Starting Points
Welcome to the Standard: Speaking Up for Every Child as part of your path to ensure that families are empowered to be advocates for their own and other children and to ensure that students are treated fairly and have access to learning opportunities that will support their success.
Use the resources included here as a starting point to strengthen identified needs in your Action Plan in the area of Speaking Up for Every Child. The Guide to Using the Toolkit includes background information and suggested steps for implementing the Standards for Family-School Partnerships.
Speaking up for Every Child
Families are empowered to be advocates for their own and other children, to ensure that students are treated fairly and have access to learning opportunities that will support their success.
School staff and parent groups can make a critical contribution to student success by ensuring all students have an advocate, whether it’s a family member, teacher, or community volunteer. They can also contribute to student achievement by offering opportunities for parents and community members to learn and practice the skills necessary to speak up for children.
Advocates often address issues affecting groups of children, but every child also needs someone who will step in and look out for him or her as an individual. To be a strong advocates for all children we can:
Help students set goals and plan for the future;
Ensure that students select courses that match his or her goals;
See that students get assistance, such as tutoring, medical attention, or counseling; and Make sure after-school time is spent in constructive, enriching activities
There are two main goals for Speaking Up for All Children
Share information about student progress.
Parents must know how the local school and district operate and how to raise questions or concerns about school and district programs, policies, and activities. They also must understand their rights and responsibilities under federal and state law and local ordinances and policies. Key questions include:
- Do parents know what school staffs do and who to contact for information?
- Do parents know the legal rights of students?
- Do parents know how to get a problem resolved?
Empower families to support their own and other children’s success in school:
Parents must be prepared to monitor students’ progress and guide them toward their goals so students graduate from high school ready for postsecondary education and a career. Key questions include:
- Are parents offered opportunities to learn how to make the best choices for their children’s education?
- How often do counselors and advisers meet with each student?
Action Steps
What Parents, Parent Leaders, and School Staff Can Do
GETTING STARTED
- Engage as a team with parents and community members to follow the steps included in a Guide to Using the Toolkit for New Mexico School Communities: Family, School, and Community Partnerships.
- Use the School Level Reflection Rubric: Speaking Up for Every Child to carefully examine characteristics of this standard and where you see yourselves in practices connected to this standard. Continue to use the rubric to evaluate growth and progress toward goals for this standard.
- Orient yourself to this Toolkit section on Speaking Up for Every Child and consider how the tools and resources can support an Action Plan.
- Review and consider state and federal program requirements for family engagement and professional development: such as Title I Family Engagement Policies, Indian Education, English Learner Family Engagement requirements, and Special Education requirements.
WHAT PARENTS AND PARENT LEADERS CAN DO
- Ask school staff about using the Toolkit for New Mexico School Communities: Family, School, and Community Partnerships as part of a process to evaluate programs and use surveys and school level assessment tools found in the Toolkit such as the School Level Starting Points: Family, School, and Community Partnerships Inventory and the School Level Reflection Rubric: Speaking Up for Every Child
- Become familiar with the Toolkit tools and resources.
- Participate in required Parent Advisory Teams for state and federal school level programs.
- Get a copy of your school’s parent involvement policy and make sure it covers all state and federal requirements. Find out what other parents think of the policy and whether it covers their concerns. Update the policy to meet the needs of your school community.
- Include a mini-poll (one question) in each school newsletter and post it on the Web. Over the course of the year, cover a wide range of issues affecting students and the school. Use the parent feedback to make decisions relating to student programs or the school community in general.
WHAT SCHOOL LEADERS AND STAFF CAN DO
- Engage as a team with parents and community members to follow the steps included in a Guide for Using the Toolkit.
- Reflect on the results of the School Level Reflection Rubric: Speaking Up for Every Child with a team of stakeholders including parents, teachers, and administrators to identify strengths and needs for the school in practices and policies that allow for speaking up for every child.
- Review and consider state and federal program requirements for family engagement and professional development: such as Title I Family Engagement Policies, Indian Education, English Learner Family Engagement requirements, and Special Education requirements.
