Back to school: How parent involvement affects student achievement (At a glance)
It may be one of the least controversial statements in American education: Parent involvement can make a difference in a child’s education. The conflict can come, though, on how to define that involvement. Do all the PTA meetings, take-home flyers and Back to School nights actually generate increases in student achievement? The Center for Public Education examined the research and found that creating a partnership between parents and schools focused on academics truly does have significant impact on student achievement.
The six types of parent involvement
Joyce Epstein of the Johns Hopkins University, Center on School, Family and Community Partnerships, one of the nation’s leading experts on parent involvement, divided school parent involvement programs into six broad categories:
- Parenting, in which schools help families with their parenting skills by providing information on children’s developmental stages and offering advice on learning-friendly home environments;
- Communicating, or working to educate families about their child’s progress and school services and providing opportunities for parents to communicate with the school;
- Volunteering, which ranges from offering opportunities for parents to visit their child’s school to finding ways to recruit and train them to work in the school or classroom;
- Learning at home, in which schools and educators share ideas to promote at-home learning through high expectations and strategies so parents can monitor and help with homework.
- Decision-making, in which schools include families as partners in school organizations, advisory panels, and similar committees.
- Community collaboration, a two-way outreach strategy in which community or business groups are involved in education and schools encourage family participation in the community.
Who is involved?
- National survey data from
