New Publications Show What Works in Parent and Family Involvement in Schools
January 28, 2010 - Parent and family involvement in schools has been shown to make children and youth: feel more connected to the school; have better academic performance and attendance; reduce internalizing behaviors such as depression and anxiety; reduce externalizing behaviors such as aggression or delinquent behaviors; be more aware of and avoid substance abuse and risky sexual behavior; and achieve and maintain health and fitness.
Three new publications relay the importance of involving parents and families in schools and show which programs work and do not work in promoting family engagement.
The first publication, published by Child Trends in December 2009, synthesizes experimentally evaluated parent involvement programs for children and shows that almost two-thirds (45 of 67) of all reviewed programs had a positive impact on at least one child outcome.
Among the strategies that were found to be most effective were: parent skills training; parent-child involvement; a combined focus on both the parent and child; and use of technological innovations and media. In addition, the synthesis highlights the importance of combining these strategies while paying attention to the particular cultural, ethnic and gender-specific needs of a given target population, which may be most likely to yield positive results. This synthesis found that programs addressing children’s health and obesity and their education were the most often effective.
On the other hand, programs whose primary strategy is to deliver information about a certain topic to parents while not offering opportunities to practice skills or to participate in activities with their children were generally found to be less successful.
The second publication, also released by Child Trends in December 2009, synthesizes findings from 47 rigorous evaluations of parent involvement interventions for adolescents. Overall, nearly two-thirds of parent involvement programs were found to be effective (30 out of 47).
Interventions that build parenting skills generally had positive impacts and all family and teen-focused therapeutic interventions were found to work for at least one outcome. As with programs for children, parent education programs that simply offer information, but no opportunities to practice related skills, did not tend to work.
The third publication, an issue brief released jointly by the PTA and the Harvard Family Research Project, outlines three district-level components that are necessary for systemic family engagement within school districts: fostering district-wide strategies; building school capacity; and reaching out to and engaging families. In addition, the authors highlight five promising practices that ensure that family involvement efforts are practiced throughout the district, including: a shared vision of family engagement; purposeful connections to learning; investments in high quality programming and staff; robust communication systems; and evaluation for accountability and continuous learning. Moreover, the publication features the family engagement promising practices of six school districts to provide concrete examples of how successful strategies were used and worked.
Source: “What Works for Parent Involvement Programs for Children: Lessons from Experimental Evaluations of Social Interventions,” Child Trends, December 2009; “What Works for Parent Involvement Programs for Adolescents: Lessons from Experimental Evaluations of Social Interventions,” Child Trends, December 2009; and “Seeing is Believing: Promising Practices for How School Districts Promote Family Engagement,” PTA and Harvard Family Project, July 2009.