Recently, Education Week’s Libby Stanford reported that, three years ago, Adlai Stevenson Elementary had little to boast: As the lowest-performing elementary school in Pennsylvania’s Southfield School District, it found itself hemorrhaging students.
The solution: It turned itself into a community school to better provide “a range of non-academic services to meet the basic needs of both students and families,” including:
- An on-site, full-service health clinic, with medical, therapeutic, and dental services.
- A parent resource room with a computer, free Wi-Fi, and snacks
- A therapy dog, Stevie
- Food drives and food banks
- A focus on academic excellence
- Volunteer tutoring services
- A safe environment
- Transportation assistance
- Before and after-school childcare
They started by simply opening the car doors every morning and greeting the parents, plus:
- Parking lot chats and weekly walks around the school track with teachers
- Virtual math and reading sessions
- Giving parents lessons and the tools to help their kids study
Says 5th grade science teacher Catherine Hamilton, “When you are teaching a student, it doesn’t just happen in these four walls. It happens at home. The closer the connection between the parents, as well as the teacher, that student is going to benefit…”
Precisely!
As the Annie E. Casey Foundation puts it: “For decades, researchers have pointed to one key success factor that transcends nearly all others, such as socioeconomic status, student background or the kind of school a student attends: parental involvement. … Students whose parents stay involved in school have better attendance and behavior, get better grades, demonstrate better social skills and adapt better to school.”
And that may well be the bottom line…
With thanks, Carol
