School Holding Power
Strategies for Individual Action
Community Capacity
- Work with a local community organization or PTA to engage, educate and empower all parents in your community.
- Develop a plan of action to address dropout rate.
- Create gatherings of parents and superintendents, convened by community-based organizations.
- Empower parents to support laws that protect and support the equality and education of all students.
Actionable Knowledge
- Work on information systems that produce better and more reliable data, and that enable educators to keep track of the progress of individual students and address their specific needs.
- Commit to taking data collected to your community and ask them to come together to demand children’s education as a priority to lawmakers and school officials.
Coalition Building/Partnerships
- Meet with other groups in the community to share your findings and strategies; engage PTAs and trustee boards in addressing the issue.
- Build support for K-16 partnerships.
- Promote dialogue between parents, high school teachers and staff, college officials and resource organizations about high school graduation and college attendance.
School Capacity
- Put school holding power goals at the forefront of education meetings, emphasizing the relationship, relevance and rigor for secondary school students.
- Press for education systems to move from goals to reality – that every student will finish high school with a diploma.
- Do the “right thing” as a school board leader.
- Expand and encourage parent and community stakeholder involvement in schools.
Student Engagement
- Plant “graduation seeds” into the minds of students and commit to serving as a scaffold – a palanca for them throughout their education.
- Make sure youth in middle school and high school are knowledgeable of all information needed to graduate from high school and go on to college.
