Part 1
For this assignment, you will write a paper on parental involvement using Epstein’s Typology of Family InvolvementEpstein’s Framework of Six Types of InvolvementLinks to an external site. (Epstein, n.d.). Using specific examples, you will describe how each of these six types of parental involvement can be realized in schools, and discuss how each of the examples has potential to support student learning and success.
In addition to the s and examples of the six types of parental involvement, you will report the results of your parent interviews: four parents you choose to interview either in person or by phone and four virtual parents in Madison Middle School in our simulated Blooming Park District: Blooming Park: Parental Involvement Interviews. Note: In addition to the virtual parents available in the Madison Middle School simulation, you may also choose to interview Madison Middle School teachers. Refer to your Week 5 Data Collection Template [DOCX].
Having studied Epstein’s framework of six major types of involvement, you devised questions for parents to establish current perceptions of the extent to which parents experience these types of involvement at Madison Middle School.
The paper is designed to assess your content knowledge of the NELP: Standard 5: Community and External Leadership: to engage families, community, and school personnel in order to strengthen student learning, support school improvement, and advocate for the needs of their school and community
See below Epstein’s framework of six major types of involvement (Epstein, n.d.) and interview questions for parents and/or teachers:
Type 1 Parenting: Assist families with parenting skills, family support, understanding child and adolescent development, and setting home conditions to support learning at each age and grade level. Assist schools in understanding families’ backgrounds, cultures, and goals for children (Cordeiro & Cunningham, 2013, p. 352).
Does the school provide parents with assistance with parenting skills, and provide support for families in understanding child and adolescent development?
Does the school guide parents in establishing conditions at home that support children’s school success?
Does the school seem to understand family backgrounds, cultures, and goals for their children?
Type 2 Communicating: Communicate with families about school programs and student progress in varied, clear, and productive ways. Create two-way communication channels (school to home and home to school) so that families can easily communicate with teachers, administrators, counselors, and other families (Cordeiro & Cunningham, 2013, p. 352).
Is there regular communication with families about school programs and student progress that is clear, varied, and productive?
Are there two-way communication channels between school and home, and home and school?
Is it easy for parents to communicate with teachers, administrators, counselors, and other families?
Type 3 Volunteering: Improve recruitment, training, activities, and schedules to involve families as volunteers and as audiences at the school or in other locations. Enable educators to work with regular and occasional volunteers who assist and support students and the school (Cordeiro & Cunningham, 2013, p. 352).
Does the school provide parents with opportunities to volunteer at school?
How are parent volunteers recruited?
Do parent volunteers assist and support students and the school?
Type 4 Learning at Home: Involve families with their children in academic learning activities at home, such as homework, goal setting, and other curriculum-related activities and decisions. Encourage teachers to design homework that enables students to share and discuss interesting work and ideas with family members (Cordeiro & Cunningham, 2013, p. 352).
Are parents involved with academic learning activities at home (for example, homework, setting goals, et cetera)?
Do teachers design homework that encourages students to share their school work with their parents?
Type 5 Decision Making: Include families as participants in school decisions, governance, and advocacy activities through school councils or improvement teams, committees, PTA/PTO, and other parent organizations. Assist family and teacher representatives to obtain information from, and give information to, those they represent (p. 352).
Do parents have opportunities to participate in school decisions, governance, and advocacy activities through school councils or improvement teams, committees, PTA/PTO, and other parent organizations?
Does the school assist families by providing information about pending school decisions that affect their children and elicit their input?
Type 6 Collaborating With Community: Coordinate resources and services for families, students, and the school with community businesses, agencies, cultural and civic organizations, colleges or universities, and other community groups. Enable students, staff, and families to contribute their service to the community (Cordeiro & Cunningham, 2013, p. 352).
Does the school assist parents in making connections to community resources and services (for example, businesses, agencies, cultural and civic organizations, colleges or universities, and other community groups)?
Does the school provide opportunities for students, staff, and families to provide service to their community?
