Denver Public Schools Task Force on Early Education and School Readiness

Denver Public Schools Task Force on Early Education and School Readiness

March 17, 2005

Subcommittee: Parent Education/Involvement

Present: Helen Thorpe, Valin Brown, Monique Lavato, Cec Ortiz

Absent: Mar Munoz, Rosemary Rodriguez

Recording: Jan Burke

Update since last meeting:

Judy Kaufmann of CPIRC suggested Joyce Epstein and Karen Mapp as two national resources for research on quality parent involvement—brief handouts on their work were provided. A summary of Parent Involvement in Head Start was also provided.

Parent Cooperative Preschools are one quality form of parent involvement but the general sense of the group was that these work because they attract families with a stay at home mom who are already strongly identify with being involved in the child’s education.

Discussion of Target Audience for parent involvement:

• There is a group of Denver parents that is already likely to be involved in their child’s early education. These families will benefit from the actions of the task force.
• Parents who are less likely to be involved are a target audience for increased parent involvement.
• Families who have a lower rate of verbal engagement with children are a target audience. There is a 20 million word gap between high and low income families by age three. Lower income families also use less encouraging and more discouraging statements with children (Hart and Risley).

Brainstorming of activities:

• Encourage schools and communities to provide space for meetings to organize parent gatherings such as those conducted by Metro Organizations for People (MOP).
• Encourage parents to engage more with their children early in life.
• Partner with places where parents naturally go (access points).
• Target two or three schools in need to focus the parent engagement activities.
• Work with the Ad Council and identify existing materials available on the topic of parents as first teachers.
• Identify the best educational videos, best CD’s for children, best literature, and best story tellers and identify materials for purchase with the idea of loaning materials.
• Anna Jo Haynes is encouraging the development of a program at Mile High Montessori that selects one book a month for families to read with children and for staff to include in curriculum. At a parent/child event the book will be distributed and the parents will receive training on activities for engaging their children in the book.
• Develop a CD to give out at the Peoples Fair and other community festivals.

Possible issues for a first focus group with existing service providers:

• What kinds of parent engagement strategies really work best?
• Which institutions or individuals do parents trust? How can these groups be engaged as partners in sharing information about family practices with children?

• What are the best media outlets for this purpose?
• What are the core messages?
• What are the current barriers?
• What are the partners’ thoughts on early childhood education?
• What are the existing resources in the community?
• What are the best strategies to use to discuss the word gap in an honest, supportive, non-judgmental way?

Activities before the next meeting

• Members will contact individuals and organizations in the Denver community that successfully involve parents and schedule a meeting to help refine ideas and identify questions for a parent focus group.(I may be off on the contact responsibilities)
• Valin will contact Rosemary and Judy
• Helen will contact Padres Unidos
• Monique will contact Mar
• Cec will contact MOP, Richard Garcia, Focus Points and Patsy Roybal
• Other partners suggested by the larger group—Ophelia on Early Excellence, Jacey Tramutt with PEAK, CPRC, Ellie Honeyman with El Grupo Vida
• Schedule a parent focus group of 10-12 families as a second step before 4/21
• Valin will ask Cheryl Caldwell for information on what DPS is doing with families including the librarians work with dialogic reading

Summary of group’s focus today

• How to get the key message out regarding critical language and vocabulary development. Language and literacy cut across all domains of learning identified by the group.
• How do we educate parents and identify trusted partners in the process

One way to organize our subcommittee’s thoughts to date (Valin’s addendum):

1)Identify key message such as “Parents are their children’s first teachers!”

●Decide the key focus/content behind this message such as the importance of language development in the first three years of life (Hart & Risley)

 this message also impacts the cognitive, language development, approaches to learning, and social-emotional areas identified in the DPS “School-Readiness Definition” draft

●Identify messaging strategies—how to get the word out

●Partner with national Ad Council (for example, visit: )

●Use of trusted networks including schools, churches, media, other providers

●Choose the delivery methods—the best ways to share the messages

●Free access to selected books

●Access to programs with emphasis on language development, vocabulary-building, dialogic reading, etc.

●Use of CD and/or DVD to share educational messages

Conduct two focus groups to solicit feedback on these questions:

●Providers to join the parent involvement/education subcommittee to review subcommittee ideas and provide feedback on best practices and questions of parent group

●Parent focus group to provide tangible feedback on messages, trusted sources for messages, barriers, etc.

2)Broaden parent involvement and trust with the schools early in their children’s lives

●Bring parents of the community’s youngest children into the schools early

●Locate activities in school buildings

●On-site immunization clinics

●Car seat checks

●Offer meaningful volunteer opportunities for parents within the schools

3)Educate/inform parents about “School-Readiness” before Kindergarten

●Educate parents about concrete things they can do to help ensure their children are ready to enter school

●What are the specific steps which must be completed—immunizations, enrollment, etc.

●Recommended programs which can help—PAT, HIPPY, Head Start, CBB, WIC, health, dental, etc.

●Provide a simple school-readiness “checklist” with skills, by age, that parents can help build at home—e.g. numbers, colors, reading, etc.