Parent Engagement

Parent Engagement Builds Student Success
When it comes to a breakfast of ham and eggs, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed. This old saying is roughly comparable to the issues facing our schools today, as they consider the kind of relationship they want to build with the parents of their students. (Dennis Shirley 1997) Overcoming systematic challenges such as closing the achievement gap, and ensuring that all students are ready for school, requires engaging parents as partners and champions for change in our school community.
According to Dictionary.com, “a parent is a child’s primary caregiver and is well positioned to provide a child with the on-going support and supervision needed to be successful in completing their schooling”. Parent engagement should start as early as kindergarden all through high school, the parents are giving their children an early and important start, in school and in their own personal life. Whether or not children get on the path to high school graduation in the first place and stay on track throughout their school carreers is significantly influenced by the extent to which parents are committed in engaging in their educational endeavors. Parents are key ingredients to their children’s successes and also their failures.
Why Parent Engagement Matters
According to Push and Ruitenberg, 2005, engagement involves, “enabling parents with the knowledge or opportunities to make a connection and take their place alongside teachers in the school community with their children”. It requires fitting together their knowledge of their children, teaching and learning with teachers to help their children gain the knowledge they need to be successful. Parent engagement is very important in the whole school community, (which involve parents, students and teachers) yet a challenging task. Constraints on time and resources often present some parents from communicating and encouraging their active engagement.
Parents who are actively engaged in their child’s learning are interested parents.(Henderson & Mapp 2002). They can become engage by showing interest through communication about what happens at school on a daily basic, this would help set the stage for parents-children decision making as they grow older. They can also stay informed by networking with teachers to find out what happens in the classroom, the school and the community. Parent engagement is more than a school council meeting or a Parent Teachers Association. It can take the form of volunteering for a field trip, meeting and communicating with teachers one-on-one about their children and school related activities. Engaged parents is given the opportunity to serve on school councils and are involved in decision making. It is very important for parents to ensure that there’s a quiet place set aside from all distraction for the children to do their homework at home and also help with homework. This way they can still be engaged even if they cannot find time to go to their school. Many schools and programs that have successfully recruited parents as volunteers say the first step is to identify the specific goals for parent engagement, and act on effective strategies that will help meet those goals.
All forms of parent engagement, no matter how small they may seem, are beneficial for students or program participants. Almost every school, congregation, sports association, or youth program has parent volunteers who know how to “make a difference.” Other parents need little encouragement, and information about what they’ll be expected to do in order to tip the balance between staying home and getting engaged. Carney Hall (2008) While it’s true that some parents rarely show up and don’t respond to sign-up sheets sent home in backpacks or posted on bulletin boards, there are ways to draw them in to attend school or program functions and volunteer on-site.
The Effects on Parental Engagement
Carole Rhodes is an author, mother, teacher and a researcher. In her book, “T.Born to Learn” (2004) she shared her experiences in the development of early childhood with her daughter. She stated that parents should be engaged in their children’s education as early as kindergarden. An engaged parent makes successful students, showing your child that you care about every aspect of their lives and are capable of turning every day activities into learning activities. Engaged parents are challenged to do something about what they feel is important. .Engaging in their child’s schooling empower them to have a voice in decision making processes and request responsibility for their children’s school.
Students with engaged parents, regardless of background or income are more likely to have higher grades and test scores, they are able to participate in in higher level courses, pass their classes, earn credits and are promoted. They attend school regularly, demonstrated social skills and behavior and adapted well to the school environment.
Research has shown that students and families characteristics affect all levels of parental engagement. Working class families, low income families and single parent families tend to be less engaged in their children’s education. Also, parents of elementary school students tend to be more involved in their children’s education than parents of older ones. School plays a significant role in getting students and family members engaged in student’s education. Some practices that involved parental engagement includes: assigning homework designed to increase interaction between students and parents, the school can hold workshops for families and communicating to parents about their children’s education.
When parents are fully engaged in school, from working with their children at home to advocating for strong public education in the community, everyone benefits. Students with involved parents, no matter their background, earn higher grades, attend school more regularly, and are more likely to graduate and go on to college . (Sam Reddings & Joseph Mey, 2004)Engaged parents who have a voice in the school develop greater confidence in themselves and the school. And as they develop as leaders, parents gain the skills, knowledge and contacts to better support their children’s learning in the classroom and at home. As they become involved in schools, parents communicate and model the importance of education to their children. Parents are also valuable resources for engaging other parents, influencing connections in the community and sharing their skill in the classroom. Schools cannot do the job they need to do alone. Parents are an essential part of what make great schools great.
Obstacles to Parental Involvement
There are obstacles that constrain parents' ability to become actively engaged in their children's education such as teachers' attitudes and family resources. These obstacles, however, can be overcome by schools and through teacher training. Teacher attitudes is a big obstacle to parental engagement. For example, teacher beliefs about the impact of their efforts to involve parents in students' learning predict their efforts to encourage family involvement. In a study published in 1991, Epstein and Dauber found that, compared to middle school teachers, elementary school teachers more strongly believed that parental engagement is important for students and provide more opportunities and help for parents to be involved in their children's education. Low levels of parental involvement at some schools may be the result of the staff's perceptions of parents or the degree to which they feel parental engagement is important for their students.
Although all families want their children to succeed in school, not all families have the same resources or opportunities to be involved in their children's education. Families in which all caregivers work full-time, where there are multiple children, or where English is not spoken or read well face significant barriers to participation in their children's education. It is important for schools to understand the demands that exist on the families of their students and to work to overcome them. In her 1995 article Epstein argued that schools need to overcome these challenges by providing opportunities for school-to-home and home-to-school communications with families; providing communications to families in a language and at a reading level all families can understand; ensuring adequate representation of the entire community of parents on school advisory committees; and distributing information provided at workshops to the families who could not attend. Schools that work to meet these challenges and try to make involvement easier and more convenient for all families will gain support from parents and improve student achievement.

Solution to Parental Engagement

There are many parents who would love to welcome the opportunity of engaging in a school community, but face a number of barriers to engagement. Issues such as childcare, language and working more than one job. Parents are more likely to become engaged in their children’s education if they know they are capable of making a contribution and feel united by the school. (John Wherry, 1996). Creating an environment where parents feel welcome and are encouraged to share their ideas is the first step towards building the bond of trust and respect necessary for strong engagement. The school need to reassess communication plans to target parents from all racial, ethnic and cultural background and also develop the capacity to work with families.
The school should be able to higher high school students to run baby-sitting services for parents who have child care issues, send news letters home to parents who cannot make it to school because of work, inform parents of upcoming events and activities, and design programs that will support families to guide their children’s learning from pre-school through high school. The school should also put up a welcome sign in every language spoken by students and parents and get the parents to network with others who speak the same language. Or offer translation services for school meetings and other community events.
Parents are also looking to schools for help in dealing with problems outside of the school community (raising adolescents, advice on drugs and sexual activities) providing they can built parent support. It is so much easier to solicit parent volunteers at the registration day for pre schoolers, have parents sign up when they are most enthusiastic.
Research says, if you can get one-third of a school’s parent engaged, you can begin to make significant improvement in students achievement. To be most effective, activities which bridge the gap between teachers – parents and students should happen when students first enter kindergarden, since it helps lay the foundation for later parental engagement by helping parents gain the confidence and the skill to continue to be engaged.( The Province, 2011)

Figure 1. Relationships among student, family, and school variables and their effects on student learning outcomes. Bold lines show path of malleable variables the school can affect to improve student learning outcomes.

Harvard Family Research Project Harvard Gradute School of Education. 3 Garden Street. Cambridge, MA. 02138