Case Study of Educational Change Model

A growing number of urban school stakeholders have sought to change failing schools by implementing initiatives to increase parent involvement.  Stakeholders have purposed changing the school’s culture; the quality of relationships between educators, parents, and students; and students’ educational outcomes by effecting systemic change within the school and the surrounding community.  The implementation of successful systemic initiatives has resulted in an increase in the quantity and quality of the various forms of parent involvement identified by Epstein (1995), such as parent volunteers in the school, and parents helping their children with homework. Implementing parent involvement initiatives has succeeded in improving student academic achievement and transforming the culture of schools (Lewis, 1997; Murnane & Levy, 1996).  The purpose of conducting this case study was to describe the change implementation process of an urban school district and to analyze a parent engagement initiative.
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The Kindergarten Connection

This study was conducted to examine the influence of prior preschool attendance, culture, and language socialization on early literacy success in drawings and dictated stories for Navajo kindergarten students at risk of school failure due to low socioeconomic status.  The researcher found that when young children attended a program in which educators incorporated the cultural values, attitudes, and beliefs of the home and heritage language, their stories contained more details and richness than the stories of non-attending peers.  While all children’s drawings reflected the influence of culture, several differences were found in the complexity and depth of the drawings.  Early education programs designed to promote the heritage culture in conjunction with academic abilities, especially for children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, were linked to lasting effects on indicators related to student achievement.
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The Literacy Connection

This study was conducted to examine the influence of prior preschool attendance, culture, and language socialization on early literacy success in drawings and dictated stories for Navajo kindergarten students at risk of school failure due to low socioeconomic status.  The researcher found that when young children attended a program in which educators incorporated the cultural values, attitudes, and beliefs of the home and heritage language, their stories contained more details and richness than the stories of non-attending peers.  While all children’s drawings reflected the influence of culture, several differences were found in the complexity and depth of the drawings.  Early education programs designed to promote the heritage culture in conjunction with academic abilities, especially for children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, were linked to lasting effects on indicators related to student achievement.
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Embedded-Explicit Response to Intervention in Early Literacy

Interventions have been developed and evaluated to support emergent literacy in young children have typically featured an embedded or explicit orientation. The embedded–explicit model of emergent literacy intervention takes an integrated approach to emphasize practices associated with both orientations.  The purpose of this research is to utilize a single subject research design in exploring the following question:  Does implementing an embedded-explicit teaching model increase emergent literacy skills in preschool children at risk due to developmental or economic disadvantage?
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