Families & the Community

Parents Show Strong Interest in School Involvement

By Catherine Gewertz — October 23, 2008 5 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

The vast majority of parents believe it is important for them to be involved in their teenagers’ high school educations, a study shows, but parents whose children attend low-performing schools say their schools do little to involve them.

The report, released last week by Civic Enterprises, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that studies public-policy issues, found that parents whose children attend high-performing schools said their schools do a far better job reaching out to them than did parents of children in low-performing schools.

Most parents cited lack of time as the biggest barrier to their involvement at school, the study notes. But it assigns primary responsibility for poor parent engagement to the schools.

“Parents at low-performing schools are clearly dissatisfied with the ways their children’s schools reach out to them,” the study says. “This failure on the part of schools leads parents to lower levels of involvement.”

The report is based on a nationally representative 2007 survey of 1,006 parents of current and recent high school students, and on focus groups conducted with parents in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and Nashville, Tenn. Parents identified their schools as low-, moderate- or high-performing by estimating the portion of graduates who went on to college.

The study was conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also underwrites Education Week’s annual Diplomas Count report on high school completion.

John M. Bridgeland, Civic Enterprises’ president and chief executive officer, said he hopes the study can “debunk the myth that parents don’t care or want to be engaged in the academic development of their children. The evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary.”

More than 90 percent of African-American and Hispanic parents surveyed said it is very important for their children to get an education that leads to college, compared with 78 percent of white parents. Parents of children in low-performing schools were more likely than those in better-performing schools to say it is important for them to be involved as advocates in their child’s high school: Eighty-five percent said so, compared with 78 percent of high-performing-school parents.

Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust, a Washington-based group that presses for better schooling for disadvantaged children, said those findings help erode a stereotype that undermines good relationships between minority parents and their children’s schools.

“It’s a constant problem—the willingness of educators to assume that low-income parents, especially minority parents, don’t have the same aspirations for their children that wealthier parents have,” she said. “It’s not that they have different values. It’s that the quality of schools their children attend is different.”

Grading the High Schools

In a recent survey, parents of students in high- and low-performing high schools gave these responses when asked whether their children’s schools do a good job.

BRIC ARCHIVE

SOURCE: Civic Enterprises

Parents may share a belief in the value of academic success, but their experiences trying to support it are linked to the schools’ own performance, the study found.

Barely half of parents in low-performing schools reported that they have had good conversations with most of their children’s teachers, compared with 70 percent of parents in high-performing schools. Eight in 10 parents in high-performing schools said their schools do a good job of communicating with them about their children’s academic performance, but only four in 10 parents in low-performing schools thought so.

Struggling Schools Lag

Far fewer parents of children in low-performing schools thought the schools encouraged their involvement or informed them well about graduation and college-entrance requirements, the study found. Parents in high-performing schools also saw more opportunity for substantive involvement in their children’s academic work. More than two-thirds said schools give them the chance to participate in choosing their children’s courses, compared with only 30 percent of parents in low-performing schools.

Lower-performing schools score poorly not only in their dealings with parents, but in their work with students. Fifteen percent or fewer of parents in those schools felt the schools did a good job of challenging their children or keeping them engaged, compared with more than half the parents in high-performing schools. Only two in 10 parents in the struggling schools thought educators did well preparing their children for college, but two-thirds of parents in high-performing schools said they did.

A greater share of parents in low-performing schools, though, acknowledged they are not as involved in their children’s educations as they should be. Only four in 10 said they were sufficiently involved, compared with nearly seven in 10 of the parents in higher-flying schools. Most cited time and scheduling conflicts as the main barrier to greater involvement. But one-quarter cited lack of information, communication, and knowledge as stumbling blocks.

In the survey and focus groups, parents identified measures they thought would facilitate their involvement at school. They wanted schools to notify them early when problems take shape. They yearned for contact when children are in 8th or 9th grade to design a plan for their success. Many focus-group participants noted that they found the transition from middle to high school daunting and complicated, and needed support from educators, the study says.

Point of Contact Needed

Parents also said they want more information about graduation and college requirements, and wished for a single point of contact in high schools, such as advisers who are well versed on all aspects of their children’s progress.

