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About Us
Dr. Reg Clark,
President,
Clark and Associates
Dr. Reg Clark leads the consulting group of
Clark and Associates, in Montclair, California. The mission of
Clark and Associates is to deliver services that help parents,
teachers and community-based organizations effectively support
the growth and success of children and youth. Dr. Clark is a
researcher, program developer, college instructor and author. He
received his Ph. D. degree in Educational Policy from the
University of Wisconsin. He was trained to use tools from
Sociology, Anthropology, Social Psychology and other disciplines
to inform the analysis of educational problems and solutions.
Reg has conducted research studies that
support the proposition that in the pursuit of student success,
time matters, adults matter, settings matter, parental
expectations and actions matter, and student planning matters.
His interest in what enables some children to achieve in school
while others do not led to his conclusion that school program
factors and family habits and interactions -- as opposed to
poverty, broken homes, race, or ethnicity -- affect success in
school. These findings, a result of his research with students
and parents from various racial groups, are described in the
book Family Life and School Achievement: Why Poor Black Children
Succeed or Fail, and in some of his recent writings. Dr. Clark’s
writings have been widely read, and his book has been in print
continuously since 1983. A summary of his research findings from
studies done in Chicago, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and
Nashville, are described in a 2002 article, “Building school
achievement: In-school and out-of-school factors” NCREL Policy
Issues, 13, 11-18 (available online at
http://www.ncrel.org/gap/clark/index.html).
Dr. Clark’s writings provide evidence that in the pursuit of
student success, in-school time matters, out-of-school time
matters, adults matter, settings matter, parental expectations
and actions matter, and student planning matters.
Based
on Dr. Clark’s research findings, youth serving agencies such as
the National office of the Boys and Girls Club of America (BGCA)
have developed successful after school youth programs. In 1993,
BGCA designed Project Learn, an “educational enhancement”
program, which currently operates in over 250 sites across the
country. It has been positively evaluated for it’s effectiveness
with youths living in low income neighborhoods across the
country.
Dr.
Clark has personally developed several programs to promote
student achievement. For example, Dr. Clark designed the Parent
Leadership for Student Achievement training program which has
been implemented in several school districts. This
parent-focused program aims to increase K-12 student’s school
success by increasing parent involvement in their children’s
learning (at home and at school). The Parent Leadership for
Student Achievement program provides seminars to parents and
teachers that provide research-based information, methods and
strategies on how to shape student’s school success through (a)
direct support to students, and (b) parent-teacher partnerships.
The program topics focus on issues of time/life management for
parents and students, helping students create high yield
activity routines (particularly out-of-school habits of reading,
writing, focused dialoguing and interacting, and homework and
study), parent-teacher communication to promote student
achievement, and parenting styles that encourage student
success.
This program has been implemented in
schools in California and Tennessee. Whenever possible, Dr.
Clark gathers data from those who participate in his programs to
assess the extent to which the program activities are
contributing to improved behaviors and student’s school
achievement. Empirical evaluation data from three different
school districts show that this program, when properly
delivered, positively affects parent knowledge, parent behavior
with their children, and student classroom performance and
student achievement.
In 1996, along with Dr. LaDawn Law, an
early childhood education expert, Dr. Clark originally designed
the Success from the Start program for parents of pre-school
children. The Success from the Start program teaches parents
many fun, easy-to-do, games and activities to do with their
pre-school aged children during everyday interactions. These
games and activities teach parents personal self-confidence as
educators of their own children by empowering them with
practical strategies to help their pre-reader children develop
school readiness skills such as:
oral language skills; physical movement and
senses skills; phonics awareness; alphabetic knowledge; concepts
of print and book awareness; creative thinking, reasoning, and
mathematical skills; time concepts and time management
strategies; and social and emotional skills. Wherever the
program has been done, parents have rated it at the highest
level. ALL of the post-delivery assessments have shown 95% or
above approval rates. We also have conducted empirical pre-post
assessments that demonstrate increases in parents’ confidence
and knowledge of how to how to help their preschool children as
a result of their participation in the training.
Reg Clark assists program
staffs to develop strategic plans for “effective outreach” to
parents who are “hard-to-reach.” Other activities have
included:
lecturer at California State University-Los Angeles in the
Department of Child and Family Studies;
conducted staff training
and evaluation research with organizations and agencies,
including school districts, after school programs, and community
based youth programs in California, Georgia, Tennessee and other
States
consulted with the U.S. Department of Education, the Education
Commission of the States, and many state and local youth-serving
agencies.
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