Member Insights

Member Insights
This area of the FINE website offers a space for member opinions and provocative ideas. We welcome your contributions. Please email FINE with your opinions at fine@gse.harvard.edu. For each contributor we need: name, position, organization, city, state, and website.

Choose a question to find out what FINE members said:

How can parents be engaged in students' transition from middle to high school?
What do you think of having teachers “grade” parents on their support of their children's learning?
Are schools doing enough to learn about families?
How can we prepare teachers to work with culturally diverse students and their families? What skills should educators develop to do this successfully?
A Public Agenda survey (People's Chief Concerns, 1999) claims that 55% of the public consider lack of parent involvement a “major problem” facing public schools. What is your opinion and how does your work address this issue?
Does the workplace hinder family involvement in children's education?
Does family involvement in high school matter?
Is teacher preparation key to improving teacher practices with families? What are the alternatives?
How can parents be engaged in students' transition from middle to high school?
Eugenia Ambrocio, advocacy team and parent outreach coordinator of the ENLACE y Avance Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, writes:

When parents are empowered to advocate for their children and collaborate with schools, they become more engaged in students' transition to high school and the process of preparing for college. ENLACE (Engaging Latino Communities for Education) is an initiative funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to increase opportunities for Latino students to enter and complete college and to boost the involvement of Latino parents in local schools.

In our project we work mostly with Latino, Spanish-speaking parents, and we engage them as leaders. Parents are natural leaders by themselves. However, often Latino parents don't feel comfortable in the schools, or have so much respect for these institutions that they don't questions their performance. They don't know that they have certain rights. We provide parents with information and tools to navigate the school system. For example, this year we began our first Parent Leadership Initiative.

The Parent Leadership Initiative is a 16-week training where parents can acquire a deeper knowledge of the school system and learn about parental rights and responsibilities, ask meaningful questions, and take action for individual children and the Latino community as a whole. We use a curriculum developed by the Mexican American Legal Defense Education Fund (MALDEF) called the National Parent School Partnership. The topics we cover include the differences between the school system in the United States and Latin America, the politics of education, the structure and function of the different committees in the schools, the importance of meeting with teachers, administrators, and counselors, and what questions to ask in a parent-teacher conference. We also discuss making presentations, university requirements, how to access the media, and responsible leadership.

Another way to engage parents in the transition to high school is by involving them in community projects. For example, one project involves parents working with a junior high school principal to create a bilingual glossary about what incoming parents of seventh grade children need to know about junior high.

From our point of view, if parents question their school administrators, counselors, and teachers, or work in collaboration with them regarding their children academics, then they are exercising leadership. This engagement will help them become informed to help their children to transition from middle to high school.

Eugenia Ambrocio
Advocacy Team Coordinator & Parent Outreach Coordinator
ENLACE y Avance Project
Center for Chicano Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
research.ucsb.edu/ccs/enlace/index.html

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What do you think of having teachers “grade” parents on their support of their children's learning?
Leah Mundell and Gretchen Suess of Research for Action in Philadelphia write:

The Philadelphia school district is issuing student report cards this year that will rate parents on the quality of “home support” given to children. Our response to the new report cards is based on conversations with parents and teachers impacted by the change. All in all, we support the inclusion of a teacher-parent dialogue on report cards, but propose that parents play a more equal role. As it stands, the parent “grading” system threatens to trigger a cycle of conflict and blame. The report card requires teachers to hold parents accountable for student learning without providing an opportunity for parents to hold teachers accountable. In today's environment of high-stakes testing and educational reform, “accountability” carries with it an implicit assumption of blame. Thus, merely providing an equivalent grading system of teachers by parents would not eliminate this cycle.

We propose an alternate report card that encourages a dialogue between teacher and parent. Components would include: (1) teacher's perspective on what child needs for learning, including supplies and home support; (2) parent/guardian's perspective on what child needs for learning, including knowledge of school resources, cultural respect, and clear, challenging homework assignments; and (3) a joint parent and teacher action plan to address these issues and needs. This proposal would best be implemented through face-to-face report card conferences. The teacher and parent each complete their respective portions of the report card prior to the conference, then devise an action plan together.

