Parent advocacy toolkit

Mobilizing parents to demand great schools for their children can unleash a powerful force for change. Armed with clear and accurate information about their school, parents will have an important tool to start a conversation and ignite action.

Innovate Public Schools and GreatSchools have joined together to offer this Parent Advocacy Toolkit for organizers and advocates across the country who work with parents to use school data to:

Build awareness about how their schools are preparing diverse communities of students
Train parents on how to use a mobile-friendly, digital platform that offers school-level information, disaggregated by student group, to mobilize grassroots advocacy

The Parent Advocacy Toolkit is a collection of resources, guidance, and inspiration for using GreatSchools.org to find school data, interpret the data, train others on how to find and understand the data, and use the data for advocacy and to push for change.

Follow these steps:

Know the data

Take a tour of the GreatSchools school profile to understand the data presented on the site. Explore different types of schools — elementary schools, middle schools, high schools.
Watch the videos

Use these videos for inspiration and easy tips to get started.

How to engage with parents:

How to engage with schools:

How to engage with your elected officials:
Review the GreatSchools Workshop Guide

Review the GreatSchools Workshop Guide to get ready to meet with other parents. You can print out this guide or you can show parents GreatSchools information by searching for a local school on your smartphone on GreatSchools.org.
Take the trainer assessment

Take the trainer assessment and receive your recognition for completing all steps of the GreatSchools Parent Advocacy Toolkit. Start the assessment now.