What The “MetLife Survey of the American Teacher” Learned About Parent Engagement

The annual “MetLife Survey of the American Teacher” was released today. You can read all about it at my main blog, but I thought I’d share an excerpt from their summary that relates to parent involvement/engagement:

And levels of parent engagement have increased:

Levels of engagement between parents and schools have seen marked improvement over past surveys.
Two-thirds of students (64 percent) report that they talk about things that happen at school with their
parents every day, compared to 40 percent who reported speaking with their parents this frequently in
1988, the first time the survey asked this question. There was also a threefold increase in the number of
students who report that their parents visit their school at least once a month – up from 16 percent in 1988
to 46 percent today.

These numbers echo what parents report. Fewer parents now than 25 years ago believe that there is
widespread parental disengagement with their children’s school and education in general. Since the first
time the survey series addressed this issue in 1987, there were significant declines in the proportion of
teachers and parents reporting that most or many parents take too little interest in their children’s
education, fail to motivate their children so they want to learn, or leave their children alone too much after
school.

Virtually all teachers (91 percent) and eight in ten parents (80 percent) believe that their schools help all parents understand what they can do at home to support student success, and 83 percent of students agree that their teachers and parents work together to help them succeed. The survey also found that teachers with high job satisfaction are more likely than those with lower job satisfaction to agree that their schools help parents better understand what they can do to help children learn (95 percent vs. 87 percent).

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