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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY – INCREASING PARENT INVOLVEMENT

Amato, Paul R. and Rivera, Fernando (1999). Parental Involvement and Children’s Behavior Problems. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 375-384.

This study uses data from the 1987-1988 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) to test the hypothesis that father who behave in an authoritative manner or positive involvement is linked with fewer behavior problems in children living in two-parent households. Four control variables were used in the study: 1) Parental age; 2) Parental education; 3) Family size; and 4) Family Structure (e.g., stepfather status). The researchers found that three of the four variables were associated with children’s behavior problems. Parental education was linked with fewer behavioral problems suggesting that better educated parents are prone to be more active in their children’s lives. Family size was positively linked with maternal involvement but not parental involvement. Children had increased behavior problems in households having stepfathers, where there is less parental involvement. As hypothesized, the researcher found that fathers’ involvement and support diminished the likelihood of children’s behavioral problems. The age of the parents was negatively linked with the involvement of both parents suggesting that older parents may have children that requires less attention and may spend more time away from home. Finally, the study suggests that the positive estimated effect of father’s involvement holds true for Latinos and Black Americans, as well as for Whites.

Balli, Sandra J., Demo, David H., and Wedman, John F. (1998). Family Involvement with Children’s Homework: An Intervention in the Middle Grades. Family Relations, Vol. 47, No. 2, 149-157.

This study investigates a mathematics homework intervention designed to increase family involvement in their children’s homework. A total of 74 Caucasian sixth graders (31 boys and 43 girls) and their predominately middle-class families participated in the study. The authors examined family involvement with homework under three scenarios. In the first group (Group 1), no prompts were given to family members to be involved in their child’s mathematics homework. Students in the second group (Group 2) where prompted to involve family members with their mathematics homework. With the final group (Group 3), both the student and the family members were encouraged to involve family members with mathematics homework. The study found that groups 2 and 3 were both substantially more involved with mathematics homework than was group 1, but there was no significant difference in family involvement between groups 2 and 3. Additionally, groups 2 and 3 reported significantly more family involvement with mathematics homework versus other homework. As hypothesized, the researchers found that the group with the highest average homework scores was the group where student and family members were prompted to involve family members with mathematics homework (Group 3), followed by Group 2 and then by Group 1. The study found that students whose parents held a college degree did substantially better on the mathematics posttest than students whose parents did not hold a college degree. Finally, family size did not significantly impact student achievement or family involvement Baker, A. J.; S. Kessler-Sklar; C. Piotrkowski; and F. L. Parker. 1999. “Kindergarten and First-Grade Teachers' Reported Knowledge of Parents' Involvement in Their Children's Education.” The Elementary School Journal 99 (4): 367-380.

In this article, Baker, Sklar, Piotrkowski and Parker look at the relationship between teachers and parents and the level of knowledge teachers possess about parental involvement. It is commonly accepted that a partnership between parents and teachers is instrumental in furthering the education of children - particularly at the younger ages - as it creates pathways of communication that allow for teachers and parents to feed off of one another and support each other's efforts. When teachers have information about parent's involvement, it enables them to promote further home learning and give suggestions for how parents can continue the lessons of the classroom at home. In order to study this relationship, Baker et. all survey 190 kindergarten and first grade teachers from 65 schools regarding their perceived knowledge of parental involvement. Teachers were surveyed on one or more parents, and then one survey was selected at random to eliminate bias among teachers towards particular parents. The survey was set up to ask several questions in which teachers responding in a sliding scale (from 0-4). The results of the survey were then analyzed. The results yielded predictable results. On average, teachers claimed higher levels of knowledge of parental involvement for activities that were directly observable to the teachers. For example, participation in the classroom. However, teachers reported knowing little or nothing in several areas and activities that fell outside of the classroom, such as a parent helping a child write stories or taking the child to the library. This shows a significant failure in the communication between teachers and parents which represents a gap between the information’s teachers have and what they need in order to foster greater learning. From these results, Baker et. all conclude that there are often insufficient opportunities for parents and teachers to communicate effectively. Often, there is not time built into the teacher’s day that would allow them to contact parents at home or engage in other forms of communication that would enhance their knowledge of parental involvement. Similarly, working parents may simply have less time to drop by the school and speak one on one with their child's teacher. Baker et. all state that future research is needed to gain more specific knowledge of teacher-parent communication and identify factors that may have been overlooked in their study. For example, what teachers perceived they knew and what the actual truth was may be strikingly different. Also, teachers themselves may feel that there is no place for excessive parental involvement in schools and may have responded to the survey in a biased manner. Additionally, it would be beneficial to survey the parents and gain their perspective on their levels of involvement and their perceptions of why they are not involved more. In sum, the article provides insight into the lack of communication between teachers and parents, but requires further study in order to make conclusive statements about the underlying reasons for the lack of knowledge between parents and teachers.

Bakker, J., Denessen, E., Brus-Laeven, M. (2007). Socio-economic background, parental involvement and teacher perceptions of these in relation to pupil achievement. Educational Studies, 33 (2), 177-192.

This study of parental involvement with students is interesting as it is done in the Netherlands rather than the United States. It provides an international approach to the relevant questions of parental involvement in education. This particular project is interesting also in that it studies (through surveys) the parents’ self-perception of involvement with their children’s education as well as teacher assumptions about the same child’s parents’ involvement. In this case, the study revealed that the crucial correlation to a student’s academic success was the teacher’s assumption of parental involvement. If the teacher assumed a higher level of parental involvement, the student was more likely to have higher levels of academic success. Although this is an article published in a peer-reviewed journal by a university member in the Netherlands, I feel that it lacks in a certain regard. Unfortunately, the study assumes causality, but does not seek to prove it. Although there was no study of why the students did better if their teachers expected a higher level of parental involvement, the study posits it is possible that teachers attend more to students in that situation. However, it does not include the possibility that teachers assume higher levels of parental involvement because the students have higher levels of academic success.

Barnard, Wendy M. (2004). Parent Involvement in Elementary School and Educational Attainment. Children and Youth Services Review, Vol. 26, 39-62.

This study investigates the relationship between parent involvement in elementary school and student’s success in high school at the age of 14 and age 20. The author hypothesizes that parental involvement in school is a vital part in early childhood education to help promote long- term school success. Evidence shows that parental involvement at home has a direct correlation with a child’s achievement. A total of 1165 children within the Chicago Public Schools were included in the study sample. The author found that the involvement of parents in their child’s education, particularly early in the educational process, has a positive benefit. There was a 21 percent lower likelihood that a child would drop out from school for each year that a teacher rated a parent as being involved in their child’s education. Limitations to the study include 1) parental involvement measures may have limited validity; 2) model specification error must be taken into consideration; and 3) other indicators of school success may exist that were not taken into consideration. However, one implication of the study includes the ability to promote cost- effective ways to improve existing school programs to aid in a child’s educational achievements.

Bogenschneider, Karen (2004). Parental Involvement in Adolescent Schooling: A Proximal Process with Transcontextual Validity. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 59(3), 718-733.

This study examines whether parental involvement in their children’s education has transcontextual validity. The data for the study came from questionnaires administered to approximately 10,000 students in grades 9 through 12 during the 1987-1988 school year in nine schools located in the states of Wisconsin and California. These schools were selected because of the cross-section of urban, rural and suburban children from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. The author examined three questions: 1) Whether parents’ school involvement was a proximal process association (e.g., whether mean scores differ in diverse context) with their children’s academic success?; 2) Whether school involvement was influenced by the parents’ level of education; and 3) Whether parental involvement is associated with family structure (e.g., biological mother and father, single mother, and mother and stepfather)? The findings revealed that both parents’ involvement was significantly correlated with high grade point averages. As hypothesized, parents with high level of education were more involved in their children’s education than parents with moderate or low levels of education. In turn, parents with moderate levels of education were more involved than those with low levels of education. Finally, both parents’ level of involvement was significantly linked with family structure. Biological parents were found to be more involved than single mothers, custodial fathers or mother-stepfather families.

Calabrese Barton. Angela, Corey Drake, Jose Gustavo Perez, Kathleen St Louis, Magnia George. (May 2004). Ecologies of Parental Engagement in Urban Education. Educational Researcher, 33(4). 3-12.

