Currents

Staying Involved

Volume 4 / Issue 4 / Summer 2004

A U.S. Department of Education report reveals that parents of middle school children become less involved in their children’s education, because they feel that the children should do their homework themselves and that parents should not help unless they are experts in the subject area. Education Week reports that parents also find middle schools more impersonal, because they no longer have one teacher who really knows their child.

The National Network of Partnership Schools offers six ways that schools can involve parents:

• teach parenting skills,
• inform parents about student progress and school programs,
• recruit and train parent volunteers,
• foster learning in the home,
• involve parents in school decisions, and
• connect families with community resources and services.

Parents can access The Case for Parent Leadership for advice on how to become more involved in their children’s schools. The report is available at no charge from the Center for Parent Leadership.

Parents can also share Including Every Parent: A Step-by-Step Guide to Engage and Empower Parents, edited by Stefan Lanfer and Kelly Kane, with their children’s school; it provides guidance on engaging parents and is available at the Project for School Innovation.