Your paper should address the following required components, and it must be presented in sections as indicated below. Use the Week 5 Assignment Template [DOC], which includes each of these headings. Except for the Introduction, each section must have its own heading, shown here in bold.
Introduction.
Parenting.
Consider parents as providers of the child’s basic needs.
Discuss how this type of parental involvement can be realized in schools and how it supports student success.
Compare parenting at Madison Middle School to the school whose parents you interviewed live.
Recommend school leaders’ strategies to improve parenting.
Communicating.
Consider communication between the school and the home.
Discuss how this type of parental involvement can be realized in schools and how it supports student success.
Compare communicating at Madison Middle School to the school whose parents you interviewed live.
Recommend school leaders’ strategies to improve communicating.
Volunteering.
Consider parents as volunteers at the school.
Discuss how this type of parental involvement can be realized in schools and how it supports student success.
Compare volunteering at Madison Middle School to the school whose parents you interviewed live.
Recommend school leaders’ strategies to improve volunteering.
Include how a system trains teachers to work cooperatively with volunteers and how this system can improve student learning. (Assignment tip: The most often missed element in this section of the paper is discussion of teacher training.)
Learning at Home.
Consider parents as instructors at home.
Discuss how this type of parental involvement can be realized in schools and how it supports student success.
Compare learning at home at Madison Middle School to the school whose parents you interviewed live.
Recommend school leaders’ strategies to improve learning at home.
Decision Making.
Consider parents involved in school governance.
Discuss how this type of parental involvement can be realized in schools and how it supports student success.
Compare decision making at Madison Middle School to the school whose parents you interviewed live.
Recommend school leaders’ strategies to improve decision making.
Collaborating With Community.
Consider parents working with the entire community.
Discuss how this type of parental involvement can be realized in schools and how it supports student success. (Assignment tip: The most often missed element in this section of the paper is discussion of how the facilitation of receiving services improves student learning.)
Compare collaborating with community at Madison Middle School to the school whose parents you interviewed live.
Recommend school leaders’ strategies to improve collaborating with community.
Conclusion.
Provide summative comments pertaining to the different roles of parental involvement. One or two paragraphs are sufficient to present the concluding section of the paper.
References.
A minimum of four scholarly, peer-reviewed references, also cited in the body of the paper, presented in adherence to current APA style and formatting.
Your paper should meet the following requirements:
Template: Use the Week 5 Assignment Template to develop this paper.
Length of paper: 610 double-spaced pages, not including the title page and references page.
References: A minimum of four scholarly, peer-reviewed resources on the References page, which are also cited in the paper.
Part 2
To support student learning, you need to have a strong instructional program; but, you also need to have a positive school culture that supports and promotes learning. In this assignment, you will have the opportunity to explore ideas and develop strategies related to the creation of a positive school culture, a comprehensive and rigorous instructional program, the leadership of school staff, and an effective use of technology.
The paper is designed to assess your content knowledge of the NELP Standard 5: Community and External Leadership: to engage families, community, and school personnel in order to strengthen student learning, support school improvement, and advocate for the needs of their school and community; NELP Building-Level Standard 3: Equity, Inclusiveness, and Cultural Responsiveness: to develop and maintain a supportive, equitable, culturally responsive, and inclusive school culture; and NELP Component 4.1: Understand and demonstrate the capacity to evaluate, develop, and implement high-quality, technology rich curricula, programs, and other supports for academic and nonacademic student programs).
Assignment Instructions
Use the Week 6 Assignment Template [DOC] to complete your assignment. Please note the current APA style guidelines. Your paper should include the following required components, and it must be presented in sections as indicated below. Except for the Introduction, each section must have its own heading. Instructions aligning with rubric criteria are presented in bold and are followed by the aligning NELP standards.
Introduction
Provide an overview of what will be presented in the paper, typically in one or two paragraphs. This section should not have a heading. The current APA style guidelines do not call for headers in introductions.
School Culture
Describe what should be done to assess and sustain a positive school culture and instructional program that supports student learning by fostering collaboration, trust, and a personalized learning environment with high expectations for students. Be sure to incorporate theories on human development, personalized learning environment, and motivation.