Although published in a peer reviewed journal, unfortunately this article does not list the association or credentials of the authors. However, the article does make an important point about how parental involvement is (or isn’t) defined in social and academic realms. It discusses that there has not been a consistent definition or understanding of “parent involvement” between the literature, schools, or parents. Through many case studies, this article presents the idea that it is important to consider parental engagement as more than parents just attending parent-teacher conferences and open houses. Engagement should be measured based upon the parent’s resources, understanding of why engagement is important and how to become involved, and actual participation. Engagement is more than just attending school functions, but includes concern for student’s performance and outside action to help the student succeed. This is an interesting study as it helps to redefine the idea of parental involvement. It is also based upon case studies rather than more traditional statistical research. The authors’ focus on urban low- income schools is also pertinent to the definition of engagement as including resources and means to be involved. The Researchers wanted to construct an account of parental involvement. Grounded in everyday practice that goes beyond list of things that food parents do for their children’s education. They make a case for a new data-driven framework for understanding parental engagement in urban elementary schools, the Ecologies of Parental Engagement (EPE) framework. The EPE framework marks a fundamental shift in understanding parents’ involvement in their children’s education. (A shift from focusing primarily on what parents do to engage with their children’s schools and with other actors within those schools, to also considering how parents understand the hows and whys of their engagement, and how this engagement relates more broadly to parents’ experiences and action both inside and out of the school community. The Researches highlight both space and capital play in the relative success parents (and teachers) have in engaging parents in the academic venue of urban schooling. They concluded the EPE placed parents within a network of actors; it also, enables the researcher to understand the engagement in relation to many things, not just those things traditionally deemed important in schools. It showed how parents engaged in very personal ways in their children’s education by authoring personal spaces within schools and classrooms in which they are able to activate interactive capital. Carter, R.S., and R.A. Wojtkiewicz. 2000. “Parental Involvement with Adolescents' Education: Do Daughters or Sons get More Help?” Adolescence 35 (137): 29-44.

The article discusses whether parents are involved with sons differently than they are with daughters. Their findings indicate that sons and daughters received help from their parents in different ways. The researchers used data collected from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), which had information from 25,000 students in the eighth-grade. After a discussion on the literature available on gender differences in parental involvement, the authors state the hypothesis that sons receive more involvement from their parents than girls. Their analysis of that data showed mixed results. In four of the seven measures of parental involvement, daughters received more attention. They go on to state that therefore the research showed that parents were more involved more with daughters than sons. The authors state that further research should try to understand the reasons behind this difference. Overall, the authors used strong parental measuring to tools to find out whether sons or daughters receive more parental involvement. However, the research showed that the measures for parental involvement were split, four measure favored daughters and three favored sons. That is not a convincing argument for daughters receiving more parental involvement.

Christenson, S., Rounds, T., & Gorney, D. (1992). Family factors and student achievement: An avenue to increase students’ success. School Psychology Quarterly, 7, 178–206.

This particular article found in the School Psychology Quarterly is useful as a literature review on the subject of parental involvement in school. The authors discuss a multitude of sources to arrive at conclusions based upon others’ research. Their research found that five family factors are important in parental involvement: parent expectations and attributions, structure for learning, home affective environment, discipline, and parent involvement. Their purpose is to identify these “family factors that influence student achievement and to provide recommendations for practice in school psychology” (180). The authors suggest that after gathering information about each area, it is possible to design a home-based learning intervention for students. They list each area and possible methods for school psychologists to employ in order to effectively encourage each type of parent involvement. The article posts an interesting perspective that school psychologists should take an active role in tailoring and encouraging parental involvement in students’ lives. The authors from the University of Minnesota have extensively researched the topic and seem to have a useful idea on how to better employ parental involvement.

Crosnoe, R.(2001, July). Academic orientation and parental involvement in education during high school. Sociology of Education, 74(3), 210-230.

A life course theory was applied to this research to find correlations between adolescent orientation and parental involvement in education. The author chose life course because unlike previous literature, it follows lives across time as opposed to stagnant. Data was collected about official transcripts of students from six schools in two different districts among varying ethnic and racial backgrounds. A data set is derived from a longitudinal study of California and Wisconsin school covering social, educational, and psychological factors for three years. Students in the college-preparatory track start off with the highest orientation and involvement but also drop off the most significantly. The decline of involvement is most among the high achieving students. The remedial track saw the greatest declines among minority students.

Cooper, C.E. & Crosnoe, R. (2007). The engagement in schooling of economically disadvantaged parents and children. Youth & Society, 38(3), 372-391.

Cooper & Crosnoe set out to answer two main questions. The first question asks does economic disadvantage disrupt parental involvement in education and children’s academic orientation (380)? The second question asks if economic disadvantage in the family moderate the association between parental involvement and children’s academic orientation (382)? To answer these questions, the researchers drew from a sample from the Philadelphia Project, a longitudinal study launched in 1990 by the MacArthur Network on Successful Adolescent Development in High Risk Settings. The families were screened via telephone interviews. Of the potential subjects, 489 target children and their primary caregivers completed in-person interviews and questionnaires in 1991. Concerning the first question, they found children’s academic orientation was not significantly associated with economic disadvantage in the family. On the other hand, they also found that parental involvement in education was significantly associated with economic disadvantage. This association decreased, however, when adding child characteristics such as age and academic achievement. Concerning the second question, they found that economic disadvantage in the family did moderate the association between parental involvement in education and the academic orientation of children. As parental involvement in education increases, so does children’s academic orientation for disadvantaged youths. The opposite is true for non-disadvantaged youths. This also suggests that because economically disadvantaged children have fewer resources available, the resources that they tend to benefit more from the resources that they have. In the research, all the variables and measures were well laid out in an organized manner. They expand on the definition of poverty to include more holistic factors. There may be some issues with the study using data from 12 years ago. The authors also note that further research is needed but this research offers important insight into the paradox of American education (389).

Crosnoe, R.(2001, July). Academic orientation and parental involvement in education during high school. Sociology of Education, 74(3), 210-230.

A life course theory was applied to this research to find correlations between adolescent orientation and parental involvement in education. The author chose life course because unlike previous literature, it follows lives across time as opposed to stagnant. Data was collected about official transcripts of students from six schools in two different districts among varying ethnic and racial backgrounds. A data set is derived from a longitudinal study of California and Wisconsin school covering social, educational, and psychological factors for three years. Students in the college-preparatory track start off with the highest orientation and involvement but also drop off the most significantly. The decline of involvement is most among the high achieving students. The remedial track saw the greatest declines among minority students. Dee, Thomas S., Wei Ha, and Brian A. Jacob. (2006/2007). The Effects of School Size on Parental Involvement and Social Capital: Evidence from the ELS:2002. Brookings Papers on Education Policy, 77-97.

The researchers in this study wanted to analyze the benefits of creating smaller schools. Proponents argued that small schools are more effective than large schools at promoting student achievement, in large part because they have positive effects on the engagement and social interactions of students and staff. The analysis also explores the enhanced involvement of students’ parents in the school and the promotion of social capital in the larger school, when dealing with smaller schools. The analysis was based on the nationally representative data from the base year of the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002). In addition to conducting standard multivariate analyses, observed traits were used to establish bounds of causal effects of school size across parents connected to smaller and larger schools. The hypothesis was born out in rural communities; however there are so few small schools in urban communities there are no conclusions in the data about school size in these contexts. Therefore though the data seems to support further study in the benefits of small school size, it cannot be discounted that the results may be due to the cultural or economic features unique to rural communities and that it may limit the external validity for other areas.

De Gaetano, Y., (2007). The role of culture in engaging Latino parents’ involvement in school. Urban Education, 42(2), 145-162.

