Nancy Honig’s QEP Program Built on Traditional Methods

“There’s really nothing that new” about Nancy Honig’s Quality Education Project (QEP), Michael Klentschy, associate superintendent of schools in Pasadena, said Thursday, “but it is a real fine collection of some of the best materials anybody has ever put together on how to get parents involved in the schools.”

Pasadena is in its third year of using QEP in kindergarten through eighth grade, Klentschy said, and has found the program “very effective.”

Pasadena is one of the school districts in which QEP was started with federal funds administered by the state Department of Education.

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren and the U.S. Department of Education are investigating the ties between QEP, the Department of Education, and State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, Nancy Honig’s husband.

QEP incorporates such traditional school activities as parent-teacher conferences and “back to school nights” with instruction on how teachers and school officials can improve communications with parents, especially in large urban school districts.

Parents sign “pledges” to provide a quiet study place for their children, to attend parent-teacher conferences and to monitor their children’s progress.

Once a week, as part of the QEP program, homework packets are sent home for parents to review and sign.

In some districts, QEP sponsors “education Sundays,” which seek to involve local churches in efforts to improve schools.

“There really is absolutely nothing new in all this,” said Peg Rybicki, national director of the nonprofit consulting firm. “It’s finding the things that have worked well around the country and organizing them so they work better.”

The features of the QEP program “are all traditional things that are no longer part of mainstream urban education, and (QEP) helps bring them back,” Klentschy said.

Since 1982, Nancy Honig has raised more than $10 million for QEP, which has run programs in 340 schools in 54 school districts, mostly in California, Bill Honig said.