Teachers and parents with whom we consulted felt nervous and defensive about the implicit blaming of parents that the current report cards may foster. All expressed concern that the information would not lead to greater support for student learning and questioned the lack of follow-up. Yet all agreed that strong communication between parents and teachers is essential to support student learning. Our proposal uses the report card format to foster dialogue about student success rather than perpetuate blame for student failure.

Leah Mundell, M.A. and Gretchen Suess, M.A.
Research for Action
3701 Chestnut St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104
www.researchforaction.org

Related Reading
Snyder, S. (2003, September 18). Parents to get “grades'” from Phila.s' teachers. Philadelphia Inquirer. Available at www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/education/6797322.htm.

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Are schools doing enough to learn about families?
Larry and Virginia Decker, coauthors of a new book on school-community partnerships, write:

Our answer to this question is “no.” There is far more educational rhetoric than meaningful action to address the needs of diverse families related to student learning. Educators acknowledge the importance of family involvement in student academic success. However most teachers and administrators have had little preservice training related to family involvement and very few schools have planned in-service training that helps teachers and administrators develop skills and action plans that connect families to student learning.

Schools do know a great deal about those who qualify for Title I, free or reduced lunch, special education, and gifted programs or other economically formula-driven programs. One reason is the large volume of demographic, socioeconomic, and diversity/cultural information and data related to families and students' potential for academic success. The other reason is that students in these types of programs mean an increase in special funding for the school. However, there has not been significant transferability of what schools know about students to adapting instructional approaches or establishing recommended outreach and relationship-building approaches to meet the needs of diverse families and students.

Over the years, we have taught numerous graduate classes for teachers and administrators and conducted a variety of conference and in-service training programs related to family and parent involvement in education. One of the first questions we ask is “What is the percentage of households in the U.S. that are traditional families—working father, homemaker mother, and 2+ children—served by a typical public school in 1955, 1980, and today?” Most of the answers are more like wild guesses and far off the actual statistics. Most of those questioned are surprised to learn that the all time high for the percentage of traditional families in the US was 60% in 1955. By 1980 the percentage had dropped to 11% and since the 1990's the percentage has been 6% or below. The follow-up questions concern what relevance does a learner's family status and economic and cultural profile have on curriculum development, learning plans, and family outreach initiatives. There is frequently a period of silence before the first answers are tentatively given.

The hesitancy to answer is not always due to a lack of knowledge. It may also be due to the current focus on “high stakes” testing and education accountability. This focus has helped to create an educational environment where a “one approach fits all” is being used to meet the challenge of achieving academic success for all students. While many educators agree that multiple approaches are needed to reach this goal, there is a lack of knowledge or consensus about which approaches and outreach efforts are most effective.

So our answer is “no, schools need to do much more.” They need to have a planned, comprehensive initiative to learn more about the families they serve and how to involve them in student learning. Teachers and administrators need to be provided sufficient time and opportunities to gain an accurate understanding of the families and students they serve, to improve skills related to family involvement, and to develop effectively outreach initiatives to involve those families in their children's education.

Larry E. Decker
Eminent Scholar in Community Education
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
www.fau.edu

Virginia A. Decker
Managing Editor
Community Collaborators
Boca Raton, Florida

Dana McDermott, an expert on parent education, writes:

No. Most schools operate from the premise of parent involvement to support schools and adopt a top-down approach tending to disregard the home culture. There seems to be little room to question school goals. Most educators do not understand noninvolvement of parents in homework as possibly a political statement that what a school does is not always in the best interest of the child (de Carvahlo, 2001). Parents may define good involvement as refusing to help a child do hours of homework, which interferes with family life. Teachers interpret this to be a deficiency in parents, as homework is rarely questioned by society.

“Reflective inquiry” on homework by students, parents, and teachers is not typical. What are teacher goals in giving homework? What about learning and relationship “work” at home and in the community? How do parents feel when teachers expect them to do something they are unable or unmotivated to do? Rather than assuming that homework is good, schools can facilitate dialogues on its meaning to a teacher, school, a child, and his/her family.

Schools often are perceived as experts telling families how to help their children succeed. Their sharing of knowledge and expectations with parents often does not anticipate the differences found in parents like socioeconomic status, cultural experience, personal characteristics, home life, or the meaning of school input.