De Gaetano’s research tries to combat the belief that Latino parents do not care about the children’s education. Thus the main problem is the low involvement of Latino parents in the academic lives of their kids. De Gaetano takes a different approach to initiating parental involvement by enacting a program that explores the culture and background of the parents, thus in turn getting them more involved. Her main argument is the when Latino parents’ cultures are focused in positive ways, they are able to be engaged substantively in the schooling process of their children (146). The Cross Cultural Demonstration Project was created out of the concern about low Latino parental involvement. The sample was drawn from two schools, where the predominant race was Latino. She, unfortunately does not mention what the sample size is. The goal of this 3 year project was to improve academic outcomes of English-language learners through the use of specific language strategies to enable children to become bilingual and the use of culture as a mediator of learning. Through informal and formal ways of participation, the parents were more becoming more engaged year after year. Through the workshops, parents became more comfortable and trusting of the teachers. This study provides great insight into the views and beliefs of Latino parents in these two schools. De Gaetano doesn’t mention her sample size, so there is no way of determining how generalizable it is. In addition, it cannot be generalized to a larger population due to the narrow scope of the project. More research is definitely needed in order to do that. This study may also be useful in other schools that are predominantly minorities. Desimone, Laura. 1999. “Linking Parent Involvement with Student Achievement: Do Race and Income Matter?” Journal of Educational Research 93 (1):11-30.

In this study, Laura Desimone examines parent involvement and student achievement in low and middle income families, to include white, black, Hispanic and Asian race-ethnicities. To conduct this study, data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 were used (survey data and standardized test scores). Desimone classsifed parent involvement into twelve types and then examined their relationship with math and reading scores of 8th grade students. Not surprisingly, Desimone reports several differences of parent involvement and student achievement that are directly tied to race and income. She also notes that the type of involvement must be reported when conducting a study of this nature. Desimone’s findings primarily seem to lead to more questions and recommendations for future studies, i.e. studies in this area should be more culturally specific. On the issue of income, Desimone found that what is effective for middle-income students may not be effective for low-income students; therefore a more varied plan for parent involvement is needed vs. a one size fits all approach.

Deslandes, R. & Bertrand, R. (2005 Jan-Feb). Motivation of parent involvement in secondary-level schooling. Journal of Educational Research, 98(3), 164-175.

The purpose of this study and article is to find out more about what factors lead parents to decide to become involved in their adolescents’ schooling, as opposed to the majority of studies that simply seek to understand the benefits of parental involvement. The authors examined 4 psychological constructs of parent involvement: (a) relative strength of parents’ role construction, (b) parents’ self-efficacy for helping adolescents succeed in school, (c) parents’ perceptions of teacher invitations to become involved, and (d) parents’ perceptions of students’ invitations to become involved, with the intention of predicting parent involvement at home and school. These four constructs were chosen after a classical and factor analysis of the psychometric properties was used to evaluate an initial 8 constructs, with the intention of only using the most beneficial constructs for this study. The final decision of keeping or rejecting some of the items was based mostly on the eigenvalues greater than 1 criterion and on the scree test. The authors obtained survey responses from 770 parents of adolescents (770 responses of the 1,500 questionnaires sent out) 7-9th grade, asking questions related to their involvement in their child’s Schooling. The results of this study provide evidence of grade-level differences in the predictive models of parent involvement at home and at school. For instance, after separate stepwise regression analyses to examine the best predictive models at Grades 7, 8, and 9, the variable corresponding to parents’ perception of student invitations in the academic domain was the best predictor of parent involvement in schooling at home for 7th graders. For eighth graders, parents’ perceptions of students’ invitations in the social domain was the most powerful predictor. Ninth graders best predictor was Parents’ perceptions of student invitations in the academic domain. Also, the results of the study indicate the necessity for considering parental involvement at school separately from parental involvement at home, as opposed to examining involvement in a holistic global context. This information has implications for how administrators, teachers, students, and parents should interact in the most effective way for a child’s schooling. The sample population seems a bit skewed, because the parents who didn’t respond to the survey may be an important, or even key population when considering psychological constructs of parental involvement.

Fan, X.T. 2001.”Parental Involvement and Students' Academic Achievement: A Growth Modeling Analysis.” Journal of Experimental Education 70 (1): 27-61.

The article focused on the academic improvement of students during their four years of high school and what kind of influence the parents had on that improvement. The author used data collected in the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS: 88) for the analysis. The article begins with a literature review discussing the current information available on the subject of the effects of parental involvement on student’s academic achievements. The previous research discussed is contradictory to a point. The author uses several analytical tools including: exploratory factor analysis, multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), and latent growth modeling analysis. His findings suggest that social economic status (SES) plays a role in a student’s academic performance. Parental involvement is effected by the SES of the family. However, the most important measurement of parental involvement was the parent’s aspirations for their child. This had the most consistent influence on their child’s academic development, regardless of SES. The author concludes his research by discussing some of the limitations. The first one is that parental involvement does not have a consistent definition. Another limitation is the loss of participants in the NELS: 88 data due to the length of time of the study. They had students answer questionnaires over a four year period, once in 1988, again in 1990 and again in 1992. Over the years, they lost participants, and this therefore affects the data collection process. The author was concerned that this could lead to a bias in the data collected.

Fan, Xitao and Michael Chen. (2001, March). Parental Involvement and Students’ Academic Achievement: a meta-analysis. Educational Psychological Review, 13 (1), 1- 22.

The researchers have taken the argument provided by other academics that parental involvement has a positive influence on students’ academic achievement. They have determined that the vast proportion of literature on this subject is qualitative and non-empirical. They noted that among the empirical studies there appeared to be considerable inconsistencies. A meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the quantitative literature about the relationship between parental involvement and students’ academic achievement. The findings revealed a small to moderate, and practically meaningful, relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement. The study showed that the relationship was strongest when parents hoped for educational achievement and weakest with regard to home supervision. The relationship was also stronger when academic achievement was represented by a global indicator (e.g., GPA) than by a subject specific indicator (e.g., math grade). Limitations to the study were due to the smaller than anticipated number of empirical studies. Also the researchers suggested that future studies pay special attention to the operational definition and measurement of parental involvement, and should carefully document each definition measurement Fantuzzo, J; E. Tighe; and S. Childs. 2000. “Family Involvement Questionnaire: A Multivariate Assessment of Family Participation in Early Childhood Education.” Journal of Educational Psychology 92 (2):367-376.

The authors in this study developed and tested a multidimensional measure - the Family Involvement Questionnaire (FIQ) - to gauge family involvement in early childhood education. To ensure relevancy, parents and teachers assisted in the questionnaire’s development. The study group consisted of preschool, kindergarten and first-grade children in an urban setting with lower income and minority families. Family involvement was divided into three areas: school- based involvement, home-school conferencing (meeting with teachers), home-based involvement. The authors found that the higher the level of education that parent’s possess, the more involved they were in school. This is due to the fact that they have more experience with the school setting and educational terminology. Parents that are married and living together are also more likely to be involved at home and at school. Single parents with low levels of education are most at risk for not being involved with their child’s education. Though the article’s terminology is difficult to follow at points, the questionnaire itself is helpful in providing good examples of questions that could be used for surveying family involvement practices.

Feuerstein, Abe. 2000. “School Characteristics and Parent Involvement: Influences on Participation in Children's Schools.” Journal of Educational Research 94 (1): 29-39.

In this study the author looked towards many other researchers’ studies on parental involvement. The author looked at the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELA) data and created nine dependent variables and created his own empirical study from the data. The author reemphasizes the need for parental involvement to create success in the student’s academic lives. The author also believes his study can point to suggestions on how to get parents more involved by looking at some of the harder to change variables. The author comes up with a few solutions but believes further study is needed on the subject. This is a great empirical study with good statistical data to back up the findings. Unfortunately, the findings were not anything new in this field of research.

Floyd, L. 1998. “Joining Hands- A Parental Involvement Program.” Urban Education 33: 123-135.

Lenore Floyd, of Cleveland State University, explains the benefits of having programs to encourage low-income families to participate in their child’s education. In particular he outlines the different phases of the Joining Hands project. Floyd begins by citing of few other researchers studies that find a decline in recent years of parental involvement. The studies also found that the traditional model of parental involvement does not hold true for low-income families and must be revised. The author interviews parents, teachers, and administrators after each phase of the program to see the unique perspectives that come from each side. The Joining Hands program has been successful because of the careful attention to detail by the program implementers. They met outside of the school, spoke to the issues faced by many low-income parents, included multicultural resources, and gave real solutions to struggling families on how to become involved in their students academic life.

Gonzalez-DeHass, A., et al. (2005, June). Examining the relationship between parental involvement and student motivation. Educational Psychology Review, 17(2), 99-123.

