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Leadership for Family and Community Involvement

By: Paul D. Houston, Alan M. Blankstein, Robert W. Cole

With articles by Alan M. Blankstein, Pedro A. Noguera, Mavis G. Sanders, Paul D. Houston, and others, this volume examines educators’ pivotal role in leading family and community involvement in school success.

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Product Details

Grade Level: K-12
ISBN: 9781412981279
Published By: Corwin
Series: The Soul of Educational Leadership Series
Year: 2010
Page Count: 160
Publication date: January 18, 2013

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Description

"Establishing school-family-community partnerships to promote the social, emotional, and academic learning of students is the most important challenge for 21st-century education. In this volume, leading practitioners and researchers compellingly convey the rationale and inspiration for these partnerships. They also share many practical, innovative, and effective strategies that readers can readily implement to engage partners in raising knowledgeable, responsible, caring, and contributing children."
—Roger P. Weissberg, Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor
University of Illinois at Chicago

Making schooling a community endeavor!

Because schools are the heart and soul of a community, educational leaders have a responsibility to bring the community into the school, as well as to make the school a part of the surrounding community. This volume in the Soul of Educational Leadership series goes beyond administrative skills to examine educators' pivotal role of leading family and community involvement in school success.

With articles written by leading authorities and practitioners in the field, this resource discusses how school leaders can build successful family and community partnerships that flourish even in trying circumstances and over time. Readers will find:

Contributions from Alan M. Blankstein, Pedro A. Noguera, Mavis G. Sanders, Paul D. Houston, Edward H. Moore, and others
Inspiring and unique perspectives on the interplay of family and community in school success
Ideas for engaging families as partners

Key features

This current volume goes beyond leadership skills to probe the pivotal roles of families and community organizations in school success. The chapters in this book have been written by leading authorities in the field with a specific view to sharing how school leaders can engage in exemplary practice to point the way toward success for schools and their communities. The gains to be realized from creating communities and schools that work in partnership are valuable beyond price.

Key contributors include:

Alan Blankstein and Pedro Noguera
Paul Houston
Lesley S.J. Farmer
Edward Moore
Lin Kuzmich

Author(s)

Paul D. Houston

Paul D. Houston has established himself as one of the leading spokespersons for American education through his extensive speaking engagements, published articles, and his regular appearances on national radio and television. Formerly executive director of the American Association of School Administrators from 1994 to 2008, Houston has served as a teacher and building administrator in North Carolina and New Jersey. He has also served as assistant superintendent in Birmingham, Alabama, and as superintendent of schools in Princeton, NJ; Tucson, AZ; and Riverside, CA. Houston has served in an adjunct capacity for the University of North Carolina, Harvard University, Brigham Young University, and Princeton University. He has served as a consultant and speaker throughout the United States and overseas, and he has published more than 100 articles in professional journals.

Alan M. Blankstein

Award-winning author and educational leader, Alan Blankstein served for 25 years as President of the HOPE Foundation, which he founded and whose honorary chair is Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. A former “high-risk” youth, Alan began his career in education as a music teacher. He worked for Phi Delta Kappa, March of Dimes, and Solution Tree, which he founded in 1987 and directed for 12 years while launching Professional Learning Communities beginning in the late 1980s. He is the author of the best-selling book Failure Is Not an Option®: Six Principles That Guide Student Achievement in High-Performing Schools, which received the Book of the Year award from Learning Forward. Alan is Senior Editor, lead contributor, and/or author of 18 books, including Excellence Through Equity with Pedro Noguera,. He also authored some 20 articles in leading education print including Education Week, Educational Leadership, The Principal, and Executive Educator. Alan has provided keynote presentations and workshops for virtually every major U.S. Ed Org, and throughout the UK, Africa, and the Middle East. Alan has served on the Harvard International Principals Centers advisory board, and the Jewish Child Care Agency, where he once was a youth in residence.

