State Superintendent of Education: SEO Ed Digest vol 4 issue 4

On February, 27, 2006, the District of Columbia Public Schools presented the Board of Education with a Master Education Plan, which will drive all aspects of instruction in the coming years. The plan addresses issues such as curriculum, instruction, professional development, high school and middle school redesign, extended learning opportunities and other student supports, partnerships, accountability and resources. Section IV of the Master Education Plan discusses the importance of parental involvement and makes it a key action to open Parent Resource Centers that will bring together the services families need to ensure that their children are ready to learn and the family is able to support that learning.

Adolescence is an intriguing stage of development filled with many physical, cognitive, social, and emotional changes. At the same time, the increase in academic demands and the complexity of the school structure make the task of academic success for adolescents even more difficult. Because parent involvement has been shown to be a very important positive force in a child's life, one would expect that during such a critical and demanding phase the two most important environments in child development, home and school, would increase their collaboration. The opposite though is true: As children progress through school, parent involvement declines dramatically. Several factors contribute to this paradoxical decline: the more complex structure of middle and high schools, the demanding curricula that can be intimidating to parents, and the fewer school outreach efforts to involve parents. Or, is this decline of parent involvement just an indication of an underlying decline of parent influence over adolescents? This digest explores paths by which parental involvement impacts achievement in high school and beyond.

This research synthesis examines the impact of different family and community connections on student achievement. The authors reviewed more than 50 research studies published since 1995 to compile A New Wave of Evidence. The synthesis confirms the already growing evidence that when schools, families, and community groups work together to support learning, children tend to do better in school, stay in school longer, and like school more. Many studies found that students with involved parents, no matter what their income or background, were more likely to: earn higher grades and test scores; enroll in higher-level programs; be promoted; pass their classes; earn credits; attend school regularly; have better social skills; show improved behavior; adapt well to school; graduate; and go onto postsecondary education. This synthesis shows that for parent involvement to have an impact on achievement, schools must link parent activities to student learning goals and be respectful of difference among families. Schools that succeed in engaging families from very diverse backgrounds: focus on building trusting collaborative relationship among teachers, families, and community members; recognize, respect, and address families' needs, as well as their differences; and embrace a philosophy of partnership where power and responsibility are shared.

Using the 1992 National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) data set, this study assessed the effects of parental involvement on the academic achievement of African American 12th grade youth, using several models. The results indicate that parental involvement had a positive impact on the educational outcomes of these youth. However, this influence was no longer statistically significant when variables for socioeconomic status were included in the analysis. All the sets of results were reasonably consistent across the different kinds of academic variables. The analyses also indicated that parents were slightly more likely to be involved in the education of their daughters than they were in the education of their sons. The results of these sets of analyses were discussed.

Family Involvement in Elementary School Children's Education (Winter 2006/2007)
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/projects/fine/resources/research/elementary.html

Family involvement processes are critical for elementary-school-age children's learning and development. However, in elementary school, the specific activities and nature of these processes change. For the first time in a child's development, the federal government affords the child and family specific rights and responsibilities—and holds the school accountable for providing them. The No Child Left Behind Act mandates that elementary schools give parents the tools they need to support their children's learning in the home, communicate regularly with families about children's academic progress, provide opportunities for family workshops, and offer parents chances to engage in parent leadership activities at the school site. In carrying out these mandates, both policymakers and elementary schools need to be aware of and encourage the family involvement processes that research has shown to be effective in advancing school-age children's learning and socio-emotional development. Schools must also distinguish the different child outcomes to which family involvement processes relate and understand the needs and assets of the diverse communities that make up their student populations. This research brief addresses these issues. The brief summarizes the latest evidence based on effective involvement for elementary school children—that is, the studies that link family involvement in elementary schools to children's outcomes. It also profiles programs that have been evaluated to show what works to promote family involvement in the elementary school years. The brief concludes with implications for policy, practice, and research.

Findings From an Evaluation of the Parent Institute for Quality Education Parent Involvement Program (1998)
https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/MR870.pdf

The Parent Institute of Quality Education (PIQE) sought RAND’s help in conducting an evaluation of its parent involvement program. The RAND evaluation relied on data from two large, urban California school districts. From the first district the authors collected teacher reports of student classroom behaviors and parent-school contact, and parent self-reports of changes in knowledge, expectations, and behaviors. From the second, official school records of attendance, grades, and disciplinary actions were obtained from five elementary schools. These data included a marker that identified those parents who had completed PIQE and the time that they had done so. The effects of PIQE were largely limited to parents. Most reported that PIQE participation increased their knowledge of good parenting and their expectations for their child, improved their parenting skills, and caused them to become more involved with the school. For the most part, teacher and parent reports of classroom contact did not agree. Further, teachers’ reports of parent visits to their classrooms revealed that PIQE parents were more likely to visit prior to PIQE participation, suggesting that more-involved parents may be more likely to sign up for PIQE in the first place. District One attendance levels did not vary by PIQE status, but high attendance rates at Time 1 made it very difficult to find increases. Data from District Two echo those from District One. Overall, the authors found no pre-post changes in student grades or behaviors when comparing students whose parents had participated in PIQE with those whose parents had not. However, they did find that among the Hispanic children, there were very small, non-significant differences in pre-post outcomes. A number of factors may have affected the ability to detect PIQE program effects, e.g., delayed measurement of outcomes, lack of random assignment, and insensitive outcome measurements, e.g., attendance levels. The analyses suggest several program improvements.

