Education United States Project #7772

The Parent Teacher Home Visit Project

by The Parent Teacher Home Visit Project

Project Report | Jul 30, 2014
PTHVP is Named a Best Practice by US Dept of Ed

By Elaine Smith | Communications Coordinator

Dear PTHVP supporters,

The combination of relationship building and collaboration as practiced by PTHVP has been recognized as a best practice in the U.S. Department of Education’s “Dual Capacity Framework for Family Engagement,” released this Spring. The document, meant to guide policy and funding priorities, explains the characteristics of “high-impact” family and community engagement that makes the most difference to student performance.

Researchers have already shown educators that family engagement is essential. But some practices are deemed more helpful than others. What, according to the report, makes a program “high-impact?”

First of all, activities must be relational. Trust and respect must be established between a school and its community before any progress can be made. Barriers to this relationship may include the fact that the school staff is different ethnically and/or culturally from their students’ community, and all parties may have had negative experiences or associations from the past. PTHVP trains participants to reflect on their assumptions, open their minds and hearts, and connect with what they all have in common: their hopes and dreams for their children.

Secondly, programs must be “dual capacity building.” This means that the program raises the competence, and confidence, in everyone involved (teachers, families, students) instead of knowledge being transmitted in only one direction. For example, at PTHVP, our evaluations show that home visits result in improved academic performance and positive behavior in children. But the benefits don’t just go one way: teachers and family members experience transformation as well. For parents and guardians, they report more trust and collaboration with the teacher, which often leads to increased involvement in the school. And they feel better equipped to help their child achieve their goals. For teachers, they report a deeper knowledge of their student’s lives, which helps them differentiate curriculum and make the classroom more relevant. Teachers also report that doing home visits teaches them to leave negative assumptions behind, and see families as essential partners in their mission to teach. Despite the extra effort, teachers credit home visits with more rewards and less burnout.

And lastly, the researchers find that the highest impact engagement methods are collaborative. Strong, sustainable efforts that stand the test of time are supported by more than one agency. This aspect is also relevant to the PTHVP model. In fact, the project was born as a collaboration between a community organizing group, ACT, the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD), and the local teachers union, CTA.

To see the actual framework click on the link below. Thanks for your continued support in this transforational work.

Sincerely,

Carrie Rose and Lisa Levasseur

Links:

PTHVP website

Attachments:

Dept of Ed Family Engagement Framework (PDF)

1 Attachment

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Apr 21, 2014
Spring 2014 Report

By Lisa Levasseur | Project Director

Waiting for his teachers to arrive!

Dear friends and supporters at Global Giving,

As you know, the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project was started fifteen years ago by a couple of single moms and a community organization. All they wanted was to end the cycle of blame and put parents and teachers on the same team. So they developed a method that establishes trust between teachers and their student’s families. With that trust has come big benefits: sending trained teachers and school staff to their students’ homes resulted in better classroom behavior, increased attendance and higher academic scores.

These benefits came with no other agenda than an authentic relationship. Now, the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project is employing their model to help schools with specific objectives. Recently, for example, the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) wanted to implement Academic Parent Teacher Teams (APTT), which is a teacher-led meeting for parents and guardians, familiarizing them with the curriculum and discussing ways to support their children’s learning.

The APTT program has had strong results for those who participated in other cities, but how could SCUSD implement it in Sacramento so that its benefits would reach the most families and have a significant impact on student success?

The district was already a strong partner with the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project, and had already trained over 400 teachers to do visits. Could visits help with getting parents and guardians to participate in APTT? The district began with APTT at 5 schools in 2012, and then added 7 in 2013 to make 12 schools conducting the APTT program. The partners found that doing home visits prior to the APTT made a significant difference in the parent participation, according to data collected via parent surveys and classroom assessments.

In fact, teachers that did a home visit first doubled their parent attendance at each their APTT meetings vs. those teachers that did not conduct a home visit first.

Subsequently, the partners found the following benefits from APTT meetings:

97% of parents who attended APTT meetings reported a better understanding of grade level foundational skills and they felt more confident helping their child with academic work at home.
Students that had families attend APTT meetings saw an average increase of 21 points in addition/subtraction/multiplication assessments.
Students that had families attend APTT meetings saw an average increase of 32 points in their fluency assessments.

PTHVP has helped local schools employ the home visit strategy for other objectives, such as college readiness and chronic absenteeism. The specific objectives or programs may change, but all programs are more effective when a visit has established a personal connection between the teacher and the family. We truly appreciate your support for making this transformational work possible!

Sincerely,

Carrie Rose Executive Director and Lisa Levasseur Project Director

Academic Parent Teacher Team meeting

College Readiness Visit

Links:

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Jan 9, 2014
A year in review

By Carrie Rose and Lisa Levasseur | Executive Director and Project Director

Home Visits at the High School Level

Dear Global Giving friends,

In Fall 2013, we quietly celebrated 15 years since a small coalition of mothers, community organizers and school teachers joined together for their mutual interest: their children. There’s been a sense of accomplishment here this fall, of puzzle pieces falling into place after years of very hard work at the grassroots.

First of all, our much anticipated national conference brought educators, community members, families, funders and policy makers to San Francisco. We don’t mind saying it was the best ever! We laughed a lot and shed a few tears together as people shared their stories of how home visits have transformed their kids, their teaching methods, and their own assumptions. The program was focused on both action and reflection, as we strategized on best practices and next steps for our growing movement.

Also at the conference, we collected the latest statistics from our affiliates: a snapshot of how much home visiting is happening out there. And the results? Unprecedented. In the last year, our grassroots affiliates across the country:

Grew to 305 participating school sites in 16 states
Trained 4,622 teachers in our model of home visits
Conducted 20,914 relational home visits!

In conjunction with the conference, the newly formed national board of directors met for the first time, focusing on governance, funding and nominations. The national organization is officially launched! You will be hearing more about the national board’s actions in future reports.

Our program is inexpensive, replicable and effective in a wide variety of cities and there is no way we could have made it this far without your contribution. With your help, we will only increase our momentum in 2014! Please consider making a significant gift to the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project in the first quarter of 2014, so that we may train more teachers, reach more families and make a relational difference in education.

Sincerely,

Carrie Rose and Lisa Levasseur

College Readiness Home Visits

Links:

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