The purpose of this article is to present some of the specific types of parent involvement related to students’ motivation, as related to academic success, by conducting a meta-analysis of relevant studies most relevant to this subject. The authors searched the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) and PsycINFO online databases for articles relating to parent involvement in the child’s education with student motivation as an outcome variable as opposed to a predictor variable. The body of literature was narrowed down to thirteen studies, and the results were reviewed. The sample/population size of the studies, ranged from 10 fourth and sixth grade students who were identified as underachievers to 1025, random, K-3 elementary students. Conclusions drawn from the articles reviewed by the authors indicate parental involvement is related to the following motivational constructs: school engagement, intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, autonomy, self-regulation, mastery goal orientation, and motivation to read.

Griffith, J. (1996). Relation of parental involvement, empowerment, and school traits to student academic performance. Journal of Educational Research, 90, 33–41.

This study done by an official of the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland is a relatively short article detailing the results of survey information. The author asked the basic question: what is the relation of parental involvement in education to student performance? The author sent surveys home with students to parents, however there is not much information included about what survey questions were asked. The study concluded that schools with higher levels of parent involvement showed higher levels of success based on a standardized test. In addition, the same schools tended to have fewer, more experienced teachers than those with lower levels of parent involvement. In general, the study showed that schools with higher percentages of minority or low-income students tended to also have lower levels of parent involvement. It is important to note that the author acknowledges that the study shows a correlation, but not necessarily a causal relation. This study is useful as evidence that parental involvement is linked to higher academic performance and it identifies particular groups (minorities and low-income families) that may need to be focused on when creating parental involvement programs.

Green, C.L. & Walker, J.M.T., (2007). Parents’ Motivations for involvement in children’s education: An empirical test of a theoretical model of parental involvement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(3), 532-544.

Green and Walker set out to explain the motivations for parents to get involved in a child’s education by using Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s theoretical framework. From this framework they can examine specific predictors of parental involvement by using three main sources. The first source is parents’ motivational beliefs. The second source is perceptions of invitations to involvement. The third source is personal life context variables, such as skills and knowledge for involvement. These constructs are divided into subsections to better define the measures of the research. Thus when tested, these variables may predict parents’ self-reported involvement in education-related activities at home and at school (535). The sample was drawn from 853 parents of 1st through 6th grade children from two different schools, at two different points in time from mid-southern states. The employed the survey research method by having the questionnaire packets sent home, and returned by, the children. The results were that these constructs, aside from three of them, accounted for a significant portion of the variance in home-based parental involvement. The three constructs that were not significant predictors were general invitations for involvement from the school, specific teacher invitations, and parental skills and knowledge. These model constructs, aside from two of them, also accounted for a significant portion of the variance in school-based parental involvement. The two constructs that were not significant predictors were general invitations for involvement from the school and parental skills and knowledge. Researchers also accounted for social economic status and found that the SES variables were not significant in predicting variance in parents’ reported home-based involvement. However, the one SES variable (spouse/partner’s education) remained significant in predicting variance in parents’ school-based involvement. These findings suggest that parental involvement is motivated primarily by features of social context rather than by SES. They also found significant differences in grade level involvement and differences by school type. Involvement generally decreased at each grade level across the elementary and early middle school years. Parents of elementary school students reported significantly more home-based and school-based involvement than parents of middle school students. . Green & Walker spend a significant amount of time explaining their measures and variables with clear concepts. As the author suggests, some of the limitations may include multicollinearity of the two constructs that were not non-predicting variables of involvement. Issues may also arise from the filling out of the questionnaires by parents. This may be skewed by the parents’ own perceptions of themselves

Grolnick, W. & Slowiaczek, M. (1994). Parents’ involvement in children’s schooling: a multidimensional conceptualization and motivational model. Child Development, 65(1), 237-252.

The two goals of this study were to assess the multidimensional factors that constitute parental involvement in their child’s education and examine the link between parental involvement and increased student performance. Breaking with the previous thoughts in the literature that parental involvement fosters skill building in the child, Grolnick and Slowiaczek rather present that the child’s attitude is motivated by their parent’s level of involvement. Parents who show that their child’s education is important motivate their student toward greater achievement. Well outlined measurements used to assess parental activity and student achievement used survey data from students, parents, and teachers. Results show that parental behavior (such as attitude toward education and interest in the student’s progress), more than background variables (i.e., level of education, income) and more than household regulatory procedures (rules mandating chores and other household practices), do more to affect higher student achievement. The study does fail to take an adequate sample of different social classes and ethnicities as the sample contained 98% Caucasian, middle class families.

Hampton, F.M.; D.A. Mumford; L. Bond. 1998. “Parent Involvement in Inner-city Schools - The Project FAST Extended Family Approach to Success.” Urban Education 33 (3): 410-427.

This article discusses the success of a project called FAST (Families are Students and Teachers). This took place in an extremely impoverished area of Cleveland, OH for three years, from 1993-1996. The idea was that kindergarten students stayed with the same teacher for the three year project. In one part of the program parents were involved in monthly workshops which helped them gain the skills necessary to be more involved with their children. The goal of this project was not to achieve academic success in one certain measurement category, but to influence the entire academic development of the child. Many factors contribute to the success of this program. They include excellent teachers and parents who are willing to give the time needed to properly implement the system. The relationship between the parents and the school must be strong to make this program successful. The program in Cleveland was successful because all the players (parents, teachers, and students) had the time and commitment to make the relationship between home and school stronger. This relationship will lead to the increased academic success of the child.

Hanafin, J. and A. Lynch. 2002. “Peripheral Voices: Parental Involvement, Social Class, and Educational Disadvantage.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 23 (1): 35- 49.

Conducting a study in Ireland, the authors of this article categorized parents into two groups: peripheral and proximal. Peripheral parents were defined as those that reside on the outside of school decisions and events, while proximal parents were defined as those primarily middle-class parents who are most involved and visible within school functions. Hanafin and Lynch then went on to focus on school effectiveness regarding the task of involving parents from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. According to them, for decades, parents from working- class backgrounds have been absent from educational debate and decision-making, causing programs regarding parental needs and wishes to be based primarily on presumptions rather than fact. Group interviews with parents of pupils attending primary schools in disadvantaged areas suggested that parental involvement in school was limited to the giving and receiving of information by the school itself. These parents were found to have often been left on the periphery of school decisions. Proximal parents, on the other hand, were those who had the time and resources to sit on school boards, yet they too stated in interviews that they were not properly included in the policy making process. They felt that their roles on committees lacked any real power and were just there to “rubber-stamp” decisions already made by school authorities. There was also a universal feeling of being unwelcome when visiting the school premises, with parents reporting feelings of anxiety and intimidation when meeting teachers. Overall, although both types of parents were interested and concerned regarding their children's education, they felt excluded from participation in decision-making about school management and organization and about their children's progress. To conclude, the purpose of this article is to reveal the fact that both peripheral and proximal parental voices need to be better heard and taken into consideration when school decisions are being made.

Heyman, J., Penrose, K. & Earle, A. (2006). Meeting children’s needs: how does the United States measure up? Merril-Palmer Quarterly, 52(2), 189-215.

The goal of this article is to analyze the dilemmas faced by working parents in general and by low-income families in particular, to present new data on how public policies in the United States compare to policies in over 150 other countries in addressing these dilemmas, and determine what must be done to improve policy. The source used to collect this data was the Work, Family, and Equity Index (WFEI), a policy database developed by the author’s Project on Global Working Families. A comprehensive review of the academic literature, international agreements, treaties, covenants, and other legal documents relevant to work and family issues was completed worldwide (168 Countries), to develop the database. Topics covered include paid leave for childbearing and childrearing, care for infants and toddlers, early childhood education and care, policies to ensure working adults' availability to care for children, educational opportunities and supervision throughout the full day, educational opportunities and supervision throughout the full calendar year, paid leave to meet children's educational needs, paid leave to meet children's health needs, access to and supports for encouraging the full education and development of children with special needs, access to and supports for meeting the ongoing and health needs of children with special needs. The results of the study indicate that the United States lags far behind when it comes to improving either working conditions or social supports for families across class. The lack of policy in the United States to guarantee any form of paid leave-including, among others, paid leave to care for infants, paid sick leave, paid annual leave, and paid leave to address such needs as children's health-not only places the United States far behind the rest of the world but also has dire consequences for low-income families who cannot afford to take unpaid leave but must still address the needs of their children

Hill, N. & Taylor, L. (2004). Parental school involvement and children’s academic achievement. American Psychological Society, 13(4), 161-164.

