Press Releases

For Immediate Release: 27 APRil 2009

New Report Highlights District Efforts to Involve Parents in Older Students’ Education

Boston, Mass. — A new Issues & Answers Report from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) describes the varied policies, practices, and programs implemented by nine urban school districts across the Northeast to engage parents in their adolescent children’s education.

“Parent Involvement Strategies in Urban Middle and High Schools in the Northeast and Islands Region” is the result of a Fast Response Project at the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) to develop and pilot test a protocol for documenting how schools and districts get parents involved at the middle- and high-school levels. The protocol was tested in nine urban districts in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York.

An archive of a REL-NEI webinar highlighting findings from the report is available at http://www.relnei.org/events.webinararchives.parentinvolvement.php.

Decades of research correlate parent involvement with higher academic achievement and improved classroom behavior across grades K–12, but less is known about how schools engage parents as their children move from elementary to middle school and then to high school. REL-NEI researchers conducted the study, at the request of state education officials, to document what schools and districts in the Northeast and Islands Region are doing to promote parent involvement at these higher grades. They particularly looked at the strategies of schools and districts that serve students from low-income households, racial and ethnic minority students, and students with limited English proficiency—all subgroups with an increased risk of school failure and dropping out.

The researchers also explored the effectiveness of the practices and programs but found little evidence to determine whether they succeed at increasing parent involvement. The report calls for more fully articulated parent involvement programs, systematic data collection, and rigorous study designs to provide evidence of what works to engage parents of adolescents in their children’s education.

“All the districts offered a diverse array of strategies to get parents of adolescent children into the schools and active in their children’s learning, from curriculum nights to parenting classes to hiring dedicated staff to forge relationships with traditionally underserved parents,” said Project Director Lydia O’Donnell, vice president at Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), which administers REL-NEI. “The next step is to develop mechanisms for rigorously evaluating these strategies so administrators and state-level officials can decide whether to continue or adopt them.”

Informed by a review of the literature on parent involvement strategies, the researchers developed a protocol that compiled information on what strategies the nine districts were using to engage parents, how those efforts were monitored, which strategies had been evaluated, what evidence existed of their effectiveness in achieving desired outcomes, and whether the strategies were consistent with the requirements and guidance of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and with research that “meets the highest professional and technical standards” (U.S Department of Education 2002).

The researchers collected data from publicly available documents and from interviews with 59 key informants in state education agencies, districts, and schools. They organized information on parent involvement strategies into eight categories: general information exchange, information exchange on individual student performance, special events, volunteer opportunities, parent education, professional development for faculty and staff, parent resource centers, and home-school coordination and outreach to traditionally hard-to-reach parents.

The report describes the methodology and limitations of the data collection and includes a literature review on parent involvement and student success. The authors argue the protocol can be used to collect data from a larger number of districts and informants to expand documentation of strategies selected, adapted, and sustained in future years.

The report was written by O’Donnell, Amy Clark, Gail Agronick, and Ann Stueve, all at EDC. It is available for download from the IES website or relnei.org.

For more information about this report , e-mail Ashley Gaddis: agaddis@edc.org.

The Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) is run by Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), the American Institutes for Research (AIR), and WestEd’s Learning Innovations program. REL-NEI is one of 10 Regional Educational Laboratories funded by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education. REL-NEI provides rigorous research that is relevant to national education priorities, responsive to local needs, and usable for policy and practice. Visit www.relnei.org.

This project has been funded at least in part with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education under Contract Number ED-06-CO-0025. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) is a global nonprofit organization that develops, delivers, and evaluates innovative programs to address some of the world’s most urgent challenges in education, health, and economic development. Celebrating its 50th year, EDC manages more than 300 projects in 35 countries. Visit www.edc.org.