Parental Involvement and Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis (December 2005)
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/projects/fine/resources/digest/meta.html

Although much research has focused on the importance of parental involvement in children's education, conducting meta-analyses to determine the overall impact of parental involvement on the student population remains only a recent enterprise. This fact largely contributes to the limited body of knowledge regarding which aspects of parental involvement help student education and just what components of this involvement are most important. A meta-analysis statistically combines all the relevant existing studies on a given subject in order to determine the aggregated results of the research. The author conducted a meta-analysis to determine the overall effects of parental involvement on K–12 students' academic achievement and to determine the extent to which certain expressions of parental involvement are beneficial to children. The meta-analysis drew from 77 studies, comprising over 300,000 students. Of the 77 studies, 36 included data only from secondary schools, 25 consisted of data only from elementary schools, and 16 possessed data for both elementary and secondary schools. Two reviewers used in this study rated the overall quality of the studies as a 2.3 on a 0.0 (lowest)–3.0 (highest) scale. Findings include the following: the range of scores for children whose parents were highly involved in their education was substantially higher than that of their counterparts whose parents were less involved; the facets of parental involvement that required a large investment of time, such as reading and communicating with one's child, and the more subtle aspects of parental involvement, such as parental style and expectations, had a greater impact on student educational outcomes than some of the more demonstrative aspects of parental involvement, such as having household rules, and parental attendance and participation at school functions; the largest effect sizes emerged for parental expectations; the effects of parental involvement are consistent across racial and ethnic groups; and on average, parental involvement programs work.

Parental Involvement and Students' Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis (2001)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p72731506kh74595/?p=7c6515a091754e1c9b489783953961ed&pi=0

The idea that parental involvement has positive influence on students' academic achievement is so intuitively appealing that society in general, and educators in particular, have considered parental involvement an important ingredient for the remedy for many problems in education. The vast proportion of the literature in this area, however, is qualitative and nonempirical. Among the empirical studies that have investigated the issue quantitatively, there appear to be considerable inconsistencies. A meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the quantitative literature about the relationship between parental involvement and students' academic achievement. The findings reveal a small to moderate, and practically meaningful, relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement. Through moderator analysis, it was revealed that parental aspiration/expectation for children's education achievement has the strongest relationship, whereas parental home supervision has the weakest relationship, with students' academic achievement. In addition, the relationship is stronger when academic achievement is represented by a global indicator (e.g., GPA) than by a subject-specific indicator (e.g., math grade). Limitations of the study are noted, and suggestions are made for future studies.

The Relationship Between Parental Involvement and Urban Secondary School Student Academic Achievement A Meta-Analysis (2007)
http://uex.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/42/1/82

A meta-analysis is undertaken, including 52 studies, to determine the influence of parental involvement on the educational outcomes of urban secondary school children. Statistical analyses are done to determine the overall impact of parental involvement as well as specific components of parental involvement. Four different measures of educational outcomes are used. These measures include an overall measure of all components of academic achievement combined, grades, standardized tests, and other measures that generally included teacher rating scales and indices of academic attitudes and behaviors. The possible differing effects of parental involvement by race and socioeconomic status are also examined. The results indicate that the influence of parental involvement overall is significant for secondary school children. Parental involvement as a whole affects all the academic variables under study by about .5 to .55 of a standard deviation unit. The positive effects of parental involvement hold for both White and minority children.

Research Summary: Parental Involvement (August 2006)
http://www.nmsa.org/portals/0/pdf/research/Research_Summaries/Parent_Involvement.pdf

This research summary on parental involvement describes what it is and why it is important. It also provides a summary of research on parental involvement, including a description of the six types of parental involvement and has information on the outcomes of parental involvement, which include the following: parent involvement leads to improved educational performance and fosters better student classroom behavior; parents who participate in decision making experience greater feelings of ownership and are more committed to supporting the school’s mission; and parent involvement increases support of schools. The summary also provides recommendations on increasing parental involvement, including conducting a needs assessment identifying what the concerns and issues are surrounding parent involvement in the education of their children and developing, in collaboration with parents, shared goals and missions concerning young adolescents’ learning and development.