Swati Rath
America’s Promises 2710
Prof. Sipple
Policy Paper

Parent Involvement in Primary and Secondary Schools

Educators have increasingly identified parental involvement as the primary vehicle by which to elevate academic achievement from current levels. However, in many cases, it is not always easy for parents to find time and energy to become involved or to coordinate with schedules for school events. A visit to school can be perceived as an uncomfortable experience, or they may have their hands full with a job and other children. “In 1990-91, one out of every four public school teachers cited lack of parent involvement as a serious problem in their schools. This problem was also described as "serious" by 4.3 percent of private school teachers. Among both public and private school teachers, this problem topped the list in the percentage of teachers who rated it as a serious problem in their schools. Secondary teachers were more likely than elementary teachers to report lack of parent involvement as a serious problem in their schools” (Loos). Given this, it becomes clear something needs to be done about the lack of parent involvement in primary and secondary schools. Should states mandate parent integration programs for all K-12 institutions?

In terms of definitions, parental involvement was defined as “parental participation in the educational processes and experiences of their children”, communication as “the extent to which parents and their children communicated about school activities”, homework as, “the extent to which parents checked their children’s homework before the child handed it in to his or her teacher”, parental expectations as, “the degree to which a student’s parents held high expectations of the student’s promise of achieving at high levels”, reading as, “the extent to which parents either have in the past or are in the present reading regularly with their children”, attendance and participation as, “whether and how frequently parents attend and participate in school functions”, and parental style as, “the extent to which a parent demonstrated a supportive and helpful parenting approach” (Jeynes). There is agreement on these definitions by many educators.

In the early days of our nation, parents were the primary educators. As technology and bureaucracy increased, however, parents began delegating more and more education to teachers. There was a division of power in that schools were held responsible for instruction in basic skills, whereas families were supposed to socialize children and teach them moral values. Industrial development, as well as bureaucratic rules, separated the personal connections between parents and schools. Later in 1930s, however, the community school movement let school buildings serve the intellectual, cultural, and recreational needs of residents of all ages, which strengthened school-family ties. Around this time, minority parents became more involved in schools and lobbied for the recognition of their own traditions and values in the larger system. In the mid-1960s, the federal government created programs such as Head Start and Follow Through, that trained mothers to homeschools, obtained parent advice in planning programs, and used parent paraprofessionals in program operations. Under Title I of the ESEA, parent advisory councils were mandated for all programs serving low-income children, first at the district and then the school level. “Large urban school districts became the scene of intense struggles to place education decision-making in the hands of families in the belief that bureaucracies could not deliver adequate services to poor and minority communities without parents’ active participation” (Chavkin). The 1988 ESEA amendments worked further for this cause, and included new parent involvement requirements for all Chapter I projects, a grant program on family-school partnerships, and Even Start. Parents provided “meaningful consultation” and annual meetings for all parents were supplemented with reports on a child’s progress. Parents, throughout history, had a changing involvement with the school system, but a strong positive correlation between parent involvement and student achievement remained.

One of the reasons for the positive correlation is that parents provide their children with social capital. “Parent involvement typically can be thought of as involving dyadic relationships between the parent and the child, the teacher, or another parent. Of course, the dyadic relations do not exist in a vacuum. Thus, even a dyadic relation between a parent and teacher may generate a weak tie to other teachers due to professional associations, relations between teachers, and so forth” (Jr). These relationships symbolize an extended social network that provides significant amounts of social capital to individual members of the network. Parents invest physical capital, human capital, and cultural capital in their children. The potential benefit of social capital is relative and dependent upon the parent's position in the social hierarchy. Bourdieu raises this point and argues that “social capital is in effect a multiplier of an individual's own capital as a result of the resources and other forms and stocks of capital available through the collectivity” (Hauberer). In this sense, if states do mandate parent integration programs such as involvement in PTOs, parents will have a greater social network and therefore provide their children with more advantageous social capital.

Examples of successful parent integration techniques include establishing a parent-liaison position to develop programs without adding to the tasks of teachers. An Institute for Responsive Education Project in Boston and New York City elementary schools have key teachers released to become a parent-community specialists. Another example is the TIPS project which has developed math and science homework that can be sent home regularly. Parents report on student success on the assignments. Also, the Indianapolis Public Schools have developed a parents in touch program. There are citywide parent-teacher conferences for all grades each fall. Because of great publicity and planning, turnout reached around 80% of all parents (Chavkin).

