Tom Loew says that East Dallas Community Schools have been creating beautiful and functional environments for decades, but developing Bachman Lake Community School was more than creating a school. They also had to establish a community center, scale up staff quickly, service a wide number of families, leverage Montessori training and related…

Guidelines for planning and conducting a series of parent awareness workshops are offered in this paper. Parent awareness programs consist of efforts to involve parents in the education of their children through collaboration with teachers. Phases of planning with parents as partners are discussed in the first part of the paper. Planning…

The paper describes Project PIPE (Parent Involvement through Parent Education), an approach designed to increase the involvement of parents of preschool developmentally delayed and disabled children in their children's education and treatment programs. Three phases are delineated: (1) development of a community network (facilitating relationships…

Participants in the Dad's Day at the Center for Young Children program meet on Saturday mornings for a series of 12 sessions which combine play and discussion group activities. The first hour of each session is structured so that fathers and their 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children can spend time together experiencing new toys, foods, arts, and games…

This paper briefly defines parent involvement in education, outlines several factors that are fueling new state interest in programs to strengthen families, describes programmatic initiatives in several states, and examines some of the issues states have faced in their efforts to craft effective community-based programs that are responsive to…

This study considers the implementation of parent choice and parent information in the Alum Rock demonstration as a case study in organizational response to innovation. Analysis of the implementation process focuses on two dimensions: the division of the implementation process into three phases--initiation, implementation, and…

This brief paper describes the "Brookline After School Special:" a program created to meet the after-school needs of older elementary school-age children throughout the city of Brookline, Massachusetts. The rationale for the program, a discussion of aspects considered in implementing the program, and reflections on the first year of…

This paper contains a description of key features of the Summer Institute on Teaching and Assessing Writing Skills, which was organized to help parents, teachers, and administrators in the Boston Public Schools begin to develop a comprehensive and coordinated writing program from kindergarten through grade 12 in each district. It also offers…

After approximately 20 years of developing collaborative delivery systems for children with disabilities, educational researchers have developed an extensive knowledge base. In an effort to identify potential strategies for developing and institutionalizing school-linked coordinated service delivery systems for at-risk youth, this paper examines…

This process model for training migrant parents to participate in the total development of their children can be used by those who wish to plan and/or improve the training process. Successful migrant training programs are shown to require: involvement of competent, action-oriented people; effective communication; planners who are skilled in…

The paper, originally given at a 1986 Ethnic and Multicultural Symposium, discusses special education needs in band-operated schools in Manitoba. These are local Indian reserve schools under the direction of locally elected education authorities. The paper reports on a survey of needs (indicating 31% of students suspected of needing special…

Realizing the importance of parents in the educational process, several states have launched campaigns to involve parents with their children in home reading activities. Using these programs as examples, the Wentzville R-IV School District (Missouri) devised and initiated "Spring Into Reading," a plan for encouraging parental involvement in…

A consortium of parent councils, developed in the Menominee Indian School District (MISD) in Keshena, Wisconsin, is described. MISD was a participant in a group of member schools that were entitled to purchase various federal services. MISD had problems concerning the required formation of parent councils for participating in federal programs. The…

Educational research cited in this paper suggests that the involvement of low socioeconomic status (SES) parents in the educational process has a positive influence on their children's academic achievement. At the preschool level, programs in which parents were instructed in ways to promote their children's intellectual development were found to…

Steps involved in developing a high quality child development program are outlined and discussed briefly. They are: (1) determining what kind of program to provide (information and referral, family-centered, community-centered or a combination); (2) establishing priorities (a priority checklist is included); (3) identifying existing resources in…