Meaningful family involvement in schools can make a huge difference for a child’s learning and for driving improvement in the school system as a whole. Extensive research has shown that students with involved parents have higher attendance, social skills, grades, test scores, and graduation rates. We learned a lot more about this topic when PP200_0we attended a presentation about parent engagement at the City College of New York as part of their Colloquium Series on Data and Data Driven Instruction.
Norm Fruchter of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform presented the session, entitled “How do parent & community groups use data for organizing?” Fruchter’s documentary, Parent Power, explores how parents and community groups leveraged data to advocate for educational improvement in New York City schools from 1995 to 2009. The film tells the story of a group of parents from the South Bronx who came together after learning that only 17% of their students were reading at grade level in elementary school.