Barbara Haxby

Barbara Haxby, director of implementation for the Roots and Wings program, based in Baltimore, Maryland, notes the importance of surveying parents and families to determine their needs and to obtain feedback on various school programs, such as reading strategies and WorldLab (an integrated science and social studies curriculum). Excerpted from an interview with Barbara Haxby (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1998).

"We want to survey parents. We want to know what their needs are. We want to know what the school is lacking. We want to know how they're seeing the reading program at home or they're seeing the world web program. Parents come in and are experts in world web all the time and in a range of different capacities, you know, not just parents who may have, you know, engineering jobs or are lawyers, any parent who is working in the community has a role to play in the kinds of group investigations that the kids are doing in world web, so parents are closely involved."

This Critical Issue was researched and written by Judith G. Caplan, director of Early Childhood and Family Education at North Central Regional Educational Laboratory in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Date posted: 1998