The School Smarts Parent Engagement Program offers a wide range of resources and best practices you can use to plan and prepare for a successful School Smarts Parent Engagement Program. Please feel free to download, print and share these different resources.
Best Practices
Below you will find a series of best practices that can be used as a guide to help you as you plan and prepare for a successful School Smarts Parent Engagement Program.
Parent Academy Art Activities
School Smarts includes a hands on art activity for parents to experience in every session of the Academy. The art activity exposes parents to the value of arts in education and has proven to be a great community-builder. Each School Smarts session provides two options of art activities for facilitators to select from. Please see the video art instructions below:
Session 1: Family Values in your Hand and Family Values Snowflake
Session 2: Parents as Teachers – Making Traditional Masks and My Child’s Mandela
Session 3: Origami Math – Making a Pinwheel and Paper Helicopter
Session 4: No art activity (School Smarts Academy Midpoint Reflection)
Session 5: Making Hats: The Different Ways We Express Ourselves and Chatterbox game
Session 6: “Envisioning Our Dream School” (Coming soon)
Session 7: No art activity (Action Plan)
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SCHOOL SMARTS NETWORK
Check out some program highlights from our School Smarts network of practitioners from across California. Read how they are transforming school communities and engaging parents to be more involved in their students education. Together, we make a difference!
Creating More Parent Advocates for the Arts
Ensure Arts Education Through LCAP
School Smarts Graduates Make Great Leaders
Arts in Education
The California State PTA is committed to advocating for a complete education that includes the arts. Below you will find resources for parents to help them advocate as well as understand why arts in education is important.
- Find out how you can put your parents arts plan into action! Download, print and share these great resources to help your parents implement their Action plan related to Arts in Education. Successful arts education programs share basic key elements and are responsive to and reflective of their community.
- Learn more about how Arts-Education Data Program helps advocacy efforts: The Data Project is designed to increase participation in arts education across the state by analyzing and reporting school-level data on arts education courses and grades 6 through 12 enrollment. It provides important information to education leaders, teachers and parents about levels of access and enrollment in arts courses in schools.
- Check out the California State PTA webpage for lots of resources and the latest news on arts in education.
LCFF/LCAP
Throughout the seven sessions, parents will gain knowledge and information about how the Local Control Funding Formula and their Local Control Accountably Plan works. They also learn how they can contribute to making positive impacts in their local school communities. Check out the resource below to help you enhance and advance and build leaders and advocates at your school site.
Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAP): Planning for Success: Check out these resources as you work with parents to better understand the LCAP.
- Download, print and share with parents the eight state priority areas in the LCAP Quick guides. These resources show how progress is measured, key questions to ask and links to more resources. English Spanish
- See how school district’s across the state are engaging parents and families in the LCAP process. Download California State PTA’s list of LCAP best practices. English Spanish
Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF): It’s a time of opportunity for parents
- The Local Control Funding Formula is a huge opportunity for parents to shape the vision for your children’s education and make it happen! As California’s school funding law, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) is a way for schools to focus on student success. The LCFF requires school districts to involve parents in planning and decision-making as well as in developing Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs).The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) also:
- Requires your school district to focus on the eight key areas that help all students succeed
- Provides extra funding for students with greater challenges
- Gives your district more flexibility for how to spend its money to improve local schools.
Take a look at the video below from the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence to learn more about the vision behind California’s commitment to local control. Click here to download.
Check out the California State PTA webpage for lots of resources and the latest news on LCAP and LCFF.
California School Dashboard – School Accountability
The new School Dashboard is the latest tool for improving education. The Dashboard represents a leap forward in how we measure the performance of schools and students. It goes beyond a single test score, instead highlighting the wide variety of factors that make up a successful school. It shines a light on what’s working well and where improvement is needed.
Parents can find out more information about their school or school district on the state’s Dashboard website at www.caschooldashboard.org.
The Dashboard reports on multiple aspects of a quality school environment.
Six state indicators — reported for both schools and districts –include state data on readiness for college and careers, graduation rates, progress of English learners, suspension rates, scores on state standardized tests and chronic absenteeism. These indicators include:
- Measures of how the results on these indicators vary by groups of students
- Where available, measures both of the current status and of change over time.
Four local indicators—reported for districts only — are based on their own measures. Districts report on how they are gauging the availability of basic services, school climate, progress towards meeting subject matter content standards and parent and family engagement
This video from the California Department of Education provides an overview of how to use the Dashboard.
PTA National Standards for Family-School Partnerships
The PTA National Standards for Family-School Partnerships Assessment Guide is based on extensive research over the past 20 years. It was developed with the guidance and support of prominent education leaders and practitioners in the field of family engagement across the country. It provides specific goals for each of six accepted family engagement standards, as well as indicators for measuring whether those goals are being met.
PTA recommends that every school district’s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) seeks to address each of the standards and that the various indicators be used to facilitate local conversations among parents and educators about how best to build stronger family-school partnerships and measure progress based on the priorities and needs of the community.
Download the complete Assessment Guide. (Also available in Spanish.)
More resources are available at pta.org/nationalstandards.