This article studies the relationship between the school and the parent, and how this affects a child’s education. They point out major changes in a school’s responsibility, in the past; it was the parent’s responsibility to prepare a child for school and to educate the child about moral, cultural and religious topics. Today, much of this “burden” is passed onto the school or ignored entirely. They describe two mechanisms which translate to a child’s achievements: First is social capital, this is the involvement of a parent in the school. Greater involvement translates to being adapt at how the system works and eases issues as they arise. The second is social control; this is being in agreement as to what is expected from the child at home and in school. This raises concerns about barriers to a child’s education created from disagreement between school and parent as to the responsibility of each party. Also raising concerns about the effect of the socioeconomic status of the parents Ho Sui-Chu, E., and J. D. Willms. 1996. “Effects of Parental Involvement on Eighth-Grade Achievement.” Sociology of Education 69:126-141.

In their study on the effects of parental involvement on eighth grade achievement, Ho Sui-Chu and Williams attempt to examine the claim that higher socioeconomic parents (SES) engage in a higher level of parental involvement than those parents of lower SES. This theory has been predominant in the education literature and has been statistically supported previously. However, Ho Sui-Chu and Williams engage in research methods that enable them to more fully grasp the variations among parental involvement as well as looking both empirically and theoretically at what "parental involvement" implies. Ho Sui-Chu and Williams examine four measures of parental involvement - two are predominantly centered in the home (discussion and supervision) and two are traditional forms of parental involvement in education (contact with the school and volunteering/PTO meetings, etc.). By broadening the definition of parental involvement past the borders of what has traditionally been studied, Ho Sui-Chu and Williams are able to more accurately determine where the greatest effect of parental involvement takes place. They use their regression models to look at the relationship between these four forms of parental involvement and family background to determine if there is a relationship between involvement and SES. Ho Sui-Chu and Williams use the NELS survey, which sampled 24,599 eighth graders which gave them a national perspective on the parental involvement both within and across schools nationwide. Their findings found that the main forms of at home involvement - discussion and supervision - were relatively uniform across SES. This negates theories which claim that parents from lower SES tend to take a negative outlook on education for their children. The traditional form of parental involvement - volunteering and participation - did show variation among SES and levels of involvement. However, Ho Sui-Chu and Williams conclude that the determining factor in whether or not parents will actively participate in their child's school is the mean SES of the school, not of the individual. This suggests that higher SES schools attract higher numbers of involvement from their parents. Finally, the study showed that background factors account for only 2% of the variation that occurs within schools in terms of participation. This implies that there are other factors that are unmeasured that determine whether or not parents will become involved in their child's school. In sum, this study is fairly insightful in examining parental involvement and the effects it has both within schools and across schools nationally. Given the nature of the survey, there are undoubtedly several factors that were unmeasured that perhaps could give greater clarity into the issue of parental involvement. However, Ho Sui-Chu and Williams succeed in uncovering broad patterns of involvement nationwide, and make significant alterations to the claim that SES determines a parent's level of involvement in their child's education.

Hoover-Dempsey, K. & Sandler, H. (Winter 1995). Parental involvement in children’s education: why does it make a difference? Teachers College Record, 97(2), 310-331.

This paper attempts to explain three questions of parental involvement. The first is why do parents become involved? When parents choose to become involved how do they choose specific forms of involvement? And how does parent involvement make a difference? The authors claim that too much attention has been given to the question of “does parental involvement make a difference.” The authors claim that in order to develop effective learning processes the questions addressed in their paper need to be addressed first. Unlike most papers regarding this topic the authors believe socio-economic characteristics of the family are not the driving factors of parent participation. Greater affluence will likely enable families to be involved as will two parent households; but these factors do not explain why parents become involved. This is the central question the paper attempts to answer.

The authors put forth excellent theoretical explanations for parental involvement. There are three reasons parents choose to become involved. The first is a personal construction. This means that parents believe it is their responsibility as parents to become involved. The second reason is because they have a personal sense of efficacy. In other words they want to see their children succeed. This in itself comes about for four reasons: direct experience of success in other involvement, others’ success in involvement, persuasion by others, and when issues of importance to the parent come about. According to the authors a personal sense of efficacy is a necessary precondition for parent involvement. Without this parents will not become involved. The final reason for parental involvement is more practical they become involved simply because they are asked to become involved and when involved they feel an inviting and encouraging environment. After explaining why parents become involved the authors move to the types of involvement parents engage in. It is suggested that parents become more involved when they feel as though they have a certain expertise or something specific to contribute. The second of socio-economic origin how much available time parents have. If the household is a single parent who works two jobs to provide they are less likely to make visits to the school instead they will call and speak with teachers or immerse themselves in the students’ school work. The final factor determining parental involvement is the types of activities they are asked to participate in. If they are invited to attend field trips, plays, or other functions they are likely to attend so long as they know it is occurring.

The paper finally turns to why parental involvement has a positive effect on children’s education. When parents become involved in their children’s education and show sincere interest this is likely to provide a good model of behavior and attitude towards school for their children. Positive reinforcement or giving praise, to children is likely to have an effect because it will demonstrate to the child that what they are learning is not for naught. The final reason involvement benefits children are when parents directly instruct their children. When parents actively engage their children to learn and challenge them they are more likely to focus on school. This is an excellent paper which provides sound theoretical justifications for their conclusions. The paper offers insights into the varying types of involvement, the effect of involvement, and a more nuanced explanation of why parents become involved as opposed to simple socio-economic considerations.

Houtenville, A. & Smith Conway, K. (2008). Parental effort, school resources, and student achievement. The Journal of Human Resources, 43(2), 437-453.

The authors contrast the affects of increasing the school’s financial resources and augmenting parental involvement on student achievement. Using the household production and time-allocation theory and data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), Houtenville and Conway discover two things. First, parental involvement, defined as the frequency parents discuss school events, class work, course offerings, and either volunteer or attend meetings, is statistically significant on increased student achievement. The typical background variables (education, income of parents) are not responsible for increased success. Second, increasing financial resources has a negative correlation to parental involvement. Of the five variables used to measure increased financial resources for the school, teacher salary has the most diminishing effect on parental involvement. The authors refer to this relationship as the “crowding out” of financial resources and conclude with an emphasis on increasing parental involvement.

Ingram, M., Wolfe, R. & Lieberman, J. (2007). The role of parents in high-achieving schools serving low-income, at-risk populations. Education and Urban Society, 39(4), 479-497.

Using Epstein’s six typologies of parental involvement, Ingram et al attempt to ascertain how high-achieving schools in low-income elementary schools in Chicago involve parents in their children’s education. Survey data of 220 parents were used in a Likert-style questionnaire. Of the six typologies, only two seemed directly linked to the high achievement of these at-risk students. These two typologies are Parenting and Learning at Home. Parenting includes providing the basic needs of food, shelter, etc, but also includes providing tools needed for school. It is includes specific practices like limiting TV time, recognizing achievements, and picking up the student from school. Parents responded that they “always” practiced parenting. Learning at home includes building social skills in the child and refers to intellectual activities such as visiting museums, zoos, and libraries. Again, parents responded overwhelmingly that they “always” practiced such things. Modal responses for the other typologies (Volunteering, Communicating, Decision Making, and Collaborating) were “never.”

Ippolito, J. & Schecter, S. (2008). Parent involvement as education: a case study. Education Canada, 48(2), 55-58.

This paper focuses on parental involvement in ESL programs as a catalyst to student, parent, and instructor learning. The authors first describe the program they initiated at three schools in a culturally diverse region of Canada. The program is called Parent Involvement as (not in) Education, or PIE for short. The program has four main goals: enhancing the learning and achievement of immigrant linguistic minorities, familiarizing immigrant parents with their children’s education system, facilitating the acquisition of English on the part of immigrant parents, and providing practicing teachers with a forum for elaborating their own pedagogies and perspectives. The program is two hours one day a week. This is convenient because many of the people living within the area do not have jobs with a set schedule so they are better able to meet with the group. The first hour parents study with their children as the children learn English literacy and number skills. The second hour parents participate in presentations and discussions around topics they identify as important.

