Dive Brief:
- More schools are beginning to move away from the traditional parent-teacher conference model to focus on more innovative and collaborative approaches.
- Academic parent-teacher teams, a new model gaining popularity, have spread to 250 schools in the past five years.
- APTT, as it’s known, is intended to build relationships between parents and teachers, creating an active partnership and getting parents’ support for pushing students on their academic goals.
Dive Insight:
As schools work to improve, parent and community engagement has taken on renewed importance. For schools, parent-teacher cofnerences remain one of the most powerful tools. Almost 90% of parents show up to parent-teacher conferences, including more than 75% of low-income parents, according to Education Week.
That time is often underutilized, though. "Conferences are short, the info a parent receives is hard to interpret, and it's unclear what actions a parent or the teacher should take to maximize the student's strengths," Heather Weiss, the director of the Harvard Family Research Project, told Education Week.
The new models are intended to rectify that, at least in part. APTT encourages parents and teachers to maintain their relationship throughout the year and to set out clear academic goals that parents can reinforce. And it focuses on giving parents tools, as well. For example, teachers discuss the concept students are learning and model ways for parents to work with students on it.