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North Dakota State PIRC is a Parent Information and Resource Center; Funded by US Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement

Parent Involvement Books

These books are available for checkout to North Dakota residents only. They are not available for purchase from our site.

Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family/School Partnerships
by Anne T. Henderson, Vivian Johnson, Karen L. Mapp, and Don Davies 

Countless studies demonstrate that students with parents actively involved in their education at home and school are more likely to earn higher grades and test scores, enroll in higher-level programs, graduate from high school, and go on to post-secondary education. Beyond the Bake Sale shows how to form these essential partnerships and how to make them work. Written with candor, clarity, and humor, Beyond the Bake Sale is essential reading for teachers, parents on the front lines in public schools, and administrators and policy makers at all levels.

Building Successful Partnerships
National PTA by Dr. James P. Comer 

Based on research, Building Successful Partnerships provides a blueprint for developing quality parent involvement programs that work. This practical resource focuses on ways to implement the six National Standards for Parent/Family Involvement Programs: Communicating, Volunteering, Parenting, School Decision Making and Advocacy, Student Learning, and Collaborating with the Community.

Building Your Baby's Brain
by Diane Trister Dodge and Cate Heroman 

This new clearly-written booklet is packed full of illustrations and charts, and shows parents how to interact with their children to foster healthy brain development. Building your Baby's Brain includes sections on: prenatal care, teaching your baby about feelings, relating to others, and more.

Creating Parent and Family Involvement: 101 Ideas for Teachers Who Care
by Hobart L. Harmon, Ph.D. and Ben H. Dickens, Ed.D. 

Research reveals successful teachers share responsibility for student achievement. How can teachers get parents and family members to support student success in school? In this book you will: learn why parent and family involvement create student success; use a five-step process and simple self-assessment tool for creating meaningful parent and family involvement; discover how to implement 101 parent and family involvement ideas; receive over 50 tips teachers can give parents in helping their child be successful in school; and receive over 40 appetizer recipes for use in parent and family involvement activities.

Family is Critical to Student Achievement
by Anne T. Henderson and Nancy Berla 

A compelling body of research - 66 studies in all - shows that family involvement, not income or social status, is the most accurate predictor of student achievement in school. Build your case for reaching out to low-income families with solid research about what happens when schools work with them - improved grades and test scores, increased attendance and higher graduation rates and college attendance. This is full of research you need to know. It also gives specific information on the benefits of family involvement strategies at all levels - pre-school through high school.

Hard-to-Reach Parent, The: Old Challenges, New Insights
by Renee White-Clark & L.E. Decker 

CLE's network finds this publication very helpful and is one of the most popular items out. It identifies positive, inclusive and specific strategies educators can use to involve families who are hard to reach. It disproves the excuse that families struggling to survive won't be interested in closer contacts with schools. They have to be asked the right way and given the right opportunities. This report tells how to do it.

Helping Your Child Achieve in School
by Dr. Barbara Johnson 

Do you want a good education for your child? Of course! As a parent, you want to be sure your child's educational experience is rich and rewarding and successful. Yet, you may not always know what you can do to ensure a good start that's why this book was written.

Parent Relations - Building an Active Partnership
The Best of Exchange Reprint Collection #9 

Ideas on improving parent/staff communication, meeting the needs of single parents, handling parent complaints, dealing with separation issues, running parent conferences, and understanding and strengthening the partnership between parents and teachers.

Parent's homework Dictionary (PhD)
by Dan J. McLaughlin 

The Parent's homework Dictionary is designed to help parents/adults understand homework their children bring home from school. It's impossible to remember concepts you haven't seen or used in 20 years, so that is the reasoning behind this book.

Parenting Rule # 1: Mom Has Fun!
by Nicole MacKenzie 

It's time Mom has fun and here is how. May everyone embrace these brilliant concepts! An easy to apply manual on how to raise happy, responsible children who follow instructions while applying Rule #1: Mom Has Fun!

Parents Assuring Student Success
by John R. Ban 

Parents Assuring Students Success (PASS) is a stairway to greater family involvement in a child's education. Its main focus is to draw home and school, parent and child, closer together to create a "connection" that has proven to lead to increased student performance in the classroom. Developed in an urban school system in Northwest Indiana, this program successfully motivated and involved low-income families in their children's education. These parents took greater responsibility for their children's learning after discovering how to teach the study skills and values necessary for success in school. Once schooled at home in specific techniques for learning, children should perform at a higher level in the classroom and their test scores, motivation, and self-esteem all should rise.

School, Family, and Community Partnerships
by Joyce L. Epstein 

This comprehensive book explains the theory, practice, and benefits of school and family partnerships, incorporating ideas and lesson plans that teachers and school officials may use to involve parents in the education of their children. It is a valuable research tool, college text, and professional handbook.

School-Savvy Parent: 365 Insider Tips to Help You Help Your Child, The
by Rosemarie Clark, M.Ed., Donna Hawkins, M.Ed. 

Whether you're sending your child to school for the first time - or you want your child to have a positive school experience anytime - this book is for you. You'll find back-to-school tips, communication tips, tips to make school easier for everyone, health and safety tips, tips on volunteering, along with many others.

Straight Talk to Parents - How You Can Help Your Child Get The Best Out Of School
by Mary Susan Miller and Samm Sinclair Baker 

This book is a great tool on how to start and keep up a constructive dialogue between home and school and how caring teachers and cooperating parents in an open-minded school system can reach the ultimate goal in education.

Up From Underachievement
by Diane Heacox, Ed.D. 

Underachievers want to succeed in school; they simply don't know how. This step-by-step program helps students of all ages. Includes 12 reproducible handout masters.

What Kids Need To Succeed
by Peter L. Benson, Ph.D. 

What Kids Need to Succeed makes you an asset builder. It can get whole communities involved in working together for kids. Inspiring, practical, and easy to read, this action handbook is essential for anyone who cares about young people too.

What Teens Need to Succeed
by Peter L. Benson, Ph.D. 

This book is ideal for distributing to parents, educators, and others who want to make a positive difference in the lives of young people. It includes common-sense ideas for building assets at home, at school, and in the community, checklists to help parents and others identify the assets in their own young people, and concrete tips for how youth can build their own assets.

Your Child and Testing
The National Institute of Education 

This booklet is designed to help you gain a better understanding of testing, its uses, and its limitations and will promote a better relationship between you, your child, and the school.

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