The study group is comprised of students aged 5-13 years of age. Three schools were used in the study two elementary schools and one middle school. The families who participated in the study speak a variety of languages including: Urdu, Tamil, Chinese, and Arabic. The region where the schools are located are characterized by single parent families, unemployment, and the families speak neither of Canada’s main languages, French and English. The study lasted four years and the findings are based on audio-taped, semi-structured interviews, taped group discussions, classroom discussions, end of year surveys, and the research team’s ethnographic field notes. The findings indicate the students under observation become more engaged in school activities and become more sociable. Parents indicate that they better understand the education system and are more inclined to participate in further parent-student programs.

The authors do not list the limitations to the program, but from what is described a number of possible limitations are apparent. The first is that the researchers indicate the region is characterized by a poorer population and single parent homes, but they never state what the participants income or households are characterized. The languages spoken by the people especially Arabic and Chinese typically do not indicate people of the lower socio-economic classes. The main limitation of the study is that the researchers have no control group from which they could base comparisons. The findings indicated above state that students are more engaged in class and more sociable. Two problems with this is that there is no way of knowing how these students would be had they not engaged in the program. One way of solving this problem would have been to ask the teachers to make comparisons to previous students of similar qualities, but no such inquiry was made. The most important critique is that the education program is intended to educate and the findings do not indicate that the program has any affect on academic performance. Being sociable is not a prerequisite for academic success nor is classroom engagement. The latter simply indicates that students feel more comfortable in class. The limitations described show that there is reason to doubt the effectiveness of the PIE program. This does not mean the program is of no use it simply highlights the need for a more systematic analysis to uncover the effectiveness of the program.

Izzo, CV; RP Weissberg; WJ Kasprow; et al. (1999). “A Longitudinal Assessment of Teacher Perceptions of Parent Involvement in Children's Education and School Performance.” American Journal of Community Psychology 27 (6): 817-839.

The authors, researchers at the University of Illinois and Yale Child Study Center, use data from their own study of parental involvement in children’s education and how it changes over time and relates to the child’s social and academic future. The teachers in the study provided information on parental involvement for 1,205 Kindergarten through third grade students for three years. The results proved the researcher’s hypothesis true, that involvement would decline as the child got older. The results also found that increasing parental involvement relates to improvements on the students part academically. The longitudinal study is used to eliminate any bias created by only using data from teachers who become close to students and parents over the years. The researchers could have benefited by inviting another audience such as the children or administrators into the study to truly eliminate this bias. Jeynes, W. H. 2007. "The relationship between parental involvement and urban secondary school student academic achievement - A meta-analysis." Urban Education: 42, 1: 82-110.

This study is a meta-analysis intended to determine the influence of parental involvement among parents of students in urban secondary schools. It consists of 52 studies and four measures of educational outcomes. These include grades, standardized tests, teacher rating scales, and other all encompassing measures of academic achievement. Four research questions need to be answered to generate an accurate understanding of parental involvement. The first question is to what degree of association is between parental involvement and achievement outcomes. The second question asks whether programs of parental involvement affect student achievement. The third question addresses what specific programs help the most. The final question questions whether the trends hold across racial and gender groups. The conclusion of the meta-analysis indicates that there is a positive correlation between parental involvement and urban student achievement in all areas measured and for minority students as well as the overall population

Kyriakides, L. 2005. “Evaluating School Policy on Parents Working With Their Children in Class.” Journal of Educational Research 98 (8): 281-298.

In this study, Kyriakides looks at the results derived from school partnership policy in Cyprus on the educational success of children. In the literature, the idea of increased parental involvement in the school leads to higher success educationally is predominant and has been supported by several studies. Here, Kyriakides moves a step ahead by looking at the actual effectiveness of a partnership policy on both the empirical results (exams from students in the experiment), as well as the attitudes of both parents and students participating in the study. In doing so, Kyriakides attempts to examine whether or not (a) partnership benefits are related to socioeconomic status, (b) gains in educational success only occur n areas where parents feel comfortable, and (c) parental involvement in the classroom effects behavioral aspects. Kyriakides examines the actual gains by distributing three exams to students in both the experimental and the control schools. The exams are giving at the beginning of the program, the end, and six months post-experiment. The results reveal that students in the experimental group made significant gains over those in the control group. Although Kyriakides claims that there are several factors he could not control for (such as individual child cognitive ability), this clear statistical lead suggests that parental involvement in the classroom does increase child learning. Additionally, the attitudes of parents and students, gathered by questionnaire, suggest that parents and students alike felt that the program was significant and useful in improving communication between parents and teachers as well as increasing overall student achievement. The statistical care given by Kyriakides to this study suggests that, although the findings are not complete, they are useful in making a statement about the overall importance of partnership policy. However, the particular demographics and culture of Cyprus might lend itself to more favorable results than elsewhere. In sum, the study accurately and efficiently documented the measured success of partnership policy in a given community. Lawson, M.A. (2003). School-family relations in context - parent and teacher perceptions of parent involvement. Urban Education 38(1), 77-133.

The literary review in this paper reiterates the importance of parental involvement in a child’s education, but sets to show how parental involvement is defined and perceived by the parent and the teacher, plays an important role in education and overcoming barriers created between the teacher and the parent in social-economical variances in society. This study focuses on issues which arise from social status and affects of poverty on a child’s education. The method used in this study a semi-structured focus group involving teachers and parents. There was a 70 % poverty level of the population studied, with less than 5% of the parents attending teach/parent conferences. While the parent focused on the difficulty of protecting the child, and the teacher stressed the lack of basic child preparedness such as, sleep and food, along with completed homework, and learning attitude. This raises the question, what is the social responsibility of the school and teacher in a child’s life?

Lopez, G., Scribner, J. & Mahitivanichcha, K. (Summer 2001). Redefining parental involvement: lessons from high-performing migrant-impacted schools. American Educational Research Journal, 38(2), 253-288.

This article addresses the special needs of migrant families when it comes to parental involvement. Most of the literature regarding parental involvement indicates a need to get parents involved in school activities. These researches claim a new paradigm must emerge to complement previous involvement schemes. Children of migrant families are characterized by low academic achievement, higher dropout rates, and other school related families. This is a result of the parents’ lack of earnings which necessitates children working in the fields alongside their parents to provide extra money to help the family. This work is of course done in the days so the children drop out of school.

The authors argue what is needed is a new type of parental involvement which benefits the parents conditions as well as helping facilitate child learning. The authors claim school teachers must make visits to the family home so as to see the conditions they are living in. This also lets the parents know that the teachers are indeed concerned with the education of the children. Another necessity is the education of parents themselves. Increased awareness among the parents of their rights and responsibilities under the education system is a prerequisite of student success. The education of parents should also be extended to more formal education such as ESL offerings, computer learning, learning of trades, and raising awareness of the dangers that pesticides present. The researchers uncover their findings by looking at five schools along the U.S. – Mexico border which have had the highest number of graduates, higher scores on tests, and greater parental involvement relative to other schools with similar migrant populations. A major reason these schools are successful is the faculty of the schools. The facults are presented as caring and deeply committed individuals who understand the needs of the migrant families.

The recommendations of the researchers are an increase in home visits of faculty to the homes of their children, education of parents in both their rights as parents and how their involvement helps their children’s education and education in learning new trades to earn money, and the final recommendation is the need of educators to appreciate the values and norms of the families that they are teaching. There are numerous problems with this paper. First and foremost is the researchers do not define what a “migrant family” is. At times it seems as though they are talking about immigrant families and others as though they are referring to families that move frequently. This oversight has huge implications, because if they are referring to immigrant families than many of the recommendations may work, but if they are referring to migrant families they will not. The recommendations will not work for migrant families because educators will not be able to establish strong relations with them because they will be constantly moving.

