Parental Involvement

Parental involvement in K–12 schooling has been linked to the social, emotional, and academic achievement of students. Researchers, policymakers, and district and school site personnel note that these links are particularly important in large urban districts. Research on parental involvement indicates that parental involvement can significantly enhance the school climate and is a critical aspect of effective schooling. The importance of parental involvement is not unique to any one type of school district or any particular race/ethnicity; however, recent literature on parental [Page 728]involvement has primarily focused on urban schools that serve large numbers of minority and low-income children.

The Yale Child Study Center Comer School Development Program (SDP) includes a comprehensive parental involvement component. Developed by James Comer, MD, in 1968, the model has been operationalized in over 700 schools in the United States and abroad, and is a child-centered, data-driven, wholeschool change process. The perspective of the home is valued in the Comer Model; school-parent miscommunication and conflict is reduced and parent-child relationships are enhanced. In 1995, Ramirez-Smith & Lofland conducted a study of the Comer model in a Virginia elementary school and found that the principles of the model were instrumental in stopping a cycle of failure at the school. The school had experienced chronic problems with poor student achievement, low teacher morale, and uninvolved parents. Significant increases in student test scores, overall student achievement, and an increase in the number of parents who volunteered at the school and attended school function were realized after implementation of the Comer model. School personnel concentrated on identifying and understanding reasons for low levels of parental involvement rather than concentrating on comparing the levels of parent involvement to other schools. The result was better communication between the home and the school and increases in students' motivation to succeed.

Two other parental involvement initiatives have become prominent in the literature on schools, communities, and families: Joyce Epstein's model for community/school/parental involvement and the 2000 National Education Goals, a national policy initiative on education. Epstein's model consists of six types of parental involvement: parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and collaborating with community. In Epstein's model, parental involvement occurs on a continuum ranging from high to low levels, with the level of involvement being dependent on the perceptions of parents and school personnel regarding the importance of involvement. Parental involvement is at the optimum level when the resources of the parents, community, and the school are integrated in a total effort centered on the child. The eighth goal of Goals 2000 specifically targets parents. The specific conceptualization, design, implementation, and evaluation of parental involvement models rests with the individual state departments of education. Thus, levels of parental involvement may vary from state to state.

Traditional definitions of parental involvement may be insufficient to make any significant impact on policies and practices in urban schools that serve large numbers of poor and minority students. In addition, social and economic changes may leave parents of poor and minority children with limited access to schools compared to middle-class and affluent parents. Schools Reaching Out, a national project of the Institute for Responsive Education, has adopted definitions of parental involvement that (a) broaden the term parent to recognize that families may include grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, and legal guardians who are charged with caring for the child and who may act as parents, (b) include community and social service agencies that provide services for children, and particularly those that service urban children and their families, (c) move beyond using the school site as the only meeting place for parent conferences/interaction, (d) consider more innovative methods for communicating with “hard to reach parents,” (e) include agendas and priorities of families, and (f) replace deficit theorizing about urban parents and their children with definitions that emphasize family values, cultural differences as strengths, and parents' desires to become active participants in their children's education.

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