• by Pam McCollum, Ph.D. • IDRA Newsletter • September 1997
One of the STAR Center’s priority areas is parent, family and community involvement in order to support the development and implementation of creative strategies for building partnerships between parents, families, communities and schools to foster high academic achievement for all students. The emphasis for the coming school year will be to provide specialized training of trainers sessions in six education service centers (ESC) regions. ESCs will use a needs assessment approach to choose specific topic areas, and the STAR Center will focus its training in those areas this fall. These sessions will reflect a comprehensive approach to parental involvement training. This past summer, STAR Center staff members developed the training of trainers materials.
The STAR Center also works to support the development of practical products concerning schoolfamily partnerships that communicate a wide range of information to client audiences. For example, the STAR Center is preparing information to disseminate about parent centers that are being developed. This information is being presented at conferences in Texas. In addition to the training of trainers sessions during the coming months, STAR Center staff members will serve as facilitators for the Texas Education Agency’s parent involvement training. They are also preparing a review of literature in parental involvement and descriptions of exemplary programs. This information will be posted on the STAR Center web site (www.starcenter.org ).
The STAR Center is the comprehensive regional assistance center funded by the U.S. Department of Education to serve Texas. It is a collaboration of the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA), RMC Research Corporation, and the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin. For information about STAR Center services call 1888FYISTAR.
[©1997, IDRA. This article originally appeared in the September 1997 IDRA Newsletter by the Intercultural Development Research Association. Permission to reproduce this article is granted provided the article is reprinted in its entirety and proper credit is given to IDRA and the author.]
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