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Ed100 Parent Leader Guide: Parent-Teacher Conferences

Ed100 Parent Leader Guide

Getting Started

How to use this Guide

School Funding Basics

What Every Parent Should Know

Get in the Groove

Attendance and School Climate

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Common Core Standards and More

Elections

California Education Election Issues

How are Our Schools Doing?

A look at student achievement

Parent-Teacher Conferences: Common Sense Standards and More

Great content for your parent meetings

Designed to help busy leaders, this ready-to-go guide makes it easy for you to have conversations that matter. It’s all here: Lessons, sample email invitations, discussion prompts, suggestions on how to take action, and resources including handouts and additional reading.

(Still not sure what this guide is all about? Read the Getting Started section first!

The Basics
(Ed100 Lessons to Read and Share)

Here are lessons and posts that can help you. Follow these links to read them; scroll down for suggestions about how to share them.

The Standards, and what they mean for your school

Ed100 Lesson 6.1: "Forget the hype. Here’s how the Common Core standards actually work."

English Spanish

Wishful Thinking: Sure, but my kid will be fine, right?

Ed100 Lesson 1.5: Can the power of denial be measured?

English Spanish

Ensuring All Kids Learn to Read, Write, and Speak English

Ed100 Lesson 6.3: School is harder for 40% of California students because…

English Spanish

What If a Student Isn't "On Schedule" with Other Students?

Ed100 Lesson 4.5: Extra Time and Tutoring - When Kids Need More Time and Attention

English Spanish

Communication Samples

Email or Newsletter
(Suggested content you can customize and use)

Are Our Students "On Schedule" For Their Future?

Time flies by for all of us, including our kids. Are they "on schedule" academically? Are they learning what they need to know to be ready for their bright future? How are we, as parents, supposed to know? What should that teacher conference be about?

I'm writing to share lessons with you from Ed100.org related to state school standards (including the Common Core). If things aren't going right for our kids, how can we know, and what are the options for doing something about it?

The California State PTA is working with Ed100.org to help create better-informed school communities. The lessons linked below each take about five minutes to read, and they are available in both English and Spanish. By learning together, we will have more fun, learn more, and have a much bigger chance of turning insights into actions for our school. When you go to Ed100.org, please sign in and remember to select our school in your profile. This will help us keep track of our progress... and might help us win some money in one of Ed100.org's drawings, too!

Please join our school's Ed100 team on ___date at ___time in ___location. We will be discussing the lessons below:

Looking forward to great conversations!

Social Media
(Suggested content you can customize and use)

Facebook

Announcement

This month we’re discussing academic standards and what they mean for our own kids. Ed100.org’s Parent Leader Guide is helping us get at the issues.
Read the lessons and come share your thoughts!

Meeting

Join us at our ____ meeting at _____ for a discussion using Ed100 about how Common Core standards affect our school, and what we can do if our students are behind. Looking forward to great conversations!

Twitter

Announcement

How is #CommonCore working for our students? We’re learning about it with @Ed100_ at our _/_ meeting at ____. Join us!

Meeting

Join us #/# at __pm to learn more about #commoncore at our school. We will use lessons from @ed100_

Getting Ready for Your Meeting
(Discussion Prompts, Ideas for Action and More)

Discussion Prompts

What did you learn from the pre-reading materials from Ed100?

Common Core standards are the same for students all over America. Is our school effectively teaching our students what they need to know? Do we need to do more to understand these expectations?

Is our school making effective use of parent-teacher conferences? How can we measure success? How can we do better?

If our students aren't keeping pace with the standards, what does our school do about it? Is there an effective plan for bringing kids up to speed?

The pre-reading included statistics about "wishful thinking." Is our school helping us understand honestly whether our students are on track? Are we facing reality?

Ideas for Action

Ask your school to create workshops or discussions at parent meetings to explain standards by grade level, and to show how students at your school are meeting those standards.

Use the California State PTA’s handout to plan your Parent Teacher Conference.

Using the California State PTA’s handout, review their CAASPP scores and ask the questions listed to your child, their Teacher, Principal and Superintendent.