Standard 1: Mission, Vision, and Improvement
1.1: Program completers understand and demonstrate the capacity to collaboratively evaluate, develop, and communicate a school mission and vision designed to reflect a core set of values and priorities that include data use, technology, equity, diversity, digital citizenship, and community.
Standard 3: Equity, Inclusiveness, and Cultural Responsiveness:
3.1: Program completers understand and demonstrate the capacity to use data to evaluate, design, cultivate, and advocate for a supportive and inclusive school culture.
Explain how school vision is essential to developing a positive school culture and what should be done to assess and sustain a shared vision of learning for a school.
Standard 1: Mission, Vision, and Improvement
Standard 3: Equity, Inclusiveness, and Cultural Responsiveness:
3.1: Program completers understand and demonstrate the capacity to use data to evaluate, design, cultivate, and advocate for a supportive and inclusive school culture.
Instructional Program
Describe the process a school leader should use to create and evaluate a comprehensive, rigorous, and coherent curricular and instructional school program. Be sure to incorporate curriculum development and instructional delivery theories and explain how the school leader measures teacher performance. Consider multiple methods of evaluation, accountability systems, data collection, and analysis of evidence.
Standard 4: Learning and Instruction
Standard 7: Building Professional Capacity
7.3: Program completers understand and have the capacity to personally engage in, as well as collaboratively engage school staff in, professional learning designed to promote reflection, cultural responsiveness, distributed leadership, digital literacy, school improvement, and student success.
7.4: Program completers understand and have the capacity to evaluate, develop, and implement systems of supervision, support, and evaluation designed to promote school improvement and student success.
Explain how the school leader should use school technology and information systems to support and monitor student learning.
Standard 4: Learning and Instruction
Standard 7: Building Professional Capacity
7.3: Program completers understand and have the capacity to personally engage in, as well as collaboratively engage school staff in, professional learning designed to promote reflection, cultural responsiveness, distributed leadership, digital literacy, school improvement, and student success.
7.4: Program completers understand and have the capacity to evaluate, develop, and implement systems of supervision, support, and evaluation designed to promote school improvement and student success.
Supervision
Describe the process a school leader should use to develop and supervise the instructional and leadership capacity of the school staff. Incorporate high-quality professional development for school staff, best instructional leadership practices, and leadership theory, change processes, and evaluation.
Standard 4: Learning and Instruction
Technology
Describe the process a school leader should use to promote the most effective and appropriate technologies to support teaching and learning in a school-level environment. Incorporate how technology should be used for instruction within the school.
Standard 4: Learning and Instruction
Conclusion
Provide summative comments pertaining to the school leader’s role in stewardship of the school’s vision and assessment and promotion of positive school culture. Two or three paragraphs are sufficient to present the concluding section of the paper.
References
Include a minimum of five scholarly, peer-reviewed references, also cited in the body of the paper, presented in adherence to current APA style and formatting.
Additional Requirements
Your paper should meet the following requirements:
Template: Use the Week 6 Assignment Template to develop this paper. Keep in mind that the paper you write for this assignment will be modified for inclusion in the final paper for this course.
Length of paper: 68 double-spaced pages, not including the title page and references page.
Part 3
For this assignment, write a paper that provides analysis of the steps and processes school leaders should use to manage the school organization, operations, and resources to promote a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment. Include discussion of strategies to collaborate with all stakeholders (families and other community members), to respond to diverse community interests and needs and to mobilize community resources. Provide examples, as appropriate, based on your own professional experiences, and support your discussions using relevant citations from professional literature.
Your paper should include the following required components, and it must be presented in sections as indicated below. Instructions aligning with rubric criteria are presented in bold and are followed by the aligning NELP standards. Except for the Introduction, each section must have its own heading and subheading:
Introduction.
School Management: Effective Learning Environment.
Evaluation of School Management and Operational Systems.
Group Processes and Distributed Leadership.
