic, December 2014,

http://theatln.tc/1DBh8kc

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8. The Half-Life of “Cultural Literacy”

            In this New Yorker article, John McPhee reports on an experiment he recently performed in a suburban Massachusetts high school. He asked a senior English class of 19 students to raise their hands if they recognized certain names, words, or phrases as he read them one by one. The results:

-   Woody Allen, Muhammad Ali, Time Magazine, Hallmark cards, Denver, Mexico, Princeton University, Winston Churchill, “Hamlet,” Toronto – 19 recognized them.

-   Sarah Palin, Omaha, Barbara Streisand, Rolls-Royce – 18

-   Paul Newman – 17

-   Heathrow – 16

-   Fort Knox – 15

-   Elizabeth Taylor, “My Fair Lady” – 11

-   Cassius Clay – 8

-   Waterloo Bridge, Maggie Smith – 6

-   Norman Rockwell, Truman Capote, Joan Baez – 5

-   Rupert Murdoch – 3

-   Hampstead, Mickey Rooney – 2

-   Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh – 1

-   In England would you know what a bobby is? – 1

-   Calabria, St. John’s Wood, Peckham Rye, Churchill Downs, The Old Vic, News of the World, Jackie Gleason, David Brower, Ralph Nelson, David Susskind, Jack Dempsey, Stephen Harper, Thomas P.F. Hoving, George Plimpton, J. Anthony Lukas, Bob Woodward, Norman Maclean, Henry Luce, Sophie Loren, Mort Sahl, Jean Kerr, James Boswell, Samuel Johnson – 0

 

“Frame of Reference: To Illuminate – or To Irritate?” by John McPhee in The New Yorker, March 9, 2015, http://nyr.kr/1PCJBLJ

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9. A Free, Open-Source Survey of Family-School Relationships

            Panorama Education has just released an online home-school questionnaire. Here’s the link: https://www.panoramaed.com/family-school-relationships-survey. The survey has 66 selected-response items and some additional open-response questions. Here are the eight categories with a sample question from each one:

-   Parent engagement – How often do you meet in person with teachers at your child’s school?

-   Parent support – How often do you and your child talk when s/he is having a problem with others?

-   Parent efficacy – How confident are you in your ability to support your child’s learning needs?

-   School fit – How well do you feel your child’s school is preparing him/her for his/her next academic year?

-   Learning behaviors – How much effort does your child put into school-related tasks?

-   Role and responsibility – Who is primarily responsible for ensuring good communication between home and school?

-   School climate – To what extent to you think that children enjoy going to your child’s school?

-   Barriers to engagement – How big of a problem are the following issues for becoming involved with your child’s current school?

 

“Family-School Relationship Survey” by Hunter Gehlbach, Panorama Director of Research

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10. Short Item:

            Free, copyright-clear images, videos, and audio – In this “Cool Tools” column in School Library Journal, Richard Byrne suggests the following links for student projects and papers:

-   Public Domain Review of images, books, essays, audio recordings, and films in the public domain: http://publicdomainreview.org

-   Free Music Archive: http://freemusicarchive.org

-   Sound Gator for miscellaneous noises: http://soundgator.com

-   Morgue File for thousands of images: http://morguefile.com and http://pixabay.com

 

“Go Forth and Reuse” by Richard Byrne in School Library Journal, April 2015 (Vol. 61, #4, p 14)

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