s, ordinarily through
notices, phone calls, visits, report cards and conferences; schools vary in the
frequency of communications and in ability to make them understood by families.
Involvement at school: Parents assist teachers, children, or other school
personnel as volunteers; schools vary their schedules to encourage such
involvement and recruit and train volunteers.
Involvement in learning activities at home: Teachers request and guide parents
to monitor and assist their children at home.
Involvement in decision-making, governance, and advocacy: Parents serve in
participatory roles and also may become activists through involvement in
advocacy groups; schools help parents become leaders through training, involving
them in meaningful decision-making, and providing information to advocacy
Schools with comprehensive programs encompassing all of these forms of parent
involvement help parents build the conditions at home that support student
learning, and there are hundreds of practices from which to choose.
Since her original research, Epstein has added a sixth form of
involvement--collaboration and exchange with community organizations. In this
form, schools collaborate with agencies, businesses, cultural organizations, and
other groups to share responsibility for the education of children. They make it
more feasible for children and families to have access to these services and
Other researchers define parent involvement on the basis of the direct
beneficiary of the intervention. Parent involvement programs which are meant to
benefit the child focus on parents as interveners, parent/child relations,
stimulating the senses, and parents as classroom aides. Programs with parents as
beneficiaries emphasize emotional support, resource access, parenting skills,
and the like.
The literature on parent involvement summarized by Henderson, Marburger, and
Ooms (1986) describes most school communication as formal and one-way, that is,
from school to home. Also, parents complain that their most personal
communication with schools usually only occurs because of a problem or crisis.
However, in the earliest grades, urban schools appear to have developed
special strategies. A study of the transition from preschools to kindergartens
found that there was more opportunity for parents in high-poverty schools (Love,
Logue, Trudeau, & Thayer, 1992). This probably is because such schools are
involved in Federal or state programs that stress home visits. In schools with
preschool programs, the parent education workshops and home visits are more
prevalent before children reach kindergarten.
Among low-income and/or minority families, parent involvement is difficult to
encourage. Studies of early intervention programs for high-risk children found
parents reluctant to participate or high rates of dropping out of specially
designed programs (Iglesias, 1992). Only about one of ten low-income parents
belongs to a parent-teacher organization (Educational Testing Service, 1992).
Furthermore, adolescent parents are especially hard to reach.
School attitudes and practices regarding
parent involvement in inner-city elementary and middle schools directly
influence how much parents will support learning at home, according to Dauber
and Epstein (1989). Parents who feel the school is actively trying to involve
them have a more positive attitude about the school, and they give higher
ratings to teachers who try to involve them. Although teachers in the Chapter 1
schools involved in Epstein's research project felt most parents were not
involved and did not want to be, parents expressed different feelings. They
reported that they were involved with their children and wanted more advice from
teachers about how to help their children.
Despite the problems in drawing parents into schools, some programs and
schools have learned to involve parents and provide greater support for their
children. And it should be noted that family involvement is becoming an even
stronger element in national policies.
Parent involvement tends to be greater
in the early years, and Even 