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The research reported herein was supported in part by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education through a contract to the Laboratory for Student Success (LSS) established at the Temple University Center for Research in Human Development and Education (CRHDE), and in part by CRHDE. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the position of the supporting agencies, and no official endorsement should be inferred. Parent involvement has emerged during the recent years as an important influence on a child's schooling. Researchers, policymakers, and the media have put the issue on the center stage of American education. Research has provided ample evidence that parent involvement plays a crucial role in a student's academic, and policymakers have included increased parent participation in the National Educational Goals for the year 2000. Assessment of the needs and perceptions of both parents and teachers is the first step toward the effective implementation of School-Family Partnership programs. The School-Family Partnership (SFP) project at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which started in December, 1994, created a self-assessment tool to measure perceptions and practices of teachers and parents. The overall mission of the project is to identify and develop effective SFP practices that enhance the academic achievement and socioemotional development of children. The project has been focusing its efforts on two major issues: (a) fostering constructive and consistent communication and collaboration between school personnel and parents; and (b) facilitating parental participation in education, both in school and in home learning activities. During the 1996-1997 school year the SFP project worked in collaboration with three inner-city public elementary schools to investigate existing perceptions and practices on school-family relationships and to pilot strategies to promote positive home-school interactions. As the first step, the project created assessment tools to measure parent and teacher perceptions and practices on parent involvement. Assessment of SFP beliefs and practices is an important step toward the effective implementation of parent involvement strategies. In this way, starting points for intervention can be identified and implementation of SFP practices can be better targeted. Based on feedback from practitioners and specialists in the field, the measures were revised and refined. The results of these assessment efforts guided our intervention practices and pointed to areas that required particular attention. In order to assist parents and teachers in communicating and collaborating more effectively, the project developed materials for both parents and teachers in areas such as homework, communication, and parent-teacher conferences. The assessment and intervention process has been well-received by parents and teachers. Findings from the SFP surveys provide a profile of perceptions and practices that can be used by schools to understand the level and nature of parent and teacher involvement in SFP initiatives and plan targeted interventions. Both a parent and a teacher questionnaire were constructed. The parent questionnaire has an English and a Spanish version to serve the predominantly Spanish-speaking parents in inner-city schools. Appendix A presents the teacher survey. Appendices B and C include copies of the parent survey in English and Spanish, respectively. Parent Survey The survey contains 37 items on SFP issues and 14 items on demographics. The questionnaire covers the following areas: (a) parent involvement at home; (b) parent-initiated involvement at school; (c) parent perceptions about teacher's parent outreach efforts; (d) parent's willingness to expand his/her involvement in various ways; and (e) background information. Three- or four-point scales were used to measure most of these areas. Teacher Survey The survey contains 42 items on SFP issues and 5 items on demographics. The questionnaire covers the following areas: (a) parent outreach strategies that teachers were currently applying; (b) teacher perceptions of parent responsiveness to parent involvement initiatives; (c) teacher perceptions of current level of parent practices; (d) teacher's willingness to expand his/her involvement in various ways; and (e) background information. Either four- or three-point scales were used to measure these areas. Open-ended items were also included in the questionnaire. Who Was Sampled? Teacher and parent surveys were distributed in the three schools which participate in and collaborate with the SFP project. Two of the three schools serve a predominantly African-American population and the third mostly Latino families. During the 1996-1997 academic year, two of the schools (one of the African-American schools and the Latino school) had been placed on "academic probation" because the majority of the students had been scoring below state and national norms in standardized tests. Questionnaires were distributed to parents of pre-kindergarten through third grade students who were attending a project classroom. It must be noted that the majority of the items in the questionnaire are developmentally appropriate for the upper elementary grades as well, but as a starting point the SFP project focused on the early grades. Teacher questionnaires were administered to all teachers in pre-kindergarten through third grade. Both parents and teachers were given a week to complete and return the surveys. Follow-up was done selectively in those classrooms or schools where the home return rate was considered to be low (below 30%). The overall return rate was 64% for the parent surveys and 74% for the teacher surveys.
The sections below include combinations of the following elements: specification of the broader topics, presentation of the key findings within a given area, tables with detailed findings, and lists with helpful practical hints for educators and parents that can remediate weaknesses and increase a child's academic and social competence. Background Information Of the 272 parents who completed the questionnaire, 84% were the mother or stepmother of the child. On average, there were two adults and three children living in the households surveyed, but in 52% of the cases the child's other parent was not living at the same address. Forty-eight percent of the parents or guardians that were surveyed, and 49% of the child's other parent, had a high school diploma. Unemployment rates were extremely high, especially if one considers the national average of 5%. Specifically, 60% of the people completing the parent survey reported being unemployed, and 44% said that their child's other parent was unemployed as well. Of the 43 teachers who completed the survey, 73% had more than five years of teaching experience, and the average number of students in the classrooms they were serving was 24. Parent Involvement at Home Teachers reported that several of their students completed their homework on an average night but not necessarily well. Educators also agreed that performance would improve if someone at home could help the children with homework. In addition, some teachers voiced their concern that in certain cases someone else may have completed the homework instead of the child. In response to views expressed by parents and teachers both in the
survey as well as in conversations with project staff, a series of
materials and strategies were shared with teachers to enhance their
communication with parents and expand parent involvement. The
following are samples of the SFP activities that took place during the
1996-1997 school year:
In addition, we are adding a new site in the mid-Atlantic region to our collaborative schools. This will provide us with the opportunity to pilot our SFP activities and materials in a school which works closely with the Laboratory for Student Success. In the future, we plan to increase the number of schools in the mid-Atlantic region in preparation for wider dissemination of our project. |