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--MAKE HOUSE CALLS. Jocelyn Graves, a single mom who lives in downtown Sacramento, Calif., felt that her son's school was run by suburban educators who didn't understand or care about her son. She began grumbling to friends and found that many were equally disaffected. At an informal school meeting, Graves acerbically suggested teachers could better understand students and parents by visiting their homes. Three years and 6,000 home visits later, the Sacramento schools' Home-Visit Project is credited with helping turn around the district's parents and its students. Reading scores on standardized exams have gone up 32%, math scores surged 66%. In a recent survey, 89% of parents said their children were performing better in school. The results have been so stunning that last year California approved a $15 million statewide home-visit program and districts in four other states launched pilot projects.
In the Sacramento model, teachers go to the homes of their students at least once each school year to chat with parents about what their child will study in the coming year and how precisely parents can help with homework assignments. For teachers, the visits can amount to a crash course in sensitivity training. Teachers visit homes in pairs and, once inside, have a relaxed chat with parents rather than levying instructions as they would in a classroom. Often that means overlooking threadbare interiors or a family's less-than-scholarly choice of reading material. Jennifer Ching Moff, a third-grade teacher at Sacramento's Woodbine Elementary who has logged 220 visits since the beginning of the program, lives in a suburb and ordinarily would not spend her after-school hours in a ZIP code where her pupils reside. The visits have been humbling. One family owned little furniture and had to borrow some folding chairs for Moff's visit; others welcomed her with sodas and snacks they'd been saving for a special occasion. "It's just a matter of changing the context of things because you know the children a little better and you've seen their soccer trophies," says Moff. "I didn't really understand the neighborhood or the kids and the parents until I walked in their shoes."
--HOLD PARENTS ACCOUNTABLE. The parents, teachers and administrators of all 11 million children in Title I schools--those that serve the nation's poorest students--are required to sign "compacts" that typically stipulate, among other things, how many hours parents will read with their children each week. At the KIPP Academies, two successful charter schools in Houston and New York City, parents, teachers and students sign contracts pledging everything from adherence to the dress code (teachers and students) to checking homework (parents). If students repeatedly slip up, the academies can send them back to a regular public school.