Efficient Use of Resources: Human, Fiscal, and Technological.
School Safety and Crisis Management.
Integrating Management and High-Quality Instruction.
Collaborating with Stakeholders: School and Community.
Collaboration with Stakeholders.
Community Agencies.
Conclusion.
References.
Instructions for completing each required section:
Introduction
Provide an overview of what will be presented in the paper, typically in one or two paragraphs. This section should not have a heading. The current APA style guidelines do not call for headers for introductions.
School Management: Effective Learning Environment
Analyze the process a leader would use to optimize the learning environment for all students. This analysis should apply appropriate models and principles of organizational development and management; include research- and data-driven decision making with attention to indicators of equity, effectiveness, and efficiency; develop an action plan focused on management of fiscal, human, and material resources; and emphasize student learning, safety, curriculum, and instruction.
NELP Standard 6: Operations and Management.
6.1: Program completers understand and demonstrate the capacity to evaluate, develop, and implement management, communication, technology, school-level governance, and operation systems that support each student’s learning needs and promote the mission and vision of the school.
Describe the steps used to facilitate group processes that build consensus, aid communication, and resolve conflicts in conducting operations and setting priorities. Include needs assessment and research-based data through the development of a communication plan that focuses on collaboration.
NELP Standard 3: Equity, Inclusiveness, and Cultural Responsiveness.
3.3: Program completers understand and demonstrate the capacity to evaluate, cultivate, and advocate for equitable, inclusive, and culturally responsive instruction and behavior support practices among teachers and staff.
NELP Standard 6: Operations and Management.
6.1: Program completers understand and demonstrate the capacity to evaluate, develop, and implement management, communication, technology, school-level governance, and operation systems that support each student’s learning needs and promote the mission and vision of the school.
NELP Standard 7: Building Professional Capacity.
7.3: Program completers understand and have the capacity to personally engage in, as well as collaboratively engage school staff in, professional learning designed to promote reflection, cultural responsiveness, distributed leadership, digital literacy, school improvement, and student success.
Address the processes a leader would use to discover new resources to facilitate learning, including application and assessment of new technologies to support management of the organization. Examples include business procedures, student data management, and communication
NELP Standard 6: Operations and Management.
6.1: Program completers understand and demonstrate the capacity to evaluate, develop, and implement management, communication, technology, school-level governance, and operation systems that support each student’s learning needs and promote the mission and vision of the school.
Subsections within School Management: Effective Learning Environment:
EVALUATION OF SCHOOL MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONAL SYSTEMS
Analyze the processes a leader would use to understand, monitor, and evaluate school management and operational systems including resources, marketing, and public relations functions.
GROUP PROCESSES AND DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP
Describe the process a school leader should use to develop school capacity for distributed leadership. Include an explanation of the meaning of distributed leadership in a school environment and how to create and sustain it.
EFFICIENT USE OF RESOURCES: HUMAN, FISCAL, AND TECHNOLOGICAL
Describe the methods and procedures a school leader should utilize to employ efficiently human, fiscal, and technological resources in managing school operations. Be sure to also explain how the school leader will ensure that resources are aligned to school priorities and forecasting requirements.
SCHOOL SAFETY AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Analyze the processes a leader would use to understand and promote school-based policies and procedures that foster a safe and secure learning environment. Include discipline management policies and plans, prevention, crisis management, and public relations.
Integrating Management and High-Quality Instruction
Describe the supervision strategies a school leader should use to ensure that teachers maximize time spent on high-quality instruction and student learning. Include a discussion of pertinent management theories related to effective school time, priorities, and schedules.
Incorporate several management theories that relate to effective school prioritization, scheduling, and time management. (Tip: The most often missed element in this section of the paper is discussion of pertinent management theories related to effective school time, priorities, and schedules.)
NELP Standard 4: Learning and Instruction.
4.4: Program completers understand and demonstrate the capacity to collaboratively evaluate, develop, and implement the school’s curriculum, instruction, technology, data systems, and assessment practices in a coherent, equitable, and systematic manner.