Certain styles of parenting have also been shown to better affect achievement. The authoritative parenting style refers to parents who keep warm relationships with their kids, but also establish and adhere to guidelines. “They found that adolescents from authoritative families showed significantly greater achievement compared to other adolescents who experienced different parenting styles (P<.001)” (Shute). In terms of the other concepts that were brought up during “definitions”, school involvement and parent-teacher communication have shown a positive association with academic achievement. Parent-teacher communication and parents checking child’s homework has shown a positive association with achievement in some studies. Overall, parents have an important opportunity to influence their children’s academic achievement.

Despite all the buzz about parent involvement that has worked in the past, there is still a lot to improve before states mandate these programs. A national survey was of school districts was conducted in 1995 to generate information about current district policies, programs, and practices regarding parent involvement in order to improve knowledge about these school-home partnerships. The policies and programs came from six areas [“providing parents with opportunities to be decision makers, regular communications with parents about school programs and their child’s progress, communicating with parents about ways they can help their children be successful in school, training and supporting staff to work with families, reaching out to diverse families, and providing links to social service agencies to address family needs” (Baker)]. The findings were important. First, “the most frequently mentioned type of program to provide parents with opportunities to be decision makers was for parents to serve on a school improvement council” (Baker). A problem right now with this is that few parents can serve on these committees, so many parents don’t get the opportunity to act as decision-makers. To solve this, data is needed to determine the extent to which parents are satisfied that they are adequately represented by these councils, and also the qualifications and characteristics of those who serve on the councils. It was also concluded that the two most frequently mentioned programs for communicating with parents were written reports and meetings with teachers. However, many parents feel this is not enough. “Parents in focus groups have indicated that meetings with teachers about their child’s progress and other communications from teachers were too short, too infrequent, and often occurred only after a problem had been apparent for some time” (Baker). Also, the issue of diversity can be dealt with in a variety of positive ways, including “having special programs for minorities, having parents as advisers, and providing multicultural curricula in the classroom” (Baker), but is not currently being dealt with. Only one district reported sending staff out to interact with diverse families. Because the different diverse groups have different values, behaviors, beliefs, and expectations, these interactions are invaluable and need to take place in more districts. Lastly, it was discovered that parents were often provided with links to services within the school rather than links to services outside the school. This should be avoided and the outside school-inside school integrated model is a much better option, because families will receive the services they need without further taxing the resources of the school staff.

Given all of the data, I believe that states should mandate K-12 parent integration, at different levels given the grade. The parent integration process would provide parents with opportunities to be decision makers by serving on fairly represented councils on a rotating basis, have regular communications with teachers about school programs and their child’s progress whenever they wanted (schedule weekly appointments if necessary), and help their children be successful in school. The school would train and support staff to work with families, reach out to diverse families by sponsoring galas and cultural events, and provide out-of-school links to social service agencies to address family needs. The school and family need to be brought together for a child to achieve at his/her potential. Pros of this include higher motivation for the students and thereby solid achievement, as well as a school that fits everyone due to the fairly-represented PTO. Students will be held accountable to their parents, as well as themselves (in different proportions as the years go by). Cons include high costs due to extra expenditures for cultural events as well as extra costs to train staff. Also, excess time would be spent meeting with parents because now appointments can be scheduled whenever the parent would like, and so time has to be cut down from somewhere else (planning class for next day, etc.). I think that the expenditures are well worth it, however, as diversity needs to be maintained and parents have a right to know what their child is learning. It has been proven time and time again that with this parent involvement, student achievement dramatically increases, and it is time to make policy changes that reflect this.

Works Cited

Loos, L. (1958). What Problems Concern Principals Most? NASSP Bulletin, 259-268.
Shute, V., Hansen, E., Underwood, J., & Razzouk, R. (n.d.). A Review of the Relationship between Parental Involvement and Secondary School Students' Academic Achievement. Education Research International, 1-10.
Jeynes, W. (2005). A Meta-Analysis of the Relation of Parental Involvement to Urban Elementary School Student Academic Achievement. Urban Education, 237-269.
Jr., R. (n.d.). Parental Involvement as Social Capital: Differential Effectiveness on Science Achievement, Truancy, and Dropping Out. Social Forces, 117-117.
Häuberer, J. (n.d.). The Founding Concepts of Social Capital - Bourdieu’s Theory of Capital and Coleman's Rational-Choice Approach to Social Capital. Social Capital Theory, 35-51.
Chavkin, N. (1993). Families and schools in a pluralistic society. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press.
Kessler-Sklar, S., & Baker, A. (n.d.). School District Parent Involvement Policies and Programs. ELEM SCHOOL J The Elementary School Journal, 101-101.

Important Figures

(a)

TABLE 1.--Percent of teachers who said that lack of parent involvement was a serious problem in their schools Total Elementary Secondary --------------------------------------- Public 25.5 20.6 30.7 Private 4.3 3.0 5.5

(b)

(c)

(d)