Robert W. Cole

Robert W. Cole is proprietor and founder of Edu-Data, a firm specializing in writing, research, and publication services. He was a member of the staff of Phi Delta Kappan magazine for 14 years: assistant editor 1974-1976, managing editor 1976-1980, and editor-in-chief 1981-88. During his tenure as editor-in-chief, the Kappan earned more than 40 Distinguished Achievement Awards from the Association of Educational Publishers, three of them for his editorials.

Since leaving the Kappan, Cole has served as founding vice president of the Schlechty Center for Leadership in School Reform (1990-1994). At CLSR he managed districtwide and communitywide school reform efforts and led the team that created the Kentucky Superintendents’ Leadership Institute. He formed the Bluegrass Leadership Network, in which superintendents worked together to use current leadership concepts to solve reform-oriented management and leadership problems.

As senior consultant to the National Reading Styles Institute (1994-2005), Cole served as editor and lead writer of the Power Reading Program. He and a team of writers and illustrators created a series of hundreds of graded short stories, short novels, and comic books from Primer through Grade 10. Those stories were then recorded by Cole and Marie Carbo; they are being used by schools all across the United States to teach struggling readers.

Cole has served as a book development editor for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), for Corwin Press, and for Writer’s Edge Press. He has been president of the Educational Press Association of America and member of the EdPress Board of Directors. He has presented workshops, master classes, and lectures at universities nationwide, including Harvard University, Stanford University, Indiana University, Xavier University, Boise State University, and the University of Southern Maine. He has served as a special consultant to college and university deans in working with faculties on writing for professional publication. Recently he began serving as managing editor and senior associate with the Center for Empowered Leadership.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

1. Engaging Families to Enhance Student Success

2. Parents as Leaders: School, Family, and Community Partnerships in Two Districts

3. Sharing the Dream: Engaging Families as Partners in Supporting Student Success

4. The ‘What’ and ‘How’ of Helping Parents Help Students Become Successful Learners

5. Family Literacy: The Roles of School Libraries and Public Libraries

6. Balancing Your Communication Ledger:Using Audits to Involve Communities and Build Support for Schools

7. Manage the Molehill Before It Becomes a Mountain: Keeping Parent Interactions Productive for Students

8. Raising the Village by Bringing Communities and Schools Together

Index

Reviews

"Establishing school-family-community partnerships to promote the social, emotional, and academic learning of students is the most important challenge for 21st-century education. In this volume, leading practitioners and researchers compellingly convey the rationale and inspiration for these partnerships. They also share many practical, innovative, and effective strategies that readers can readily implement to engage partners in raising knowledgeable, responsible, caring, and contributing children."

Roger P. Weissberg, Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor
University of Illinois at Chicago

"This is a wonderful resource for all levels of educational leaders, new or seasoned. The foundational concepts, research-based strategies, and real-life examples offer useful information for involving families in schooling and student learning. Additionally, the attention paid to the values, attitudes, and behaviors of families is much appreciated. This is not a recipe book. Rather, it is a compilation of what matters for thoughtfully engaging all families."

Jean West Lewis, Family and Community Outreach Specialist
Howard County Public Schools, Columbia, MD

"It takes leadership to establish mutually respectful and responsible family-school partnerships. This book is very timely because the authors provide insight about how this leadership might take shape and offer guidance for establishing effective partnerships that engage families in the academic lives of their children. The guidance is based on real experiences in schools and districts. This book moves us forward—together."

Jeana Preston, Director, California Parent Center
San Diego State University Research Foundation

"This important collection of papers by many of the nation’s educational leaders provides specific and concrete ideas that practitioners can use to support the whole school community and the whole child."

Jonathan Cohen, President
Center for Social and Emotional Education

"It is rare to find a book on family and community involvement that is insightfully sensitive to the needs of parents. This book offers clear examples and methods to create authentic partnerships that will benefit everyone, especially our children.”

Barbara Flis, Founder
Parent Action for Healthy Kids

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