GOAL 1:
Communications With Families
Providence
Effective school communication with families has been shown to increase parental involvement, make teacher-student relationships stronger, and even have an effect on students’ on-task behavior and classroom participation.
In PPSD, approximately 31% of students are Multilingual Learners, and 55% of the student body come from homes where English is not the primary language spoken. Students and families in PPSD speak over 55 different languages and hail from 91 countries of origin. This diversity in languages provides unique challenges and opportunities for school and family communications, and the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division recently reached a settlement with PPSD over noncompliance issues for the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). Through this investigation, the Justice Department found that the district did not effectively communicate with parents of Multilingual Learners (MLLs).
Our Providence SCORE Community Research Team was particularly interested in measures that show:
The ways and effectiveness of PPSD’s communication with limited English proficient parents and families;
The modes of communications that PPSD uses with families and their effectiveness;
The types and effectiveness of school- and district-based family engagement events.
See below for more information about the SCORE Communications with Families goals and indicators, and click on the links to see available indicator data!
The SCORE Communications with Family indicators are separated into four goal areas that focus on access to communication:
Language justice in schools
| Number | Indicator |
|---|---|
| 1 | Family language preferences for school/district communication. |
| 2 | # of school staff who are bilingual/multilingual and languages spoken. |
| 3 | Description of services of partner/external organizations (and/or district-based staff) providing language access services. |
| 4 | Family satisfaction with district/school communication in preferred language and language access services. |
| Number | Indicator |
|---|---|
| 5 | Modes of communication with families used by schools and district. |
| 6 | Languages available in modes of communication with families. | 7 | Engagement measures for mass emails sent by schools and district. |
| 8 | Family satisfaction with school and district communication. |
| Number | Goal |
|---|---|
| 9 | Average response time for communication with family by schools or district. |
| Number | Indicator |
|---|---|
| 10 | #, types, and attendance numbers for family engagement sessions/events run by schools and district. |
| 11 | Family satisfaction with family engagement sessions/events run by schools and district. | 12 | # and % of school staff trained in family engagement and curriculum covered. |
| 13 | Parent Ambassador job description and staffing levels. |
| 14 | Family satisfaction with Parent Ambassador(s). |
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Currently, the active indicator links represent data that is publicly available (i.e., enrollment data and SurveyWorks climate survey). However, in many cases, our community-identified indicators differ from those that are publicly available. We are working to request data that the school district collects but is not yet made public. As new data and visualizations are ready, we will add them to the SCOREcard.
Additionally, some of what community members have asked to be measured in the SCOREcard is, to the best of our knowledge, not currently being collected In these cases, this SCOREcard represents a call to action for the school system, in partnership with community organizations, to collect data in areas that matter to the community, and to make it publicly accessible. As we get access to more data, more indicators will be populated and our SCOREcard will be stronger.