Engaging Parents In School…

I’ve posted in the past about some of the challenges we’ve had in our home visit conversations with parents when discussing college possibilities for their children. In that same point I shared how we were responding to those challenges, and the plan I wrote about is going quite well.

Education Week has just published an article about research and a book highlighting some of the particular issues facing schools connecting to parents in middle and high school.

The article is worth a visit. It identifies some of the same issues we’ve found in our conversations with parents.

Every year a Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll is done on “Public Attitudes Toward The Public Schools.” This year’s results were released a couple of months ago.

This is one question that was included:

I am going to read several factors. For each, tell me how important you think that factor is in keeping public schools moving on the right track?

People were then given a list of these options to choose from:

More Funding

Better Teachers

Better Use of Technology

More Parent Support

More School Choice

“More Parent Support” was identified as the most important factor in keeping schools moving on the right track.   85% of respondents identified it as “very important.”

You can read more about the results of the poll here.

The New York Times just published an extensive article on the report I posted about earlier today.

It’s much more extensive than the Wall Street Journal article I wrote about it. Check out Job Woes Exacting a Heavy Toll on Family Life.

The Critical Connection Between Student Health and Academic Achievement:How Schools and Policymakers Can Achieve a Positive Impact is a report recently issued by the California Endowment, a major health-related private foundation in California. It’s the first in a series of reports the Foundation is developing. The purpose of these reports is “to develop a framework for injecting health—physical health, mental health and developmental health—into the state’s education reform dialogue.”

I’ve got to say the research in this first report is really to-notch. It’s very accessible, and I’d recommend you read it. The information certainly bolsters what we write in our book about the need for schools to look at how other issues affect the lives of students and their families.

The report’s recommendations for action, on the other hand, seemed a bit disappointing to me. They were all great ideas, but except for sharing a story about how the teacher’s union cooperated in signing up kids for the state’s health insurance program (a similar effort might really come in handy if health reform passes), they mostly seemed to me nice-sounding goals with no effective strategies offered on how to accomplish them.

Of course, as I quoted, their stated focus was “to create a framework” for discussion, so offering practical strategies might not have been one of their goals. I hope they offer more of them, though, in their future papers.

Nevertheless, The Endowment has definitely performed a service to those of us who are pushing schools to look at other issues. Such clearly written research is unfortunately all too rare….

The Wall Street Journal reports on a new research paper that highlights the impact of the recession on student achievement. The article is titled “As Unemployment Rises, Kids’ Future Dims”. It provides more evidence supporting one of the key points of our book — that as part of a parent engagement strategy, it makes sense for schools to work with parents on issues beyond the schoolhouse walls.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

A parent’s job loss increases the probability that a child repeats a grade in school by roughly 15%, according to a new paper from two economics professors at the University of California, Davis.

It goes on to say:

“More attention should be paid to the potential role of external factors in affecting school level outcomes,” they [the report's writers] conclude. “Schools in areas with large concentrations of displaced workers…may face particular challenges in maintaining achievement standards during times of economic hardship.”

Anne Henderson has been researching parent involvement/engagement strategies for many years, and we cite several of her research findings in our book. She is also the co-author of Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family-School Partnerships. I’ll be interviewing her for this blog in the coming months.

She provided testimony to the United States Senate in 2007 on Effective Strategies for Engaging Parents and Communities in Schools.

It’s definitely worth a read.

A summary of a research report titled “School Staff Perceptions Of Parental Involvement” was recently published in Data Trends. The Research and Training Center at Portland State University collaborates with the Research and Training Center at the University of South Florida to produce Data Trends, ” a series of briefs addressing current themes, summarizing recent literature, or presenting new developments in the field of children’s mental health.”

The report, focused on a rural county in North Carolina, shared school staff’s surprisingly (at least to me) negative attitude towards parents: ” [staff]ultimately placed the blame of student underachievement…. “squarely on the shoulders of parents.”

The researchers nailed it when they wrote:

“To truly partner with families in planning for youth, schools must change practices so that information can be shared with a socially just approach. Schools must…meet families where they are, rather than embracing misperceptions and stereotypes that perpetuate ambiguity.”

Last year researchers from the University of Hampshire concluded that:

“Parental effort is consistently associated with higher levels of achievement, and the magnitude of the effect of parental effort is substantial. We found that schools would need to increase per-pupil spending by more than $1,000 in order to achieve the same results that are gained with parental involvement.”

You can read the press release about the study here, and you can read the actual study, Parental Effort, School Resources, and Student Achievement.

I have to admit that I’m a bit wary about quantifying parent involvment/engagement in those terms, even though the results certainly support my perspective.

I’d be interested in hearing from others who are more experienced with this kind of research — does the methodology of this study look good?

The labor federation AFL-CIO’s blog just wrote a post titled Report: Helping Latina Students Succeed Helps Us All.

It highlights a recent research report on the Latina drop-out rate that includes this recommendation:

Schools should develop and implement—and federal, state and local governments should fund—parent involvement initiatives for the parents of Latino students, and ensure that Latino parents are made to feel welcome at school.

The Wall Street Journal just reported on a study analyzing effective ways parents can help middle-schoolers.  The article says:

“The best way to promote achievement in middle school isn’t to help student with their homework, or even to volunteer for school fundraisers. Instead, middle-school students posted the best results in school when their parents stepped back a bit and moved into more of a “coaching role,” teaching them to value education, relate it to daily life and set high goals for themselves, says the study.”

The article also contains a link to the study.

It’s also worth looking at the comments on the article. There are over fifty of them.

Education Week has a good page titled “Parent Involvement” that’s short and simple — with some decent statistics.

The same page includes some links to resources and related Ed Week articles (though you can’t access most of the articles without a paid subscription.