Another failure of the researchers is to provide an analysis of other schools with similar populations and describing how those educators interact with the parents, their activities, and their faculty. Without an analysis of the schools who aren’t doing as well we have no basis for comparisons. It is possible that the others schools do the exact same things the schools analyzed do but just come up short. If so the policy recommendations are of no use whatsoever. The policy suggestions assume a budget of no limit. Schools are established to educate children not parents. The services provided by the school for parents were not part of state policy it was community initiative to make it state responsibility would be to take resources away from other areas of need. Also there is no doubt that the educators in the area they studied were committed but many of the actions they did they did of their own accord. It is not within the state’s rights to obligate educators to learn another language, expose themselves to dangerous situations, or to put themselves in compromising situations. The researchers also assume that the educators in other schools are not equally committed. They are examining schools in Texas all people in Texas are going to be outgoing, eager to learn, and committed to their profession. These are characteristics of Texans, perhaps not other regions which share a border with Mexico. A final problem is that the authors claim that they are providing a way to ease drop out rates among migrant populations. This is something that the researchers never even address in their article. None of the policy suggestions can be attributed to lowering drop out rates. They never even characterize the average dropout student. After stating that addressing this problem is their aim they never bring it up again. Overall this paper is an example of terrible scholarship and should have never been printed.

Lopez, L., Rodriguez, R. & Sanchez, V. (1995). The relationship between parental education and school involvement of Mexican-American parents. Psychological Reports, 77, 1203-1207.

This paper attempts to determine whether the education of parents, in Hispanic families, has an effect on involvement in child education. The researches look at a single school in a school district close to the U.S.-Mexico border. The paper is largely descriptive and offers no theoretical insights into why the results come about. The instrument used was a survey that children delivered to their parents. The survey had questions concerning their involvement in their child’s education and their own education. The parents were broken into two groups: high school dropouts and high school graduates. The descriptive statistics that emerge are as follows: 1) age: graduates 35 years, dropouts 34 years; 2) number of kids: graduates 2 kids, dropouts 4 kids; 3) years of education: graduates 13 years, dropouts 7 years. The parents with greater amounts of education reported they were more involved with fundraising activities and attended school-sponsored functions more frequently than parents with less education. Parents with less education reported they helped their children with their school work, attended parent-teacher conferences, and served as room mothers more often than parents with more education. School personnel reported that they had to contact the more educated parents more about parent teacher conferences, whereas they had to contact parents with less education more about child absences. This paper does not address the limitations of the paper but prima facie problems do seem to be present. The first is that the research is supposed to be examining Hispanic families but the paper never indicated if the survey was sent out to only Hispanic families. Another problem is that the researcher does not indicate how many surveys they sent out and how many the received back. If there is a low return rate the results may be skewed as a result of selection bias. Odds are parents who are more involved are going to reply whereas parents who are not involved in anyway will not respond. This discrepancy will artificially inflate the numbers of participation among both groups.

Lopez, G. 2001. “The Value of Hard Work: Lessons on Parent Involvement from an Immigrant Household.” Harvard Educational Review 71 (3): 416-437.

In this article, Lopez examines the traditional definition of “parental involvement” and challenges the notion that these scripted forms of involvement are the key measures to a child’s educational success. The point of the study drives at looking at unconventional modes of involvement in a child’s education that does not necessarily mean classic examples of parental involvement (ex: PTA meetings, classroom helper). Lopez argues that in the coming years, the demographic of the nation’s education system will change so that a large percentage of new enrollments will be the children of immigrants or migrants. Because these immigrants often are forced to work long hours in order to make ends meet, they are not able to participate in their children’s education in the traditional roles. Lopez qualitatively studies five families (only one was used for the purposes of this article) who embark on non-traditional involvement techniques. The family Lopez examines is comprised of two agricultural worker parents who stress the importance of education by showing their children the difficulty of a life without an education to help support them. In this manner, the children are exposed to the importance of education first hand with successful results that are not related to their parent’s presence in the classroom. Essentially, this weakens the argument that holds that traditional forms of parental involvement are the only ways in which to create a positive effect on a child’s educational success. Although the data is qualitative and relatively narrow in scope, the article successfully challenges the predominant theory of parental involvement and stresses new forms of evaluating involvement in education

Mattingly, D., Prislin, R., McKenzie, T., Rodriguez, J. & Kayzar, B. (2002). Evaluating evaluations: the case of parent involvement programs. Review of Educational Research, 72(4), 549-576.

The authors, San Diego State University researchers, analyze 41 studies that evaluate parental involvement programs in order to evaluate the claims that such programs work. They found little empirical support for the claim. They do not assert that the programs are ineffective, but rather, that the studies evaluating their efficacy are so flawed as to prevent objective conclusions to be drawn. The 41 studies were chosen from articles that reported the findings of an evaluation of parental involvement programs. The vast majority of these studies contained flaws. The majority of the studies did not report crucial variables, such as participant racial- ethnic composition and educational achievement. The majority had been in existence for less than six months, 20.6 percent had fewer than 30 participants, and 26.8 percent did not report any demographic information. The authors argue, rightly, that the lack of this data makes forming conclusions about a program problematic. Furthermore, many of these studies that claim to provide evidence for parental involvement programs’ efficacy do not measure outcomes. Only 40 percent of the 15 programs that included interventions aimed at teachers included an outcome to evaluate this intervention. Only 43.9 percent of programs designed to improve home learning included an assessment of that intervention. A large percentage of studies did not measure outcomes in any way. Only 23 evaluations included data on academic performance. About a quarter of evaluations only used post-tests. Only four studies used the most rigorous research design (matched controls, pretest and post-test), and two of those found that parental involvement programs did not increase child educational performance. Importantly, these evaluations differ in their conclusions about the effectiveness of parental involvement programs from those using weak methods.

There are some problems with this study. First, the studies evaluated might not be a representative sample of parental involvement studies in general, a possibility which would limit the validity of the conclusions. Also, the fact that many of these studies lack so much vital information, however, also limits the use of inferential statistics in the analyses conducted by the authors. Despite these possible flaws, this study was performed with scientific rigor. Its conclusion that parental involvement programs have not been shown to be effective is important given the large sums of federal money allocated for such programs. At the very least, it demonstrates the need for better parental involvement program evaluations to determine whether they should continue to be funded or whether money should be spent elsewhere.

McNeal, Ralph B., Jr. (1999). “Parental Involvement as Social Capital: Differential Effectiveness on Science Achievement, Truancy, and Dropping Out.” Social Forces 78: 117–144.

In his article, McNeal attempts to shift the focus of parental involvement in improving student achievement to other dependent variables such as high school drop outs. The article conceptualizes parental involvement as social capital and examines how it affects cognitive outcomes such as science achievement, truancy, and high school drop out using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) in a regression model. The independent variable looks at four different types of parental involvement; (1) parent-child discussion; (2) Parent Teacher Organizations (PTO), (3) monitoring child work, and (4) direct parent involvement in educational process based off of reactionary behavior of students’ progress and educational standings; each of which showing different levels of effect on the dependent variables. The results from this model show parental involvement improving student achievement as a valid belief for middle to upper-class, but the article also reveals the limited impact that such involvement has on students with single parents, minority parents, and parents with lower socioeconomic status. McNeal’s article is an excellent study, as it expands parental involvement research to include race and socioeconomic status as a variable and the difficulties in which these groups face in education.

Morris, V., & Taylor, S. (1998). Alleviating barriers to family involvement in education: the role of teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(2), 219-231.

The authors, researchers from the Memphis College of Education, argue that teachers face barriers in promoting family involvement. These barriers include limited skills and knowledge needed to work with parents effectively, restricted opportunities for interaction, and psychological and cultural barriers. These barriers exist, in part, because of a lack of teacher training. In fact, only 4 percent of teacher-training institutions in the Southwest offer a course in parent-teacher relations. The authors hypothesize that educating teachers in areas relevant to promoting parental involvement will increase levels of effective parental involvement. In order to test this hypothesis, the authors performed pre- and post-tests on 105 education students enrolled in a school/community relations course over four semesters. The course assigned four assignments designed to give student teachers experience in promoting parental involvement: conducting parent interviews, developing a parent involvement/education plan for one school year, developing a parental involvement notebook, and planning an implementing a parent workshop. The pre- and post- self-assessments, which measured the students’ knowledge and comfort levels in areas pertaining to parental involvement, showed significant increases. There were particularly large gains in students’ perceived knowledge, skills, and strategies required to plan and implement parental involvement programs. These results, however, are problematic in that a student’s perception may not reflect reality. The results were reinforced by qualitative data, as students’ performance in practical application improved. This is an important study, in that it emphasizes the teacher’s role, not only the parent’s, in parental involvement, and it supports a possible way to assist teachers in that role. One class may not guarantee that student teachers will be able to implement effective parental involvement plans, but it is a step in the right direction.