Collaborating With Stakeholders: School and Community
Analyze how family and community resources can be used to boost learning. Include: distributed leadership; use of community agencies (for example, health agencies and social service organizations); services to special and exceptional needs students; and some of the best practices for the use of community resources, school resources, and public resources and funds to encourage communities to provide new resources to address emerging student problems.
Analyze the school or community diversity and how school leaders should use this variety of perspectives to enrich school programs while meeting the needs of all students. Examples of diversity include cultural, ethnic, racial, economic, and special interest groups.
NELP Standard 5: Community and External Leadership.
5.2: Program completers understand and demonstrate the capacity to collaboratively engage and cultivate relationships with diverse community members, partners, and other constituencies for the benefit of school improvement and student development.
Subsections within Collaborating with Stakeholders: School and Community:
COLLABORATION WITH STAKEHOLDERS
Describe the processes a school leader would use to collaborate with stakeholders (school faculty, staff, and community members) to gather information needed to plan for improvement of the educational environment and share in decision making. Examine processes and systems a school leader would use to support the needs of all students, parents, and caregivers through open, effective communication (oral and written). Discuss ways school leaders can use to promote and monitor a culture of communication and collaboration with families and caregivers.
COMMUNITY AGENCIES
Determine how a school leader could identify and mobilize community resources to build cultural competence and support the success of all students through integration of diverse cultural, social, and intellectual community resources. Examples of resources include: health agencies, social service organizations, and ethnic, racial, or cultural organizations. Include processes a school leader would use to promote effective communication (written and oral) and productive relationships with community partners.
Conclusion
The conclusion should provide summative comments pertaining to the school leader’s role in managing the school and collaborating with stakeholders. Two or three paragraphs are sufficient to present the concluding section of the paper.
References
Include a minimum of five scholarly, peer-reviewed references, also cited in the body of the paper, presented in adherence to current APA style and formatting.
Additional Requirements
Your paper should meet the following requirements:
Template: Use the Week 8 Assignment Template [DOC] to develop this paper. Keep in mind that the paper you write for this assignment will be summarized in the final paper for this course.
Length of paper: 610 double-spaced pages, not including the title page and references page. Do not exceed the page limit.
Part 4
This final paper has three components. Throughout the course, you have been working on the separate parts of the course project. The first two components were created and graded in Weeks 6 and 8that is, School Culture and the Instructional Program and Managing a School and Stakeholder Collaboration, respectively. In this week, you will revise the first two papers by:
Removing the original papers’ introductions and conclusions and replacing them with a new introduction and conclusion for the final paper.
Addressing comments from the instructor’s grading of the Week 6 and Week 8 papers.
You will present the revised papers as the final paper, along with the added Week 10 paper component: Integrity, Fairness, and Ethics.
The final paper requires you to address key leadership concepts for acting ethically with integrity and fairness. It is important to review the distinctions discussed in Week 8 between ethical and moral behaviors and learn the meaning of theories of efficacy listed in this week.
In developing your final paper, consider the following:
Examine personal and professional perspectives relevant to educational leadership and reflect on their implications for practice.
Reflect critically on professional learning experiences in educational administration and plan for further growth.
Document the use of educational resources to support your thoughts.
Use the Week 10 Assignment Template [DOC] to complete this assignment. Your final paper should include the following components (which are all listed on the template), and it must be presented in sections as indicated below. Except for the Introduction, each section must have its own heading:
Introduction: Develop an introduction that provides an overview of the topics.
School Culture and Instructional Program: Revise and improve the paper you wrote for Week 6. Be sure that you address the following:
School Culture: Advocate for what should be done to assess and sustain a positive school culture and instructional program that supports student learning by fostering collaboration, trust, and a personalized learning environment with high expectations for students. Incorporate theories on human development, personalized learning environment, and motivation (NELP 1.1, 3.1).
