Insights from Our First Year

EdNavigator is a year old today! To celebrate, we’re guest-blogging at Eduwonk all week, sharing observations and insights from our work helping New Orleans families give their kids a great education.

Today’s post: For Families, a Little Help Goes a Long Way. Find out how some well-timed support from EdNavigator helped “Maria” keep her third-grade daughter on track during a critical year—and what her story shows us about how families experience schools.

For Maria and Ana, a few well-timed interventions went a long way. They had a lot going for them, for sure, but their experience also illustrates the challenges that so many families face in navigating schools: Language and cultural barriers, contradictory information about how students are really doing, uncertainty about how to support learning at home, a tendency among school systems not to respond to learning challenges until they become five-alarm fires. The list goes on and on.

Check back every day this week for new posts on how parents interpret information about student performance, choose schools, and more. We’ll keep a running list of links here. On Friday, we’ll share our most important lesson learned so far, with implications for everyone in the education community.

READ THE SERIES ON EDUWONK

Insight #1: For Families, a Little Help Goes a Long Way

Insight #2: Families are Overwhelmed with Confusing Information

Insight #3: Summer is a Massive Challenge for Working Families

Insight #4: It's Hard for Families to Discern Differences in Quality among Schools

Insight #5: No "Theory of Change" Will Work if It Doesn't Work for Families

Join the conversation

Share your thoughts with us on Twitter (@ednavigate) or Facebook. And a big thank you to Andy Rotherham of Eduwonk for hosting us!