Bringing the family culture into what is learned in school can have positive benefits (McCaleb, 1994). Bowman (1996) in his article Empowering Parents is Mining Diamonds in the Rough notes that “underneath even the most cautious guarded exterior is a person with talents, skills, and dreams looking for a place for the sparkle to emerge and be seen” (p. 27). Few faculty development or teacher-training programs address this process adequately, especially the understanding of context or a discussion about roles (McDermott, 1997).

We know from adult learning principles that if we want learning to go beyond parents receiving information from us, parents need a place to filter information through their values and beliefs. This is difficult within the current construct of parent-school relationships. Often it is wrongly assumed that educators and parents are or are not on the same page. School goals are often so general that parents do not question them or the methods for achieving them until they run into their own child's problems. Many parents and teachers do not have a chance to reflect on how a directive meshes with their own ideas about what they believe children need. They end up consciously or unconsciously resisting what is asked of them. Parents will learn best if they have time to think about a school directive with school representatives, together look at alternatives, make a commitment to the best one, and then personalize it. Many school initiatives are unsuccessful because this process is bypassed.

It is now time for a “new frontier” of parent involvement where we synthesize information on involvement that is culturally aware, review the research on parents and teachers as adult and lifelong learners, explore school reform models like those mentioned above and explores the work on helping parents and teachers with their own growth issues which I hope to highlight in my upcoming book.

Dana McDermott
Resident Faculty
The School for New Learning
DePaul University
Chicago, Illinois
snl.depaul.edu

References
Bowman, T. (1996). Empowering parents is mining diamonds in the rough. Family Resource Coalition Report, 15(2), 27–28.

de Carvalho, M. (2001). Rethinking family-school relations: A critique of parental involvement in schooling. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates.

McCaleb, S. P. (1994) Building a community of learners. New York: St. Martin's Press.

McDermott, D. (1997, May). Parent and teacher plan for the child. Young Children, 52(4), 32–36.

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How can we prepare teachers to work with culturally diverse students and their families? What skills should educators develop to do this successfully?
Eileen Kugler, speaker and trainer on building community support for diverse schools, writes:

It is important for teachers to seriously examine their own attitudes toward people who think and look different than they do. In the classroom, it's comfortable to call on the students whose opinions, speech, and attitude match the teacher's. But it's often the quiet students—feeling uncomfortable with a new culture and a new language—who need personal attention from the teacher to empower them to participate more fully.

Teachers must encourage students to express their own ideas, even if they are challenging to the teacher's own perspective. When I interviewed students from strong diverse schools for my book, Debunking the Middle-Class Myth: Why Diverse Schools Are Good for All Kids, they repeatedly emphasized that they were encouraged by their teachers to speak their minds, listen to others, and think critically in their classrooms.

Teachers need to analyze how they react to parents who don't act “right” in their view, moving beyond the myth that the only parents who care about their children are those who fit the traditional visible mold. While many immigrant parents don't feel comfortable at school, at home they are actively supporting their children's education—making sure homework is done, checking up on their friends, keeping tabs on their time after school, and helping them plan for the future. When you investigate beyond the surface, you find that these parents face similar parenting issues as their American-born peers.

Teachers also need to identify nonthreatening opportunities to welcome parents with diverse backgrounds to the school. At the end of a unit of study, teachers can invite parents into the classroom so the students can share their achievements with them. As opposed to the stereotype of not caring, parents frequently feel left out, just waiting to be asked to be involved.

Teachers must ask themselves tough, challenging questions about their expectations and how they respond based on them. Are classroom discussions dominated by students from mainstream American families who appear more engaged and have views closer to the teacher's? Are white, middle-class students chosen for select programs because their parents know how to advocate for them? Are students of color and those from lower-income backgrounds placed in low reading groups because their parents don't connect well with the teacher? Teachers need to move beyond stereotypes that may be grounded in their own limited frame of reference or myths about “good families.”

Eileen Kugler
President
Kugler Communications
Washington, DC
www.embracediverseschools.com

Andrew Schneider-Muñoz from City Year writes:

Teachers need to learn about the families and communities of the students they teach so that they can do a better job in the classroom.

For a little over a decade, I have conducted an ongoing field project on child-rearing practices in rural communities in Hawaii. Because I am not Hawaiian, I have found it important to show the communities I work with how serious and committed I am to knowing their culture and handling their cultural knowledge respectfully.