Bob Wise, the former West Virginia governor who is now the president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based group that advocates reform of the nation’s high schools, said a single point of contact can open the “forbidding cave” of high school to parents, and build their understanding of what is necessary to their children’s success. That knowledge can translate into crucial support for schools as they try to improve, he said.

“That kind of will-building, understanding what it takes to turn around a low-performing school, depends a lot on the attitude and support of parents,” Mr. Wise said.

Gerald N. Tirozzi, the executive director of the Reston, Va.-based National Association of Secondary School Principals, said it is particularly tough for parents to be involved at the high school level, in part because adolescents don’t want their parents around, and typically don’t let them know what’s up at school. The large size of most schools makes close parent-school connections challenging as well, he said.

But he said his organization’s study of “breakthrough high schools”—high-minority, high-poverty schools with good college-going rates—shows that strong parent involvement is possible.

“What you need is principals and faculty who understand this,” Mr. Tirozzi said. “Where you find solid leadership, these things do happen.”

A version of this article appeared in the October 29, 2008 edition of Education Week as Parents Show Strong Interest in School Involvement

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and K-12 education jubs at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Mathematics K-12 Essentials Forum Helping Students Succeed in Math
Student Well-Being Live Online Discussion A Seat at the Table: The Power of Emotion Regulation to Drive K-12 Academic Performance and Wellbeing
Wish you could handle emotions better? Learn practical strategies with researcher Marc Brackett and host Peter DeWitt.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Families & the Community How One District Uses Tech Nights to Bring Families Into Learning
A technology resource teacher provides tips for creating events that parents will actually attend.
2 min read
Aarnavi Gupta, 8, and her father, Chanchal, review a coding project about a family trip to the beach at “Creative Coding: A Morning of Making” as part of a Remake Learning Days program held at South Fayette Intermediate School on May 23, 2022 in McDonald, Pa.
Aarnavi Gupta, 8, and her father, Chanchal, review a coding project about a family trip to the beach at South Fayette Intermediate School on May 23, 2022 in McDonald, Pa. Providing opportunities for parents and students to learn together can help increase their engagement with the school; some districts are featuring tech tools in these kinds of activities.
Jeff Swensen for Education Week
Families & the Community Q&A Want to Reach Parents? Try a Podcast
A district technology leader discusses the value of podcasts and how to start one.
3 min read
D. M. Therrell High School student Ja'Marion Hulin, 17, who runs the school's record company, Panther Records, laughs with another student in the school's podcast recording room on Jan. 27, 2025, in Atlanta.
D. M. Therrell High School student Ja'Marion Hulin, 17, who runs the school's record company, Panther Records, laughs with another student in the school's podcast recording room on Jan. 27, 2025, in Atlanta. Podcasts can be another way for schools to increase family engagement.
Brynn Anderson/AP
Families & the Community How to Go Deeper on Family Engagement
There is a discrepancy in understanding what family engagement is and how it can be utilized to support schools in their COVID recovery efforts, according to a new report.
5 min read
Miranda Scully, Director of Family and Community Engagement (FACE) for Fayette County Public Schools, serves food to students and parents during a ACT prep class held at the Family Connection Center on Dec. 12, 2024, in Lexington, Ky. The Family Connection Center offers programs like ESL classes, college preparation, and household budgeting and money management classes. Family engagement is crucial for COVID recovery, but not all in the education field define it in the same way.
Miranda Scully, director of Family and Community Engagement (FACE) for Fayette County Public Schools, serves food to students and parents during a ACT prep class held at the Family Connection Center on Dec. 12, 2024, in Lexington, Ky. The Family Connection Center offers programs like ESL classes, college preparation, and household budgeting and money management classes.
Michael Swensen for Education Week
Families & the Community The Low-Cost, Low-Lift Way These Districts Used to Reduce Student Absences
Dozens of districts tested this strategy as one component of their absenteeism-fighting strategy.
6 min read
Photograph of the front of a schoo lbus driving on a country road with trees, fencing, and a yellow sign reading School Bus Stop Ahead.
iStock/Getty