1.5: Parents

Increase information and options for parents.

Other Information:

Parents are children’s first and most important teachers. The Department will continue to aggressively implement the parental involvement, information, and options components of NCLB and encourage states and communities to provide additional choices to parents. States and districts will continue to be required to publish report cards that provide school-performance information to parents. Children who attend underperforming schools will have increased opportunity to attend better public schools (including charter schools) or private schools, or, if eligible, use federal funds to obtain tutoring from the SES provider of their choice. Strategy 1. Ensure adequate parental notification. The Department will work with states so that they may provide high-quality, comprehensible information to parents about their child’s school. The Department will work with states to ensure that this information is useful both for school improvement efforts and in helping parents make informed decisions regarding school choice and SES. The Department will also encourage the creation of easy-to-use online databases of school information and options for parents. Strategy 2. Support charter schools. The Department will continue to provide start-up funds and facilities financing to enable the development of many high-quality charter schools. Strategy 3. Encourage states and communities to provide choices to children attending underperforming schools. The Department will work with states to ensure that children attending underperforming schools have the opportunity to transfer to better public schools (including charter schools), attend private schools, or, if eligible, use federal dollars for SES. Strategy 4. Provide support to states in implementing the choice and SES requirements of ESEA. The Department will work with states to help ensure that choice and SES are provided to the greatest number of students eligible to access these opportunities. The Department will offer guidance and technical assistance to states on such issues as improving parental outreach, recruiting SES providers in underserved areas, promoting successful practices to enroll students and sustain their participation, and evaluating SES provider effectiveness while enforcing effective SES implementation through expanded monitoring. External Factors -- While NCLB requires public school choice for children enrolled in schools identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring, the range of choices depends on state and local factors. The Department will encourage states and districts to increase their capacity to offer choice and remove other barriers, such as caps on the number of charter schools. The Department’s implementation of some of these strategies requires amendments to the ESEA, as amended by NCLB, and sufficient annual appropriations. The Department will work with Congress to create the statutory authority and obtain the annual appropriations needed to implement these strategies.

Stakeholder(s):

• Parents of Students

Indicator(s):

Indicator:1

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