Join us in Lexington, Kentucky

for Parent Leaders: An Untapped Resource in Education

May 7th-8th, 2008

register here

ABOUT US

Since 1997, a key part of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence’s  advocacy strategy in Kentucky has been the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership (CIPL), an initiative that trains and supports parent activists to help improve achievement in their schools and to be advocates for statewide reform.

Through this program, over 1,300 parents have received training and support.  Support has come from Kentucky individuals and corporations and, primarily, by national foundations (Ford, Kellogg, BellSouth, Casey, Pew, Edna McConnell Clark, Wallace-Readers Digest). Please see the 2002-2003 Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership Biennial Report, pdf.

In response to numerous requests for advice and assistance from outside of Kentucky, and to generate income to sustain the Prichard Committee and the Commonwealth Institute, the Center for Parent Leadership (CPL) was formed in 2001. Three of the Prichard Committee’s long-time foundation supporters — Ford, Casey and Pew — urged us to create the capacity to generate revenue and specifically provided venture funding for three years of CPL.

The Center for Parent Leadership markets its consulting services across the country. The Center for Parent Leadership (CPL) is a division of the non-profit Prichard Committee. CPL is managed and its consulting services are provided by Prichard Committee staff.

CPL offers a variety of services and products to clients. Overall the objective is to help others benefit from what we have learned from all these years of organizing support for improved schools.

Our services fall roughly in three categories:
· large-scale consulting
· workshops and seminars
· publications
 

OUR AGENDA
 
The nation-wide focus on student achievement across the country has changed everything — including advocacy. The advent of standards-based education reform in all states and the federal law (No Child Left Behind) creates a compelling need for the more powerful engagement of parents as advocates for all children in their schools and the schools in their communities. Just as expectations for teachers and students have been raised by higher academic standards, accountability and testing, expectations for parents have been raised as well.

At the school level, parent understanding of school achievement data is needed so parents can push and/or assist educators to make improvements based on that data. At the public and community level, parent knowledge of test scores and data is required for informed public dialogue and decision making.
 
We want to redefine parent engagement in the standards-based context. The idea is to go beyond parents’ traditional roles (bake sales and homework help) to focus on parents’ potential for helping improve student achievement.
 
We want to put the importance of parent leadership on the national and local agendas, in the same way, for instance, that issues such as principal leadership and teaching quality are on that agenda. This is especially timely in light of No Child Left Behind. Without a broader base of knowledgeable and demanding parents and advocates, the great promise of standards-based reform is unlikely to be realized.

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Contact Information

Telephone
859-233-9849 ext. 226

FAX
859-233-0760

Postal address
167 West Main Street, Suite 310
Lexington, KY 40507

Electronic mail
General Information: mtoney@prichardcommittee.org