The school library media center should be a place that every student and teacher feels compelled to visit on a daily basis. Offering good, informative orientations can provide the direction needed to ensure that happens. Orientations should be part of every school library media specialist's job description and role. Orientations can be as long or…

One of the most difficult challenges school leaders face is building meaningful reciprocal connections with students, their families and the surrounding community. Regardless of the context of the community, there are important questions that they must ask themselves in order to build family and community involvement. By first critically examining…

This study examines the long-term associations among parental support, extra-familial partner support, and the trajectories of sense of mastery from adolescence to the early adulthood years. Ten waves of panel data collected over a 16-year period from the Iowa Family Transitions Project (N = 527) were used to test the hypotheses. Results indicated…

This article analyzes parents' perceptions of their role in supporting educational opportunities for their children, based on a qualitative study of parents and teachers in a rural community in Paraguay. The parents' views on participation are positioned within the context of the intended goals for parent participation outlined in Paraguayan…

Bigger classes are the reality for more and more teachers across the country. In the 2010-11 school year, 57 percent of districts increased their class sizes, and 65 percent anticipate doing so in 2011-12, according to a December 2010 survey by the American Association of School Administrators. So how do teachers cope? Experts and veteran teachers…

In this article, the author argues that urban school reform falters, in part, because of the lack of an organized political constituency among the stakeholders with the most direct interest in school improvement, that is, parents whose children attend urban schools. The author examines community organizing as a potential strategy to build such a…

Background: Existing evidence suggests a relationship between family social contexts, family relationships and interactions, children's social and cognitive development and educational outcomes. Interventions that assist families in relation to parenting and supporting children's development can have positive effects on both parents' skills and…

Family literacy studies have shown that the role of parental storybook reading has an impact on children's success in school-based literacy instruction. However, many children who are English language learners come from homes or cultures where storybook readings are not common practice. The purpose of this qualitative research study explored…

From the early twentieth century to the present, citizen participation in U.S. public institutions--particularly schools--has continually decreased. The trend has been linked to the bureaucratization of public schools and their increasing reliance on expert knowledge for solutions to school- and education-related problems. The purpose of this…

This article examines the effects of social capital on the likelihood of dropping out from the compulsory education system (Grades One through Eight) in Turkey. It focuses on the question of whether school-related social capital can provide the means to stay in school in the presence of risk factors such as socioeconomic status, race, or gender…

Family-school partnerships are difficult to initiate and sustain in ways that actually promote student learning, especially in high-poverty communities. This quantitative study was designed to better understand how social forces shape parent responsibility in education. Based on social cognitive theory as the conceptual framework, the…

Socioeconomic status and parental support play important roles in determining academic achievement and have been positively correlated with academic success. It is important to determine if students from low-socioeconomic-status (SES) families perceive less parent support than students from middle-SES families. The participants (n?=?54) were high…

The early twenty-first century has seen increased attention to developing young children's social-emotional skills and competencies in preschool programs, including Head Start--the largest federally funded early-childhood education program in the United States. At the same time, there has been greater recognition of the importance of adapting…

School choice is increasingly the new normal in urban education. But in cities with multiple public school options, how can civic leaders create a choice system that works for all families, whether they choose a charter or district public school? To answer this question, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) researchers surveyed 4,000…

This report describes the findings from Phase II of a study of Maine's implementation of a proficiency-based diploma system. At the request of the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs of the Maine Legislature, the Maine Policy Research Institute (MEPRI) has conducted a two-phased study of the implementation of Maine law…