Parent Involvement and Parent Education

Parents are their children’s first and foremost teachers about the importance and value of good citizenship, good study habits and respect for the teaching and learning process. Children also learn from their parents about the school-family relationship, the parent-teacher relationship, and the level of public support for schools. Parents pass along these values without any coaching from the school. Most parents, however, can improve their ability to encourage student success in school with assistance from teachers and principals.

Researchers find that when parents are involved with schools in positive ways, dramatic results occur. Attendance and achievement improve, and parents and students develop better attitudes toward school. Researchers also know children grow up in a web of institutions – family, neighborhood, school, church, social and health agencies that serve children, local government, and private employers. The complex environmental, physical, social, and economic influences operate very much like an ecosystem – namely what happens in one part affects the other parts. The interest of the child is best served when all parts of the ecosystem collaborate and together support the needs of the child. The school can ensure positive results when it involves parents in meaningful ways.

“Parent involvement” is a loosely defined term that is used in many effective school reform efforts. Perhaps closer examination of the various roles that parents play with regard to their children’s education will provide insights into philosophical as well as behavioral and organizational change. Five types of parent involvement have been identified. Parent participation falls into these defined roles:

•Parents – Parents perform basic obligations for their child’s education and social development by registering the child for school, ensuring daily attendance, obtaining necessary medical exams and vaccinations, reading and responding to written communications from the teacher and school, and attending parent-teacher conferences. These regular activities are the core of the parent-school relationships.
•Collaborators – Parents reinforce the school’s efforts and help solve problems with their child by assisting with homework; responding to absences, truancy, behavioral orientation, and peer group pressure; and acting as the teacher’s partner regarding the learning environment. Schools need to examine whether their current policies and practices facilitate or hinder effective parental involvement in problem solving.
•Audience – Parents attend and appreciate school (and their children’s) performance and productions – open houses, back-to-school nights, plays, exhibits, athletic events, etc. These activities are designed to draw parents into the school. The level of parent participation in these school-sponsored activities varies from school to school and family to family.
•Supporter – Parents provide a wide range of volunteer assistance to their own children’s teacher, to the parent organization, and to the school as a whole by serving as room parents, volunteering services in the library or lunch room, making calls, providing tutoring to children in special need, participating in organized parent support groups, or organizing and instituting “safe block” programs or prevention groups such as MADD.
•Advisors and/or Co-Decision Makers – Parents provide input on school policy and programs through membership in ad hoc or permanent governance bodies. The most successful parental involvement occurs when parents serve as equal members and do not perform merely perfunctory roles in decision-making.

Schools have come to expect parents to fulfill the roles noted above. But schools and community educators can also provide a valuable service to parents by providing parenting classes, such as the single parent family, discipline and expectations, step parenting, Parents As Teachers program, etc. One child psychologist believes that parents should help their children with the 3 R’s - respect, responsibility, and resourcefulness. By helping parents, the schools are helping prepare students for their K-12 learning experience.

The Iowa PTA is a great resource. Click here to access their website.