I would encourage teachers working with culturally diverse families to use ethnographic methods. Attending community gatherings and traditional events is one way to do this. Teachers might follow the ethnographic strategy of participant observation. In this way they are part of the action, alternating between being in the center of things and observing interactions at the periphery. It's important to notice who talks to whom in the community and who has the leadership for different issues in the family.

For example, in Hawaiian culture, the elders play a very important role in transmitting the cultural rituals of the community. This knowledge has translated into culturally-specific practice in the Hawaiian schools whereby the community selects an elder to come to the school every day, go into the classrooms, and give lessons to the children.

Even if a teacher can't become fully immersed in the community, he or she can listen carefully to the vocabulary of the community and the ways parents talk about schooling and the classroom. There is also an inescapable value to having an “every day” presence in the community, like buying groceries or going to church there. It's important to make a connection with families and communities and that the community views the teacher as a willing participant.

Andrew Schneider-Muñoz
Vice President of Research and Development
City Year
Boston, Massachusetts
www.cityear.org

Ed Greene from Montclair State University writes:

Teacher preparation programs should institute lifelong learning principles that encourage students to examine their values, attitudes, standards of acceptable behavior, and the ways in which these things influence their beliefs about teaching and learning. Because we live in a dynamic climate of demographic change, there should also be time devoted to examining issues of language, race, class, gender, culture, values, and beliefs. Faculty should be (or become) knowledgeable about these issues and include assignments that help them facilitate dialogue that deconstruct stereotypes and myths about families. Without such opportunities, future classroom practitioners may perpetuate victim blaming and deficit model approaches in their classroom and program practices.

Equally important, we all need to identify and use the strengths of the children and families we serve. Parents and other family members can be resources whose perspectives, perceptions, and concerns may often help reveal strengths that, too often, are overlooked. Students in teacher preparation programs must also learn how to develop and use trust-building strategies, and, if possible, experience approaches respectful cross-cultural dialogue.

What is described here is not a one-semester class or a single lecture on culturally diverse families. The related content and learning processes require time, study, and planning. Ideally, the knowledge, skills, and experiences discussed here should be explicitly woven throughout the teacher preparation institution's program of study and field-based experiences. This is lifelong work that will, hopefully, increase the number of educators who are socially and culturally conscious, competent, and confident, as they serve children and families.

Ed Greene
Associate Professor
Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education
School of Education and Human Services
Montclair State University
Upper Montclair, New Jersey

Carol S. Huntsinger from College of Lake County writes:

In my own research, I examine the parenting beliefs and practices of immigrant Chinese American families, as compared to European American families. In my classes we discuss cultural belief systems and view videotapes that compare different cultures. Often students haven't thought about what their beliefs are. When they talk about these issues they begin to define their own beliefs and practices, and to become aware of the perspectives of other class members. One assignment in my class involves an interview of a parent from another culture regarding child-rearing techniques. The students use an interview questionnaire I've developed and used in my research. I ask the students to conduct the interview, transcribe it, and then answer the questions themselves. It is interesting for them to compare their own beliefs with the beliefs of the parents interviewed. We reflect on and question our own practices and learn to appreciate those of others. This exercise enables us to be more culturally sensitive to parents and families.

Carol S. Huntsinger
Professor of Psychology and Education
College of Lake County
Grayslake, Illinois

Peter Bak-Fun Wong, Principal of the Josiah Quincy Upper School in Boston, Massachusetts, writes:

I look at schools as if they are leather wine skin. If the skin is old, it cracks. It is not that the wine is bad, but rather that the leather skin must be reworked. We created the leather skin. The new leather skin must be more global. Our schools are now diverse and must be flexible to allow for our differences.

In Chinatown, the opportunity for education is crucial. Families give up everything to come over here. There is a lot of stress on these families and social economic pressure to succeed. In the community there is uncertainty and a fear of failure. Looking at the issues facing today's youth and their present realities we must educate and encourage everyone to love and respect other people, their cultures, others' points of views, and themselves.

The four pavilions we follow in our school are critical to the Chinatown community because they are the essence of the combination of the Eastern and Western styles of education. The pavilions are for both students and families. The cultural pavilion concentrates on world cultures, race, and ethnicity, and acknowledges that school and family cannot exist without harmony in society. We have so many things in common. So, we talk about the commonalities first. Then, we talk about our diversity. A lot of people don't appreciate other cultures because they don't know or appreciate their own. We help to involve parents in the process by holding school meetings on Saturdays in different areas in the neighborhoods so that they can actually attend.

