Jill Tucker – Wealthy parents are more likely to make cookies for bake sales, volunteer in classrooms and be otherwise involved in their children’s schools than lower-income mothers and fathers. That’s the conclusion of a survey of California public school parents released Thursday.

Yet even parents with greater financial resources are reluctant to spend hours at meetings or on school committees – even though that’s where the money decisions are made. Just 1 in 4 parents said they had ever participated in school committees, according to the survey of 1,003 parents.

But with the state putting more budgeting power in the hands of local districts and schools, education leaders have an obligation and an opportunity to bring more parents to the table, said Louis Freedberg, executive director of EdSource, an Oakland nonprofit education research organization, which sponsored the survey.

The new education funding system is based on student enrollment and gives more money to schools with higher numbers of English learners and low-income students.

The law, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in July, requires schools to include parents – and specifically low-income and English-learner parents – in the budgeting process.

“There had been no other poll, really, that drilled down to give us a baseline to see how involved parents are, what the attitudes are to their schools,” Freedberg said. “We asked parents what it would take to get more involved.”

The answer: Parents want to participate more, but schools need to make it easier, Freedberg said of the results.

“Parents are more likely to cite a lack of time, rather than a lack of interest or a system that is unreceptive to their input, as an obstacle to greater participation in advising and decision-making,” the survey concludes.

Parents want translators, advance notice of meetings, weekend options and perhaps most importantly, they want to know their input matters, the poll found.

San Francisco school officials have already been working on that, offering community meetings in various languages to explain the new funding system to parents and encourage involvement. The district already uses a budgeting process that incorporates parent input at each school.

“They know their kids the best,” said Myong Leigh, San Francisco Unified deputy superintendent. “That knowledge comes to bear in the school planning discussions. It really helps complement the work the teachers and administrators are doing.”

Yet getting parents involved in the new funding process at all schools is a top priority for the California PTA, said state President Colleen You.

“PTA really feels it’s absolutely essential that parents are comfortable, engaged and informed,” she said. “Every parent has something to offer based on their expertise in being a parent.”

Local PTA parent academies are part of the organization’s efforts to increase participation, as well as statewide outreach efforts.

“Parents don’t automatically become advocates,” she said. “But 30 years of research really proves student success improves when parents are involved and engaged.”

The survey was taken between Nov. 5 and 12. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percent.

Parent participation

A poll of 1,003 public schools parents found:

— 76 percent of parents overall say they are somewhat or very involved in their children’s schools

— 39 percent of parents with incomes greater than $100,000 said they were very involved in their children’s schools compared with 24 percent of parents making less than $30,000.

— 57 percent of parents said they knew nothing at all about the new state funding formula for schools

— Two-thirds of parents said time and work schedules were obstacles in participating at their children’s schools.

Source: EdSource

via California parents on school participation – SFGate.

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Only 36 percent of Los Angeles public school teachers who responded to a survey strongly favor continuing a troubled and very costly plan to put iPads in the hands of every student.

Employee unions representing teachers and administrators along with a Los Angeles Unified School District board member conducted the anonymous survey, reports the Los Angeles Times.

About 15 percent of teachers who have endured the iPad program rollout participated in the survey.

Despite promises by administrators that wireless connections would be sufficient, many teachers pointed to persistent infrastructure glitches. Almost 75 percent said they or their students had experienced serious connectivity problems.

“The system keeps going down,” explained one teacher, “which makes it impossible to utilize the iPads in the way that the district desired.”

A majority of the teachers who responded to the survey complained about problems with storage, applications, signing on and ongoing security issues.

A majority also said they and their students were using the iPads — which cost a whopping $768 each — just three hours or less each week.

Why aren’t teachers using the iPads in class? The survey suggests that they don’t really know how.

Training has been minimal. Apple, the manufacturer, provided one day of iPad training. Pearson, the London-based textbook company that provides the still-just-partially available curriculum for the devices, provided only two days of training.

School district officials told the Times they now realize that teachers need additional training on how to use iPads and how to manage classrooms of students who are using iPads. They have also recommended giving teachers iPads six months before students receive them.

The great Los Angeles public schools giveaway has been a disaster from the start. This fall, when students received their tablets at the first few high schools chosen for the project, hundreds of students figured out almost immediately how to hack the security settings so they could surf the internet and download music. Another 71 kids ostensibly lost their iPads just as immediately.

As a result of that hot mess, every student who got an iPad had to give it back temporarily. (RELATED: Los Angeles high schools now confiscate all free iPads they gave students)

Also, the school district must pay an extra $60 million each year starting three years from now in order to re-license the English and math curriculum software on the devices.

via L.A. schools’ iPad giveaway continues to be hilarious disaster | The Daily Caller.

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