Introductory Packet

Parent and Home Involvement in Schools(Revised 2015)

*The Center is co-directed by Howard Adelman and Linda Taylor and operates under the auspice of theSchool Mental Health Project, Dept. of Psychology, UCLA,

Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563 (310) 825-3634

E-mail: Ltaylor@ucla.edu

Permission to reproduce this document is granted.Please cite source as the Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA

mailto:Ltaylor@ucla.edu

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Table of Contents

Parent & Home Involvement in Schools

Preface 1I. A Broad View of Involvement 2

A. Different Caretakers, Different Needs, Different Agendas 3B. Surveying What Your School Does To Enhance Home Involvement 15C. The Impact of Family Involvement on the Education of Children 23D. Intervening to Enhance Home Involvement in Schooling 24E. Family-School Partnerships 29

II. Intervention Phases and Tasks 35>Organizing Schools to Enhance Home Involvement 38>Inviting Involvement 39>Facilitating Early Involvement 42

>Maintaining Involvement 47>Using Evaluation Data for Improving Intervention 49

III. About Standards and Outcomes 52A. Introduction 53B. National PTA Standards for Parent/ Family Involvement Programs 54C. A Sampling of Research Relevant to Home Involvement in Schooling 55D. Frequently Cited Outcomes 58

IV Examples of Current Activity 61A. Examples of a State Departments Approach and a Program Model 62B. Major Organizational Resources 69C. Family Needs Assessment (English and Spanish Versions 72D. Resources for Promoting Family-School Partnerships 81D. Activities for State and Local Educational Agencies 87E. Preparing Teachers in Family Involvement 89F. Engaging and Re-engaging Families When a Student is Not Doing Well 94

V. Helping Parents Help Their Children 98A. Helping Parents Become Better Educators at Home 99B. Parent Discussion Groups 108C. Examples of Flyers and Invitations to Parents 126D. Examples of Feedback Materials 137E. Example of Addressing Diversity 145

About Center Quick Find 148

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In general, research findings over the past 30 years haveconsistently shown home involvement in schooling has apositive impact on youngsters attitudes, aspirations, andachievement. The tasks ahead include expanding the focusbeyond thinking only in terms of parents and expanding therange of ways in which schools connect with those in the home.In particular, more intensive efforts must focus on those in thehome who have the greatest influence on a students well beingand with whom it has proven difficult to connect. Newapproaches must be developed and evaluated to clarify howbest to involve such hard-to-reach individuals.

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I. A Broad View of Involvement

A. Home Involvement, Engagement, & Re-engagement in Schooling

B. Surveying What Your School Does To Enhance Home Involvement

C. The Impact of Family Involvement on the Education of Children

D. Intervening to Enhance Home Involvement in Schooling

E. Family-School Partnerships

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I. A Broad View of Involvement

A. Home Involvement, Engagement, and Re-engagement in Schooling

From: Transforming Student and Learning Supports: Developing a Unified, Comprehensive, andEquitable System (Chapter 6) http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/book/book.pdf

Research findings accumulated over ... decades ... show that ... parental encouragement,activities, and interest at home and participation in schools and classrooms affect childrensachievement, attitudes, and aspirations, even after student ability and family socioeconomicstatus are taken into account.

Joyce Epstein

The strongest predictors that a student is likely to drop out are family characteristics such as:socioeconomic status, family structure, family stress (e.g., death, divorce, family moves), andthe mothers age. Students who come from low-income families, are the children of single,young, unemployed mothers, or who have experienced high degrees of family stress are morelikely than other students to drop out of school. Of those characteristics, low socioeconomicstatus has been shown to bear the strongest relationship to students tendency to drop out.

National Education Association

Research findings over the past 30 plus years consistently indicate the value of home supportfor schooling. Moreover, with respect to students who are not doing well at school, efforts toenhance home involvement are an basic element of the overall approach to addressing factorsinterfering with school learning and performance.

