PARENT POWER, A SNAPPY NEWSLETTER from Scholastic, looks at issues in education with an eye to informing parents, and encouraging them to be aware of the education their children receive and involved in their children's schools.

The glossy, four-color publication covers a lot of territory in its six pages and provides parents a springboard for further investigation of educational issues.

To subscribe, write to Ashland Inc. PARENT POWER, c/o Susan Moger, Scholastic Inc., 555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

AMONG THE MORE THAN TWO DOZEN brochures for parents available from the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) is one that addresses ways to involve yourself in your child's education.

Research studies consistently reveal that high student achievement and self-esteem are closely related to positive parental participation in education. Parents and schools need to work together so all children can succeed in school.

Almost everyone agrees that parents are, after all, their children's first and most important teachers. You, as a parent, have important knowledge about your child's likes, dislikes, needs, and problems that the school may not be aware of.

You may also have ideas for improving your child's school. But even though studies show that most parents want to be involved in their children's education, they may not know how to go about it, especially if, like most parents, they work during the school day.

How Can I Be Involved in My Child's Education? provides ideas for often-asked questions such as:

• What can I do to involve myself with my child's school?
• How can I help my child with homework?
• How can I make our home a good place for my child to learn?
• What should I do if my child isn't doing well in school?
• What if my child doesn't like school?

The brochure is available on the Parent Brochures home page at the ACCESS ERIC Web site: http://www.accesseric.org/. Paper copies may be ordered by calling 1-800-LET-ERIC; by writing to ACCESS ERIC at 1600 Research Boulevard-MS 5F, Rockville, MD, 20850-3172; or by sending e-mail to: acceric@inet.ed.gov. ACCESS ERIC is the promotional and outreach arm of the U.S. Department of Education's Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) system.

ANOTHER PUBLICATION THAT LOOKS AT SUCCESSFUL FAMILY INVOLVEMENT efforts is Model Strategies in Bilingual Education: Family Literacy and Parent Involvement.

The report examines nine exemplary sites which exhibit a wide range of parent involvement and family literacy programs. Five of the profiles describe bilingual projects, including four that teach Spanish speakers and one serving Navajo families.

The report suggests promising strategies in areas such as project design and implementation, population targeting and recruitment, staffing, inservice training, instruction and curriculum, and program evaluation.

It also describes how local projects address mixed and homogeneous groups of participants in an effort to reconcile different goals and expectations of programs and parents. It also looks at developing literacy and language proficiency, and serving hard-to-reach populations.

A RECENT PUBLICATION FROM the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory provides parents with some tools to help their children learn to read. Tips for Parents About Reading: Information and Ideas for Helping Children Through Grade Eight Succeed with Reading guides parents and their children through developmental reading stages.

The publication includes information and guidelines about characteristics of reading behaviors for several developmental stages including: emergent readers (infants and toddlers); developing readers (pre-kindergarten through first grade); transitional readers (second- and third-graders); fluent readers (fourth- and fifth-graders); and independent readers (sixth- through eighth-graders).

The authors provide cues that children give in their learning to read, offers activities to enhance reading, and lists some favorite books for the reading level.

For a free copy of Tips for Parents, contact NWREL's Comprehensive Center, (503) 275-9481.

ANOTHER DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PUBLICATION PROVIDES insights into the successful efforts of schools, districts, and family centers to support family involvement in education.

The publication, Family Involvement in Children's Education: Successful Local Approaches, profiles six schools from different parts of the country, two parent centers, and a school district. The profiles illustrate how some schools and districts are breaking down barriers to family involvement in schools.

Family Involvement also includes chapters on resources available for involving families in education, and issues to address in building successful local approaches to family involvement. Findings include:

• There is no single approach that will work for all who seek to build partnerships
• Training and staff development are essential investments
• Communication is the foundation of effective partnerships
• Flexibility and diversity are key
• Projects need to take advantage of the training, assistance, and funding offered by sources external to schools
• Change takes time
• Projects need to regularly assess the effects of the partnership using multiple indicators

Copies of Family Involvement in Children's Education: Successful Local Approaches can be obtained from the Partnership for Family Involvement in Education, 600 Independence Avenue Southwest, Washington, DC 20202. To learn more about the partnership, call 1-800-USA-LEARN.

IN CHILDREN FIRST: WHAT OUR SOCIETY MUST DO-AND IS NOT DOING-FOR OUR CHILDREN TODAY, Penelope Leach calls on individuals and the nation to make good on the promise about the importance of family by creating the indispensable economic and social supports for children currently missing.

Leach asks all of us-in our legislation, policymaking, and industrial might-to think and act in the best interests of children first. Leach, who also wrote Your Baby & Child, contends that what parents do for their children depends on what society actually wants, approves, and encourages. The author presents specific steps by which society can move to fashion a new economic priority for all children; to make the child central in the fight against poverty and inequity; to achieve a rational standard of human rights for our children; and to find, in individual lives, effective new approaches to positive parenting.

"This book argues that our society is inimical to children and has therefore devalued parents to such an extent that individual good parenting is not only exceedingly difficult but, ultimately, insufficient," Leach writes in her introduction. "All of us are shareholders in society's children and it is time we widened the focus of our attention from what is happening at the bottom, in individual families, to what is happening at the top in society as a whole."

Children First was published by Alfred Knopf, Inc., and is distributed by Random House. It is available in many libraries and bookstores.

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