Key points:

• Link goals to grade-level strategies
• Rally families, teachers around a common vision
• Let revitalized compacts create a snowball effect

Republished from Title1Admin.com

Turn Title I compacts into dog-eared documents

Somewhere from a back room, a Title I compact emerges. It’s passed out to parents who squint at miniscule lines of suggested strategies. Everyone signs on the dotted line, and a copy is filed and forgotten somewhere in the back room.
Or that’s how things used to be in Bridgeport (Conn.) Public Schools. As in many places, the district had cookie cutter compacts, said Dolores Mason, the district’s National Network of Partnership Schools facilitator.
Then, the district joined the state’s pilot study on revitalizing Title I compacts. The approach includes gathering feedback, linking to school improvement goals, and providing parents with grade-level strategies.
Now, Connecticut is rolling out the voluntary process statewide and offering its districts regional technical assistance. Lessons learned in Bridgeport and other pilot districts are included on a new website along with resources to guide Title I schools nationwide.
The effort is led by Anne T. Henderson, a senior consultant for the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Judy Carson, who heads up the Connecticut State Department of Education’s School-Family-Community Partnerships Project, and state education consultant Patti Avallone. Avallone’s past experience as a Title I director and principal with New Haven (Conn.) Public Schools helped the team fine-tune the compact project’s 10-step process, and she worked to provide direct support to participating schools, Carson said.
“Before, schools would just create a compact and they would kind of put it on the shelf,” said Donna Marino, partnership coordinator for Middletown (Conn.) Public Schools. “Now we’ve given it legs.”

Change the conversation

Educators told Title1Admin® they believe Title I compacts hold the potential to help schools succeed despite steep challenges, and their districts reflect those challenges faced by Title I districts and schools across the nation.
Bridgeport’s free or reduced-price lunch eligibility percentage stands at nearly 100 percent. The mobility rate in one Middletown school is such that a third of the school’s population shifts annually, Marino said. Over in West Haven Public Schools, Forest School has an increasing Spanish-speaking population. Unemployment and foreclosures mean a steady stream of new student registrations and withdrawals, said Principal Thomas Hunt.
Family hardships, language barriers, and other challenges can put a damper on school-home partnerships. However, by rethinking your compact, you can change the conversation between staff and parents and the school’s entire approach to families, they said.
Their compacts now directly connect to school improvement goals. Linking compacts to goals and gathering
feedback to develop strategies shifts a school’s entire family engagement approach, Hunt said. “It went from
that promissory note of parents getting their kids to school to how can we as a school help you as parents at
home?” he said.

Partner strategically

The new compact approach lets teachers and parents work together more specifically and strategically, Marino
added. For example, at Hunt’s school, teachers created activity packets to provide resources aligned with the
compact goals for each grade level. They reformatted back-to-school night to share academic skills in greater
detail.
Compacts changed from rarely used documents that list a million “we think you should” items for parents to
ones that explicitly list in everyday language the five things a child ought to know when he leaves fourth grade,
and the five things he’ll learn in fifth grade, Marino said.
In short order, everyone focuses on strategies, such as ways to support reading comprehension skills, rather than
expectations, such as getting your child to bed early, Mason explained. The compact is turning student
achievement around, she said. “People are finally getting it.”

Related Story:

Compacts 101: Target needs, gather feedback
Here are pointers on revitalizing Title I compacts from educators who participated in Connecticut’s pilot study.

• Prioritize first; brainstorm second. Look at data for specific needs at various grade levels or grade spans. These needs should be reflected in your school improvement goals. Once you’ve prioritized needs, you’re ready to brainstorm potential strategies.
• Organize feedback. Create a system for having grade-level or subject-area leaders gather ideas from other teachers. Organize those ideas along with ones from parents and others. Narrow down based on which strategies for each grade level best address improvement goals.
• Build staff buy-in. Involve staff in meetings where parents share ideas. This helps staff hear parents’ interest in helping. Underscore that revamping Title I compacts isn’t more work; it’s a tool to support classroom instruction.
• Go big or don’t bother. Turn your compact into a handy format, like a brochure, and then take every chance to mention it. Think open house, annual Title I meetings, parent-teacher conferences, family nights, websites, and newsletters. Don’t market it in boring ways, such as, “Come to our Title I compact meeting.” Be sneaky and tuck it into fun events.

