First, I found an article with a title that made me giggle out loud, Study: Parents play big role in academic success. (Gee, really?) It actually turned out to be an article geared more toward arguing against vouchers, but it did have interesting data involving parent involvement. This study was a 12 year longitudinal study that followed 1,000 urban students from 8th grade until 8 years beyond high school in both public and private schools. It involved tracking of academic achievements as well as surveys of principals, teachers, and parents of the students. The study showed that students who went to private schools did not receive much of an advantage in terms of academic achievements and long term career satisfaction than their counterparts who attended public schools. While students who went to private schools typically scored higher on SAT's, they had no better overall academic performance in math, reading, science, and history than students in public schools. What did come up as the biggest factors in student success all involved parents: how much parents earned, whether they were involved in their child's day to day schoolwork, and the long-term expectations for their children. While no one can influence the first factor, it seems the school can have a role in encouraging the second two.
As I investigated, I read Parental Involvement in Education which synthesized information from many sources related to parents in education. The authors first acknowledged the broadness of the term "parental involvement" to include attending school function, school obligations like conferences, volunteering at school, taking a role in school planning activities, and helping with schoolwork. Studies indicate that involved parents are linked to student achievement. In fact, the more intensely involved the parent is, the more beneficial it is to the student. Some of the most effective things parents can do are: read with their children at home, support children with homework, tutor children with teacher provided materials, and being involved with conferences, school events, field trips, etc. So how can schools encourage all of this to happen?
Programs that have orientations or training for parents show more effectiveness in encouraging parental involvement. Most parents need and want the direction to help their children. The article cautions that less is more in this situation. Schools have to be careful not to overtax parents. In addition, schools have to encourage participation in a broad sense with a variety of ways to get involved. The benefits of parental involvement extend to the middle and high school levels and among traditional "subgroups" of low socio-economic status, limited English proficiency, special education, and etc. This shows that if low-income parents are trained and encouraged in how to help their children, there can be a large increase in achievement for students who have the most to gain.
What I see in my own daily life supports a lot of this. Many of my middle school parents do not feel confident in their own ability to help their children as the content increases in difficulty, especially in subjects like math. In addition, many of my parents do not speak English and feel they cannot participate in helping their children. My school departmentalizes in middle school and many parents are daunted trying to keep up with different teachers. This causes learning to become the sole responsibility of the student, and situations like that seem destined for failure. I think we should have a parent event, particularly at the beginning of middle school, to help familiarize parents to the change that is about to happen and ways that they can continue to support their students' educations. Of course there will always be those that choose not to participate in that, but as the previous article stated, we should also be conscious of opening a variety of ways to participate throughout the year. I think an orientation night is a good place to start in my situation, but there would need to be a plan in place for other ways to encourage parental involvement throughout the school year as well.
I also agree that parent involvement is paramount to a student’s success. Although there are always exceptions, it is my experience that students that have involved parents tend to do better academically. The added support by parents holds the student accountable for their education both at school and at home. Parents that ask their children about their school day, homework, and projects etc…and take the time to check up on their completion, help the students develop positive habits such as: work ethic , punctuality, accountability, responsibility. As the students progresses into the upper elementary and high school grades, often times parents step back and leave education up to the teacher and student. I think that orientations and training are a great idea for educating parents on the importance of their involvement in their child’s educational process.
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