*This article is adapted from Family Involvement In Children's Education: Successful Local Approaches, An Idea Book, prepared by Policy Studies Associates, Inc. for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.

Thirty years of research confirms that family involvement is a powerful influence on children's achievement in school (Henderson & Berla, 1994). When families are involved in their children's education, children earn higher grades and receive higher scores on tests, attend school more regularly, complete more homework, demonstrate more positive attitudes and behaviors, graduate from high school at higher rates, and are more likely to enroll in higher education than students with less involved families. For these reasons, increasing family involvement in the education of their children is an important goal for schools, particularly those serving low-income and other students at risk of failure.

Family and Schools as Partners

If families are to work with schools as partners in the education of their children, schools must provide them with the opportunities and support they need to become involved. Achieving effective school-family partnerships is not always easy, however. Barriers to family involvement in schools arise from many sources, some related to the constraints facing teachers and other school staff, some related to the challenges and pressures that families face, and others related to language, cultural, and socioeconomic differences between families and school staff. For many schools across the nation, these barriers are formidable obstacles to increasing parents' involvement in their children's education. Experience in other schools and communities, however, demonstrates that schools and families can work together to overcome these barriers in productive and mutually satisfying ways.

Strategies for overcoming common barriers to family involvement in schools include:

  • Overcoming time and resource constraints
  • Providing information and training to parents and school staff
  • Restructuring schools to support family involvement
  • Bridging school-family differences
  • Tapping external supports for partnerships
    •  Overcoming time and resource constraints. In order to build strong partnerships, families and school staff members need time to get to know one another, plan how they will work together to increase student learning, and carry out their plans. Strategies for helping teachers make time to develop school-family partnerships include (1) assigning parent coordinator or home-school liaisons to help teachers maintain contact with parents through home visits or by covering classes for teachers so they can meet with parents,
    (2) providing time during the school day for teachers to meet with parents or visit them at their homes,
    (3) providing stipends or compensatory time off for teachers to meet with parents after school hours, and
    (4) freeing up teachers from routine duties, such as lunchroom supervision, in order to meet with students' family members.
    Schools can be sensitive to time pressures facing parents by scheduling meetings at night or before shifts to accommodate the schedules of working parents or on weekend mornings to address parents' safety concerns. Schools can also help parents by providing early notices of meetings and activities, allowing parents time to adjust their schedules, and establishing homework hotlines or voice mail systems so parents can stay in touch with their children's schoolwork without leaving their home.

    Providing information and training to parents and school staff. Without the information and skills to communicate with each other, misperceptions and distrust can flourish between parents and school personnel. Through workshops and a variety of outreach activities such as informative newsletters, handbooks, and home visits, parents and school staff can learn how to trust each other and work together to help children succeed in school. Approaches include helping parents support learning at home, preparing parents to participate in school decision-making, and providing teachers, principals, and school staff with strategies for working with parents as partners. Workshops on parenting help families learn about child development and how to support student academic learning. Parenting workshops cover a number of different issues, such as children's language development and learning styles, parent nurturing and discipline strategies, child abuse prevention, and nutrition and health practices.

    Restructuring schools to support family involvement. Developing a successful school-family partnership must be a whole school endeavor, not the work of a single person or program. Traditional school organization and practices, especially in secondary schools, often discourage family members from becoming involved. To create a welcoming environment for parents, one that enlists their support in helping their children succeed, schools can make changes that make them more personal and inviting places. Whatever steps schools take in developing partnerships with families, schools that are most successful are prepared to reconsider all of their established ways of doing business and to restructure in ways that will make them less hierarchical, more personal, and more accessible to parents.

    Bridging school-family differences. Language and cultural differences as well as differences in educational attainment separating families and school staff can make communication and family participation in school activities difficult. Strategies to address these differences include reaching out to parents with little formal education, addressing language differences through bilingual services for communicating both orally and in writing with families about school programs and children's progress, and promoting cultural understanding to build trust between home and school.

    Tapping external supports for partnerships. Many Title I schools have nourished and strengthened partnerships by tapping the supports available in their local communities and beyond. Collaborative efforts to provide schools and families with the tools they need to support learning can include partnerships with local businesses, health care and other community service agencies, and colleges and universities, as well as supports provided by school districts and states.

    Successful Partnerships

    Schools that are most successful in engaging parents and other family members in support of their children's learning look beyond traditional definitions of parent involvement-participating in a parent teacher organization or signing quarterly report cards-to a broader conception of parents as full partners in the education of their children. Rather than striving only to increase parent participation in school-based activities, successful schools seek to support families in their activities outside of school that can encourage their children's learning. Schools that have developed successful partnerships with parents view student achievement as a shared responsibility, and all stake-holders-including parents, administrators, teachers, and community leaders-play important roles in supporting children's learning.

    References

    Henderson, A. T., & Berla, N. (Eds.). (1994). A new generation of evidence: The family is critical to student achievement (A report from the National Committee for Citizens in Education). Washington, DC: Center for Law and Education.

    Alliance Access

    Table of Contents

    Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1998

    Family Involvement in Children's Education

    The Idea Book

    Parent Involvement in Massachusetts

    Regional Networks

    TIMSS

    Alliance Access index