PARENT RESOURCES
Additional resources of interest to parents of young children can be found on the afterschool resources page. Parents will find opportunities and resources for improving their own literacy skills and helping their children from the family literacy page.
- Visit the District of Columbia Public Schools site for information including individual and city-wide school performance data on the Stanford Achievement Tests and other measures of student success. The Academic Performance Database System offers additional reports on student reading and math scores.
- The Benton Foundation's Connect for Kids site provides information and ideas to help parents get involved in improving their communities for their children's benefit.
- Colorín Colorado: In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15), Reading Rockets, a multi-media initiative of PBS station WETA, is launching this Web site created specifically for Spanish-speaking parents to help their children learn to read. The site also includes downloadable resources for teachers and librarians to distribute to parents in their own communities.
- The Early Childhood and Parenting Collaborative offers an online journal called Early Childhood Research and Practice. The Collaborative also features tip sheets, training modules, and project information on the Web site.
- Early Years Are Learning Years: These articles developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) help parents and early childhood professionals make the critical early years the best that they can be for children.
- Especially for Parents is the Parents section of the United States Department of Education's Web site. More information and resources for parents and for parents who may also be students are available from the Parents' Corner of the National Center for Education Statistics Web site.
- Getting involved in your child's education: This site from the National Education Association offers a variety of resources to help parents get and stay involved in their children's education.
- The Healthy Families Partnership is a team effort in which city and community agencies in Hampton, VA have joined together with public and private organizations to help the families in that community become healthy, happy, and self sufficient.
- According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 5 out of every 100 high school students drop out of school; the number is often higher in urban areas. Even though high school is the stepping stone to the future for American youth, many students leave high school unprepared or even lacking the basic skills they need to get a good job or to continue their education. Learn more about the challenges public high schools and high school students face from the U.S. Department of Education's High School Education page.
- The National Child Care Information Center (a project of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families) maintains a Web list of resources for parents on early literacy instruction and critical issues affecting early readers and emergent readers. Most of these resources are government products. Some are also available in Spanish.
- The Parent Guide to the No Child Left Behind legislation and what it means for children's educational opportunities is available from a site maintained by the United States Department of Education. More resources for parents and teachers on the topics of reading instruction and No Child Left Behind recognized research and practices are available from Recommended Resources section of the Partnership for Reading Web site.
- Reach Out and Read provides the link between literacy and a healthy childhood to children, with a special emphasis on children growing up in poverty. Reach Out and Read reinforces the parent's role as the first and most important teacher, and gives parents the tools and techniques to help their children succeed. The Web site provides a number of resources on literacy development. The program emphasis is on well-child visits, from 6 months to 5 years, at which doctors and nurses provide information about the importance of reading aloud and give new, developmentally appropriate books to children to take home. In the waiting room, volunteers read to children, modeling techniques for parents.
- Reading is Fundamental maintains a brief guide to reading aloud to children at home on the RIF site. The document is in PDF.
- Simple Things You Can Do To Help All Children Read Well and Independently by the End of the Third Grade is a product of the America Reads Challenge from 1997 and is archived on the United States Department of Education's Web site.