- With a team, collaboratively develop your Action Plan for implementing strategies aimed at this standard: Speaking Up for Every Child.
- Frequently share the school’s policy and procedures for resolving parent concerns. Cover how to define the problem, whom to approach first, how to develop solutions, and so forth. Encourage parents to address problems early.
- Carefully review the district and school family engagement policy ad required by Title I and other programs. Develop a Parent Bill of Rights.
- Provide a school handbook, workshops, and/or web-based materials to explain all school policies and procedures to families.
- Publicize any successful changes in the school that resulted from parent initiation and involvement.
- Facilitate parent participation in school committees and other community groups.
- Leverage resources and seek funding to invest in programs with educational and action oriented curriculums and opportunities for families and school staff such as Clave al Éxito, the Family Leadership Institutue, Abriendo Puertas, NMPTA, After School Learning, CESDP and NMPED Toolkit Use Technical Assistance, and other programs focused on student success.
Resources and Tools
School Level Reflection Rubric: Speaking Up for Every Child
Use this rubric to help evaluate how well your school partners with families and community to support student success. Think about where you see yourself in the process and strategies you use to improve practices by marking the box that most clearly matches what you are doing now. Reflect on the results as you plan and focus efforts on embracing advocacy for your school community.
School Level Starting Points Inventory: Family, School, and Community Partnerships
Use the Inventory with a team to review the School Level Starting Points Inventory: Family, School, and Community Partnerships to assess your strengths and needs around engagement within your school community and current practices for improving school climate.
Puntos de inicio para inventario a nivel escolar sobre la familia, escuela y socios comunitarios
Family/Community Survey
This is one family survey example based on the six areas of National Standards for Family-School Partnerships. Use this sample to personalize or modify for your school.
Encuesta Familiar Asociaciones Familia, Escuela, y Comunidad
School Staff Survey
This survey focused on family engagement can be used to help with professional development and action planning for building strong partnerships between families, schools, and the community.
Action Plan Template
The Toolkit provides a number of action steps for collecting data and ideas for developing an action plan. Use the Action Plan template to document your goals, objectives, and timelines.
Sample Action Plan
Use this sample to help guide your action plan development based on the six Standards for Family-School Partnerships.
Student Survey
Use this survey with students to help guide your action plan development based on the six Standards for Family-School Partnerships.
(PDF coming soon)
Family Friendly Schools Walkthrough Checklist
The checklist is designed to allow schools to assess their “family friendly” practices. This tool gives school leaders the opportunity to evaluate how inviting and “customer friendly” their school is to families and the community. It can also help to point out various areas that may have been previously overlooked and can be easily addressed.
Lista de revisión para ambiente familiar en las escuelas
Effective Practices: Quick Tips Checklist: How Well Does Your School Support Parents as Advocates?
Clave al Éxito
This web-based resource can be very useful for school wide use and inclusion on web site. Everything is in English and Spanish and it includes grade guides, reading log tools, a parent-teacher translator communicator tools, multimedia parent academies, current tips and news, resources for parents and teachers with EL students and students with learning exceptionalities in special education.
Clave al Éxito
Este recurso basado en la red puede ser muy útil de amplio uso en la escuela, inclusive en el sitio en la red. Todo está en Ingles y en Español e incluye guía de grados, herramientas de registro de lecturas, herramientas de comunicación o traductor padre-maestro, academias multimedia para padres, pistas nuevas y actuales, recursos para padres y maestros con estudiantes de EL y estudiantes de aprendizaje excepcional y educación especial.
Guide to New Mexico State and Federal Program Requirements for Family Engagement
- Bilingual Education
- Title I
- Indian Education
- Special Education
- School Programs
(coming soon)
More Coming soon:
- All About Homework
- Top Websites to Include on School Websites on Student Success
- College and Career Readiness
- Grandparents raising Grandchildren
- Measuring the Cultural and Linguistic Responsiveness of Your School and Classroom
- Professional development opportunities for building effective family-school partnerships programs for student success.
- Media awareness, Internet Safety
- NMPED FAQ