Group items tagged

Parent involvement is consistently cited as an important correlate of effective schools. For nearly a quarter of a century, research on parental and family involvement has documented that parents can do much to reinforce positive attitudes toward school, to prepare their children for school, and to support their children's efforts once they are in school.

This guide provides ideas and suggestions taken from research on family and community involvement in schools and can help school staff and others design a long-term approach to garnering the positive involvement of all concerned. These ideas represent the tip of the iceberg of what is possible. There are as many solutions for creating a comprehensive plan to involve parents, families, and the community in the education of children, as there are schools. Each school has its own demographic mix, community context, and history. Following are ideas that can be modified and expanded upon to suit the needs of the school.

Parents play an important part in literacy. We need to engage our parents to increase our children's literacy performance.

Latinos1 have been continually overrepresented in low-skill and service sector U.S. jobs. One of the factors accounting for this is the educational experience of the Latino community, which has been characterized by low high school graduation rates, low college completion rates and substandard schooling conditions.2 As schools and policymakers seek to improve the educational conditions of Latinos, parental influence in the form of school involvement is assumed to play some role in shaping students' educational experiences.

Parent involvement in schools has an impact.

NEA policy brief examining research showing need for community involvement in education

Child Trends improves the lives and prospects of children and youth by conducting high-quality research and sharing the resulting knowledge with practitioners and policymakers.

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." That's the conclusion of A New Wave of Evidence, a report from SEDL.