Sources: Thomas Hunt, principal, Forest School, West Haven (Conn.) Public Schools; Donna Marino, partnership coordinator, Middletown Public Schools; and Dolores Mason, National Network of Partnership Schools facilitator, Bridgeport Public Schools.
Tricia Offutt covers family and community engagement and other Title I issues for LRP Publications.
February 23, 2012
Copyright 2012© LRP Publications

Key points:

• Project provides free resources to a national audience
• Grade-level compacts connect to data, improvement goals
• Parents partner through at-home strategies

Republished from Title1Admin.com

Turn forgettable Title I compacts into remarkable reform tools

Title I compacts present a whole lot of opportunity that typically fizzles out to nothing more than inane compliance, according to family engagement researcher Anne T. Henderson. However, free online tools will help you dust off your compact, toss out the boilerplate language, and add in grade-level goals and at-home strategies that link directly to school improvement and current student data. Henderson developed the tools along with Judy Carson at the Connecticut State Department of Education and Patti Avallone, a consultant to the Connecticut SDE for School-Family-Community Partnerships. Avallone, a retired Title I director and principal, also serves as a coach to participating schools and helped develop training resources for a statewide rollout.
The 10-step process is based on a three-year pilot in the state. The project was born from the simple premise that because you must do Title I compacts anyway, you ought to do them well, explained Carson, who heads up the state’s School-Family-Community Partnerships Project. Doing compacts well means making them specific, data-driven, and connected to your school improvement plan. And if families aren’t in on the planning, something is sorely amiss, Henderson said.
“If parents are out of the loop, there isn’t a loop,” said Henderson, a senior consultant for the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. “The idea is to move from a school culture where the teachers are expected to accomplish all the change that takes place to one that’s a shared responsibility,” she said. Schools must move away from a culture of compliance to one of shared ownership with families, Henderson added.
Compacts should be a natural outgrowth of your school improvement plan and a way to communicate clearly with families, Carson said. “We keep saying the process is as important as the product.”
To support schools along the way, a dozen folks in Connecticut’s regional education service centers will receive training and support from a go-to state staff member. Those regional contacts will in turn provide technical assistance to any Title I schools in the state that want to join the voluntary compact project.
The steps and related tools, including a rubric for rating a compact’s quality, are available free online and can work for any Title I school, Henderson said. A new website includes videos of principals, district leaders and others sharing about how the process works and their local results. Meanwhile, other states and the feds are showing an interest in the state’s work, she added.
Access the steps, tools and videos at http://schoolparentcompact.org.

Related Story:

Follow 10 steps to breathe new life into Title I compacts
Here is a summary of the steps that Connecticut is using to improve Title I compacts. The steps were developed by Anne T. Henderson at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, and Judy Carson at the Connecticut State Department of Education, and Patti Avallone, a consultant and retired Title I director and principal.

1. Motivate and get staff buy-in. For example, hold a staff meeting to discuss what compacts are and how they can help students.
2. Designate a leader to build a team Choose whoever will be a strong, energetic leader for the compact revitalization effort. Although principals or assistant principals are ideal candidates, don’t overlook other staff such as literacy or math coaches, a teacher leader, or a family liaison.
3. Align your compact with school improvement goals. Review schoolwide data and improvement goals. Decide on specific areas to focus on in each grade level.
4. Get grade-level input. Using the state’s model for teacher data teams, teachers set grade-level goals and brainstorm potential home learning strategies that match school improvement goals and the related skills that students in each grade level struggle with most. Teachers’ ideas are then shared with families to get more ideas and input.
5. Reach out to families. Share grade-level goals with families through a variety of venues, including workshops, class meetings, and orientations, and create opportunities for two-way communication between teachers and families at each grade level.
6. Don’t forget your students. Make sure you talk to students and find out their ideas about how they can be successful and ways they’d like teachers and parents to help them.
7. Put the pieces together. Make a family-friendly compact to summarize all the input and plan out how to roll out the new compact to families.
8. Align all resources. Using the compact goals, figure out what resources are needed, including training, volunteers, funding, and take-home supplies or materials.
9. Market your compact. Take time at every event and during parent-teacher conferences to share the compact and keep goals front and center.
10. Review, revise, and celebrate annually. At the end of each school year, review how efforts are going, identify successes, and plan for the following year. Celebrate and honor those who helped put the compact into action, including students.

For more information, visit http://schoolparentcompact.org. –Tricia Offutt covers family and community engagement and other Title I issues for LRP Publications.

Originally published February 2, 2012
Copyright 2012© LRP Publications

You can view the archived session online HERE.

The article is available to read HERE.

“Making the Most of School-Family Compacts” by Anne T. Henderson, Judy Carson, Patti Avallone, and Melissa Whipple, (pages 48-53) is available here to read online.

You can also download the PDF article HERE.