Instructional Program: Describe the process a school leader should use to create and evaluate a comprehensive, rigorous, and coherent curricular and instructional school program. Incorporate curriculum development and instructional delivery theories. Incorporate how the school leader measures teacher performance. Consider multiple methods of evaluation, accountability systems, data collection and analysis of evidence. Explain how the school leader should use school technology and information systems to support and monitor student learning (NELP 4.4, 7.3, 7.4).
Supervision: Describe the process a school leader should use to develop and supervise the instructional and leadership capacity of the school staff. Incorporate high-quality professional development for school staff. Incorporate best instructional leadership practices. Incorporate leadership theory, change processes, and evaluation (NELP 4.2).
Technology: Describe the process a school leader should use to promote the most effective and appropriate technologies to support teaching and learning in a school level environment. Incorporate how technology should be used for instruction within the school (NELP 4.2).
School Management and Stakeholder Collaboration: Revise and improve the paper you wrote for Week 8. Be sure to address the following:
Evaluation of School Management and Operational Systems: Describe the process a school leader should use to understand, monitor, and evaluate school management and operational systems, including resources, marketing, and public relations functions. Incorporate how you will manage the marketing and public relations functions (NELP 6.1).
Group Processes and Distributed Leadership: Describe the process a school leader should use to develop school capacity for distributed leadership. Explain the meaning of distributed leadership in a school environment and how to create and sustain it (NELP 7.3).
Efficient Use of Resources: Human, Fiscal, and Technological: Describe the methods and procedures a school leader should utilize to efficiently employ human, fiscal, and technological resources in managing school operations. Explain how the school leader will ensure that resources are aligned to school priorities and forecasting requirements (NELP 6.1).
School Safety and Crisis Management: Describe the process a school leader should use to understand and promote school-based policies and procedures that foster a safe and secure learning environment, including discipline management policies and plans, prevention, crisis management, and public relations (NELP 3.3).
Integrating Management and High-Quality Instruction: Describe the supervision strategies a school leader should use to ensure that teachers maximize time spent on high-quality instruction and student learning. Include a discussion of pertinent management theories related to effective school time, priorities, and schedules (NELP 4.4).
Collaborating With Stakeholders: School and Community: Discuss and analyze how family and community resources can be used to boost learning, including distributed leadership; use of community agencies (for example, health agencies and social service organizations); services to special- and exceptional-needs students; and some of the best practices for the use of community resources, school resources, and public resources and funds to encourage communities to provide new resources to address emerging student problems. Also, discuss school or community diversity (cultural, ethnic, racial, economic, and special interest groups) and how school leaders should use this variety of perspectives to enrich school programs while meeting the needs of all students (NELP 5.1, 5.2, 6.1).
Collaboration With Stakeholders: Discuss the processes a school leader would use to collaborate with stakeholders (school faculty, staff, and community members) to gather information needed to plan for improvement of the educational environment and share in decision making. Examine processes and systems a school leader would use to support the needs of all students, parents, and caregivers through open, effective communication (oral and written). Discuss ways school leaders can use to promote and monitor a culture of communication and collaboration with families and caregivers (NELP 5.1, 6.1).
Community Agencies: Discuss how a school leader could identify and mobilize community resources to build cultural competence and support the success of all students through integration of diverse cultural, social, and intellectual community resources (for example, health agencies, social service organizations, ethnic, racial, or cultural organizations). Include processes a school leader would use to promote effective communication (written and oral) and productive relationships with community partners. (NELP 5.2).
Integrity, Fairness, and Ethics.
Integrity and Fairness: Describe how a school leader demonstrates integrity and fairness to ensure accountability for each student’s academic and social success. Explain the practice of demonstrating the principles of integrity and fairness and the legal consequences of the leader’s decision making in schools (NELP 2.1).
Ethical Behavior: Describe how a school leader can model principles of self-awareness, reflective practice, transparency, and ethical behavior. Explain the basic principles of ethical behavior and the effect of ethical behavior on the school’s leadership (NELP 2.1).
Ethical Issues: Identify ethical issues related to leadership and school change practices that ensure a school leader can safeguard the values of democracy, equity, and diversity within the school. Provide examples to i