Peter Bak-Fun Wong
Principal
Josiah Quincy Upper School
Boston, Massachusetts

Diane Burts from Louisiana State University writes:

The trends initiated by NCATE or NAEYC demonstrate that we want students in preservice programs not only to know about families, but also to interact and work with families from diverse backgrounds. New state guidelines are discussing ways teachers can interface with families and work with less traditional ways of interaction. At LSU we teach classes specifically in family involvement in the graduate and undergraduate level and look at strategies for involving families from diverse backgrounds. Research shows community leaders are becoming more involved and teachers must be aware of how to link with other agencies and what resources are available that sometimes families are less likely to know about. Teachers need to work on more positive and open attitudes. Teachers need to have positive attitudes and beliefs that there are possibilities for collaboration. They must have the willingness to reach out. They must understand the possibilities and issues that exist. Students must learn the environment they teach in, especially if they are separated from it, to understand all the possibilities.

Diane Burts
Professor, School of Human Ecology
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Martha Dever from Utah State University writes:

In recent decades, our national perspective on community and family involvement has evolved. Historically, family involvement was primarily mothers volunteering or accompanying classes on field trips, particularly in the early grades. Parents who did not participate were often considered parents who did not care. Now, we are acknowledging a broad variety of family value systems. For example, in some cultures, parents consider it to be intrusive to come to school and rude to challenge a homework assignment.

Family diversity must be a central component in teacher education programs. Teachers need to understand family structures, embrace diverse family values, demonstrate tolerance, and be prepared to reach families of all types. The objective of teacher educators should be to emphasize the importance of the many ways to include parents in the learning process and promote learning at home.

Martha Dever
Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education
Utah State University
Logan, Utah

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A Public Agenda survey (People's Chief Concerns, 1999) claims that 55% of the public consider lack of parent involvement a “major problem” facing public schools. What is your opinion and how does your work address this issue?
Jorge Izquierdo, Superintendent of District 6 in New York City, writes:

I believe that a large number of parents are disenchanted with schools. I've been finding ways to bring them back and show them there is hope.

First, I invite parents to come into schools with me. My district is the largest in Manhattan. Unfortunately, we are a low-performing district with a number of limited English proficient students. The majority of our families are immigrants from the Dominican Republic. To make them more comfortable with schools, I conduct walk-throughs, where every week about 15 parents walk through a building and learn about instructional practices. We have rich conversations about how schools might be different than those they attended. What people also realize after the visit is that we do a good job with limited resources

Second, as schools, we can do better. We haven't done enough because we don't reach out and make our schools family friendly places. When parents visit schools they often don't feel welcome. Schools must be a lot more welcoming, meet parents where they are, and encourage their participation. For example, as a principal I started Café 163. What began as a one-time breakfast to meet parents turned into a weekly breakfast forum, where parents eventually took over the organization of the entire activity. It's also important when we invite parents to meetings that these are organized, consistent, and have follow through. Otherwise, parents get turned off and don't come back.

Finally, I've involved parents in school restructuring. Student flight is one of the biggest challenges facing our district. Historically, the city schools have not been doing well, and middle- and upper-class parents enroll their children in other schools. It is extremely difficult to change schools when middle- and upper-class parents leave because they don't have faith in our schools. We are now seeing an influx of upper/middle-class families in our district and my goal is to bring them in and have them stay. To do this we are converting two middle schools into smaller academies. Parents have been part of this planning process. Parents must be interested, because if they're not, the children won't succeed.

My goal is to educate parents to the degree that they understand good instruction and become able to support our schools and our children. We have to focus our sights on instruction and we must have the entire community involved in doing it. The parents are key.

Jorge Izquierdo
Superintendent of District 6
New York, New York

Kathy Nakagawa from Arizona State University writes:

Although the lack of parent involvement is often listed as a major problem facing public schools, this (mis)conception places both parents and schools between a rock and a hard place. This view suggests that schools cannot improve without parents, but if schools are doing poorly, then parents (not the schools) are the problem. The reality is that both schools and parents need greater support, not just from each other, but also from the surrounding community. For instance, increasingly, urban schools face the challenge of “city migrant” students—those students whose families move numerous times throughout the year from school to school within the same district or between neighboring districts. The reasons for these moves vary from a need for affordable housing to changes in family structure. This constant movement presents a special challenge to building strong family-school relationships. What should schools do to address this challenge?