Despite the long-standing call by policy makers and researchers for schools to enhance parentinvolvement, the challenges in doing so have confounded many schools. Our analyses indicate thatthis will continue to be the case as long as the focus fails to account for the variety of individualsproviding parenting and until involvement is designed as a mutually beneficial, equitable, andengaging process.

Instead of just focusing on parent involvement think about students being raised primarily bygrandparents, aunts, older siblings, nannies, and in foster homes. Primary child caretakers differ.That is why we stress the term home involvement.

Other home involvement complications stem from factors such as caretaker economic status,work schedules, immigrant status, ethnic and racial considerations, single parent families,number of youngsters in the home, homes where English is not spoken, extended families,military families, families where parents are in prison, foster homes, and homeless families andyoungsters. In addition, some caretakers have disabilities, and some are dysfunctional.

Home situations also differ in caretaker attitudes about school. Such attitudes often reflectpersonal past experiences as well as current encounters and how well their youngsters are doingat school. (Remember, some have more than one youngster who is not doing well.) Involvingreluctant primary caretakers is difficult and often handled at school as a low priority.

In general, as with students, parents and other caretakers vary in their personal motivation andability to participate at school. And as with many students who are not doing well at school,(re)establishing productive working relationships with some caretakers involves addressingindividual psychosocial and educational barriers and doing so in a personalized way.

http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/book/book.pdf

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Reflecting on Those Who Arent InvolvedWe find that most efforts to involve parents are aimed at those who want and are able toshow up at school. It's important to have activities for such parents. It's also important toremember that, at many schools, these parents represent a small percent of families.

What about the rest? Especially those whose children are doing poorly at school.

Ironically, endeavors to involve families whose youngsters are doing poorly often result inparents becoming less involved. For example, a parent of such a youngster usually iscalled to school to explore the child's problems and often leaves with a sense of frustration,anger, and guilt. It is not surprising, then, that the parent subsequently avoids schoolcontact as much as feasible.

A colleague describes the typical pattern of messages over time from the school tofamilies of struggling students as follows:

Early messages: We are concerned about ... [missing assignments, poorattendance, lack of academic progress, behavior problems] ...

Over the years the schools messages become more urgent: Dear parents, weneed a conference to talk about ... [behavior problems, academic problems,truancy]; please attend student study team meeting...

Finally, the schools messages become more formal: This is to inform you ...[your child will be retained, your child will be suspended]; you must attend anattendance review board meeting ....

Schools that really want to involve those at home minimize "finger wagging" and offermore than parent education classes.

We are reminded of the dictum that it can take as many as eight positive interactions to restore a relationship after a negative encounter.

The various complications that must be addressed in enhancing home involvement can becategorized as institutional, impersonal, and personal barriers (see Exhibit 1).

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Exhibit 1 General Types and Forms of Barriers to Home Involvement

Forms of Barriers

Types

of Barriers

Negative Attitudes Lack ofMechanisms/Skills

Practical Deterrents

Institutional

Examples

School administration ishostile toward increasinghome involvement

Examples

Insufficient staffassigned to planning andimplementing ways toenhance involvement;no more than a tokeneffort to accommodatedifferent languages

Examples

Low priority given to homeinvolvement in allocating resources such as space, time, and money

ImpersonalHome involvement suffersfrom benign neglect

Rapid influx ofimmigrant familiesoverwhelms schoolsability to communicateand provide relevanthome involvementactivities

Schools lack resources; majority in home have problemsrelated to work schedules, childcare, transportation

PersonalSpecific teachers andparents feel homeinvolvement is not worththe effort or feel threatenedby such involvement

Specific teachers andparents lack relevantlanguages andinterpersonal skills

Specific teachers and parents are too busy or lack resources

Increasing attention has been given to reducing institutional and impersonal barriers. However, aswith so many endeavors to address barriers to learning and teaching, home i