In our recent article, The “City Migrant” Dilemma: Building Community at High Mobility Schools, my colleagues and I found that many schools with high levels of mobility also provide outreach through counseling, adult education classes, and additional academic support for children. We found that some schools did a great deal to address the needs of city migrant families—for instance creating special classroom support for the children—whereas others viewed transience as a problem that the schools could not control, and so did little to support these families. We also suggest that schools cannot address this challenge alone; improved community development is needed to provide access to resources, such as better housing and job opportunities, that will allow these city migrant families to become more stable.

Kathryn Nakagawa
Assistant Professor
Psychology in Education
Arizona State University College of Education
Tempe, Arizona
www.ed.asu.edu/coe

Reference
Nakagawa, K., Stafford, M. E., Fisher, T. A., & Matthews, L. (2002). The “city migrant” dilemma: Building community at high-mobility urban schools. Urban Educaiton, 37, 96-125.

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Does the workplace hinder family involvement in children's education?
Claire Smrekar from Vanderbilt University writes:

Our report, March Toward Excellence: School Success and Minority Student Achievement in Department of Defense Schools, underscores the value of a “community-wide, corporate commitment” to children's education. We believe that nonmilitary settings can gain similarly impressive levels of commitment to public education by making more visible the facets of the workplace that limit the ability of employees to participate more fully in school-based activities. Schools tend to structure school-based activities for traditional, stay-at-home mothers. At the same time, a large number of households include parents who are employed in full-time occupations that provide little flexibility and opportunity for parents to leave work during school hours. As schools begin to rethink the purpose and organization of parent involvement activities, employers should reevaluate workplace policies that hinder the kind of parental commitment to educational excellence that organized business groups are demanding in the current debate on the quality of our nation's schools.

Claire Smrekar
Associate Professor
Department of Leadership and Organizations
Peabody College
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee
peabody.vanderbilt.edu/peabody

Holly Kreider and Ellen Mayer, researchers on the School Transition Study at Harvard Family Research Project, write:

Our own research suggests that the answer is yes, but also no. We found that low-income mothers who worked full-time tended to be less involved at school than those who worked part-time. However, while work may hinder family involvement in some ways, it may also pose opportunities. Conditions such as positive workplace relationships and climate, and some jobs in the nonprofit and small business sectors, may help provide such opportunities. For example, mothers in our study described communicating with their child's teacher from their workplace—such as by phone or the office fax machine. Several moms brought their children to family friendly workplaces for child care and learning purposes—such as to access computer programs. Others drew upon supervisors and coworkers for educational advice and other supports—such as help in choosing a good school.

Holly Kreider
Project Manager

Ellen Mayer
Research Associate

Harvard Family Research Project
Cambridge, Massachusetts
www.hfrp.org

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Does family involvement in high school matter?
Rae Simpson from the Project on the Parenting of Adolescents writes:

My report, Raising Teens: A Synthesis of Research and a Foundation for Action, is primarily intended for people who work with parents—teachers being an important group. A network of caring adults is crucial for positive teen outcomes and parents and non-parents need to see each other as allies. Teachers therefore need the appropriate skills for collaborating with parents on behalf of teens. Many of the natural structures for parent involvement disappear in high school, so some of the skills teachers need involve setting up frameworks for teachers and parents to be in contact. Teachers also require a knowledge base of both teen and adult development, and they must be aware of issues that both parents and teens may be struggling with developmentally. Finally, so that parents can monitor their teens' school achievement, teachers must be proficient in balancing the increasing privacy teens deserve with the continuing role of explaining clearly to parents about academic strengths and needs.

A. Rae Simpson
Project on the Parenting of Adolescents
Center for Health Communication
Harvard School of Public Health
Boston, Massachusetts
www.hsph.harvard.edu/chc/parenting

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Is teacher preparation key to improving teacher practices with families? What are the alternatives?
Anne T. Henderson from NYU writes:

Whether and how well teachers engage their students' families depends more on the culture of the school where they work than on their training. Is it a fortress school, bent on protecting itself from “outsiders,” or a partnership school, that supports productive relationships with families? Teachers must be able to be leaders. If they enter a poorly performing school, they must know how to work with their colleagues, parents, and community members to improve it.

With this in mind, I recommend three key points for teacher preparation programs:

1. Make sure teachers understand that engaging families is a vital part of their job, and why. The research is clear that students with involved families tend to do better in school, stay in school longer, and go on to post-secondary education. If teachers engage families children will do better, and if they don't (and this is important), children will do worse. It's not a choice.

2. Build strategies for engaging families and working with community groups into every course prospective teachers take. Develop a good methods course, too, and don't make it optional. Give them useful, practical tools to do this job.

3. Establish a relationship with a local school that works well with families and help it do even better. Make sure every prospective teacher spends time there, experiences the benefits, and sees, first hand, how it's done.

Anne T. Henderson
Institute for Education and Social Policy
New York University
1640 Roxanna Road, NW
Washington, DC 20012
www.nyu.edu/iesp/home.html

Dorothy Rich from the Home and School Institute writes:

We need academies to provide in-service and preservice training in school and family/community involvement. It's harder to change schools of education, even though some education leaders are trying. Academies could operate on a team concept and include teachers, school district staff, state education department staff, teacher educators, parent leaders. The goal will be to enable these teams to provide training on site directly in communities across the nation. We have successful models for this kind of initiative. Now, we need the support to make it happen more widely.

Dorothy Rich
Founder/President
The Home and School Institute
Washington, DC
www.megaskillshsi.org

Sue Ferguson from the National Coalition of Parent Involvement in Education writes:

Very little is done on the preservice or in-service level to provide teachers with greater understanding and skills needed to effectively teach students from cultural backgrounds different from their own, or to recognize cultural and economic factors that may influence family-school dynamics. Existing professional development programs and courses seldom address cultural and class differences in relationship to their impact in the classroom or home-school interactions. If fact, even having teachers confront their own prejudice toward other races, lifestyles, and economic class is almost unheard of. Yet the power of such prejudice “tracks” kids and their families, keeping academic expectations low and families at arms length. Professional development programs need to develop multiple strategies to provide teachers with tools to successfully break through these barriers. Resources such as the Public Education Network and Public Agenda report Quality Now! Results of National Conversations on Education and Race as well as emerging research from the Poverty and Race Research Action Council can provide invaluable knowledge and information. Programs must embed these subjects within the curricula and create ongoing opportunities for discussion. Family/school/community field experiences emphasizing diversity must also be relentlessly pursued.

Sue Ferguson
Chair
National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education
Washington, DC
www.ncpie.org

Nancy Chavkin, Professor at Southwest Texas State University, writes:

We don't prepare people in education for a broad conceptualization of the whole child. We teach them about very specific areas; we teach them to work alone and not as team members. Even if we do prepare them, when they get into the real world, the school's not set up for them to do that. There is a very weak policy about parent involvement in many schools. There's still a lot of rhetoric and parent involvement is not well supported.

Nancy Chavkin
Professor and Co-Director
Center for Children and Families
Southwest Texas State University
San Marcos, Texas
www.health.txstate.edu/sowk/ccf/ccf.htm

Joyce Epstein, Director of the Center on School, Family & Community Partnerships, writes:

Family-school partnership is really a very immature field of study compared to other aspects of education. People talk about thirty years of research and that's very young in terms of a research enterprise. There must be an investment for research over the next ten years, and how to develop this infrastructure in colleges and universities will be an interesting and challenging task.

Joyce Epstein
Director
Center on School, Family & Community Partnerships
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
www.csos.jhu.edu/p2000/center.htm

Gord Kerr, Founder of the Ontario School Council Support Centre, writes:

People involved in the Ontario school council system are still learning how to make them work for maximum possible advantage. School council members have not had training in the more advanced responsibility of improving student learning. Without guidance, involved parents will slip back into their “comfort zones” and school councils will continue to struggle to move beyond the more traditional roles of parent groups. The way forward appears to involve a focus on learning for school council participants, principals, and teaching professionals.

Gord Kerr
Founder
Ontario School Council Support Centre
Ontario, Canada
www.schoolcouncils.net