Neuman, S.B., Hagedorn, T. & Celano, D., et al. (1995, WIN). Toward a collaborative approach to parent involvement in early education: a study of teenage mothers in an African-American community. American Educational Research Journal, 32(4), 801- 827.

This study explores the challenges of creating a collaborative approach to parent involvement in a child’s education. The studies reviewed in this article, suggest that parents have an integral role in their children’s educational success. The studies suggest that working class and minority parents have different views as to how or what a child is to be taught. In this study nineteen African-American adolescent parents from low income backgrounds participated in a family literacy program which provided free daycare and education ranging from 8th grade reading classes to GED preparation. The purpose of the program was to get an understanding of the parents’ beliefs about learning and literacy through an egalitarian peer group discussion, while educating the parents and children as well. Groups of mothers were randomly assigned to one of four interview discussion groups (4-5 per group) held in a quiet setting within the school. Discussion time varied on the basis of their interests and comments from 1.5-2.5 hours each. All sessions, totaling approximately 10 hours (including debriefing described below) were recorded with permission and later transcribed. The discussions were broad and open-ended to enable the mothers to be comfortable and to give an honest opinion on how children learn. The constant comparative method was used to analyze the data into codable categories. Coding consisted of marking a turn at speaking and reading for gist. The transcripts were reviewed and themes or categories across the groups were identified. Following this analysis, the researchers then derived a set of theoretical propositions within and across categories and perspectives that seemed to best encompass parents' beliefs about learning and literacy for their children. This analysis provided a set of shared beliefs that could be used to facilitate a more collaborative process of involving parents in their children's early education

Olmstead, P. (1991). Parent involvement in elementary education: findings and suggestions from the follow through program. The Elementary School Journal, 91(3), 221-231.

Patricia Olmstead reflects upon the first 20 years of the Follow Through (FT) program by presenting quantitative and qualitative data on its success in increasing parental involvement in their child’s education (grades K-6 measured). Advocacy, Decision Making, and Instruction form the three areas where positive returns on parental involvement are mentioned. FT increases the influence of parental meetings by doing home visits to those who can’t normally attend gatherings at school. FT also enhances involvement with increased volunteer time in the classroom. Parents are taught to take up the role of a teacher with Home Learning Activities (HLA). These innovative ideas do much to pick up where most PTAs fail; however, increased student performance is rarely mentioned and questionably achieved. Only twice is it mentioned that higher child achievement was correlated to measures enacted by FT participants, but the specifics are lacking in detail and followed by a call for more research. FT is an innovative program with seemingly more benefit for the parents than the children.

Oneill, KK. 1978. "Parent Involvement-Key to Education of Gifted Children." Gifted Child Quarterly 22, 2: 235-242.

This piece is intended to show how a teacher substituted funds and institutional programs for direct parental involvement to further advance the skills of gifted children. The children were all in their first year of school, and the school itself had no program dedicated to gifted children. This article is just reflection of the programs this teacher introduced and the reactions and results from both the parents and the students. This is by no means a quantitative study and hardly can be justified as a qualitative piece due to the lack of empirical evidence. The effectiveness of this experience, however, could be important as a possible way to encourage parents to involve themselves in the education of their young children. Peña, Delores C. 2000. “Parent Involvement: Influencing Factors and Implications.” Journal of Educational Research 94 (1): 42-54.

Peña’s article encompasses a year long case study on Mexican-American parents in Texas and the limitations in which these families face when it comes to parental involvement in their child’s education. This qualitative study looks at factors which hinder parental involvement, including: language, parent cliques, parents’ education, attitude of school staff, cultural influence, and family issues. Language appears to be the greatest problem, as many schools lacked bilingual speakers or refused to speak Spanish in regards to school communication. While the article relies on previous research to show the importance of parental involvement in student achievement, Peña focuses more on the problems with improving this involvement. These problems include cultural aspects which stress a separation of school from the family and the disorganization of schools in providing information through proper means. The article also reveals other important aspects of parental involvement, overlooked by many researchers, including tension in teachers regarding parents intruding into their work and clique- ness aspects of Parent Teacher Associations and their officers.

Perna, Laura Walter, and Marvin A. Titus. (2005). “The Relationship between Parental Involvement as Social Capital and College Enrollment: An Examination of Racial/Ethnic Group Differences.” The Journal of Higher Education 76(5): 485-518.

Perna and Titus’ article looks into the lack of representation of minority students (specifically African American and Hispanic) in college enrollment. Focusing on parental involvement across racial/ethnic lines and its effects on enrollment for a 2 year or 4 year college or university program, the authors conduct a multinomial analysis using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS). Concentrating on three specific issues; (1) the relationship of parental involvement and the likelihood of college enrollment, (2) how different types of involvement vary across racial/ethnic lines, and (3) the relationship of the characteristics of the school attended and the likelihood of enrollment; the authors’ findings show familiar results when it comes to the minority enrollment and the disadvantages minorities face in education. While parental involvement was found to have a positive effect on enrollment, this effect was mitigated for minorities due to the lack of resources that these students have access to. The study reveals some interesting aspects of college enrollment, including the correlation of the strong likelihood of enrolling in college with networking with friends who plan to enroll in college and the negative effects of behavioral problems on the likelihood of a student to enroll after graduation. Why the article presents interesting results which are to aimed to aid its intended audience of college preparation programs, the authors’ inability to achieve an accurate representation of the population and a lack of a deeper evaluation of student performance in high school limits this study’s potential. Though parental involvement is concluded to have a strong effect on performance, the lack of “social capital” for minority students to take advantage for college enrollment will probably mean the lack of such capital for these students to achieve in high school. As all students are not equal in education, this study needs to look more depth into the ability of students and the limitations they face in their education before it can look at their likelihood of enrolling in college. Reynolds, A. 1992. “Comparing Measures of Parental Involvement and their Effects on Academic Achievement.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 7: 441–462.

According to Reynolds, despite its presumed positive influence, there is no consistent evidence that parental involvement has a significant influence on academic outcomes, which may be due to a lack of consensus about the definition. Reynolds defines parental involvement as any interactions between a parent and child that may contribute to the child’s development, or to direct parent participation with a child’s school in the interest of the child. Overall, the many contradictions present in research findings regarding parental involvement indicate that there are differences among sources of report, like self-reporting, and samples. Reynolds collected data for 481 seven-year-old, low-income minority children on parental involvement at home and in school through surveys of Year 2 and Year 3 reading and mathematics achievement tests. Reynolds controlled for: sex, parental education, sibling size, grade retention, prekindergarten experience, and lunch subsidies. According to the study, it appears as though school involvement overall is more important than home involvement. This may be due to the fact that perhaps low- income parents have less education and abilities to assist children at home, combined with the fact that teacher ratings of school involvement had the greatest and most consistent positive influence on achievement. Since in the lives of many disadvantaged families, the daily struggle for survival takes precedence over all other concerns, this survey seems to have found that it then becomes the school’s responsibility to help these children succeed.

Reynoso, M., & Tidwell, R. (1996). Hispanic parents’ attitudes and participation - regular and special education. School Psychology International, 17(2), 205-221.

The authors, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, interviewed Hispanic parents to examine whether there is a difference in the educational attitudes and level of participation of Hispanic parents with children in regular education and those with children in special education. One hundred eighty Hispanic parents were interviewed; 100 Hispanic parents with children in regular education classes and 80 with children in special education classes were interviewed.

Four instruments were used in the study. The first, the Demographic Interview, was used to measure the respondents’ sociodemographic characteristics, educational level, income, and level of acculturation. The Parent/Family Involvement Index was used to measure parent participation through twelve dimensions: contact with teacher, participation in special education process, transportation, observation at school, educational activities at home, attendance at parent education meetings, classroom volunteering, parent-parent contact and support, involvement with school administration, involvement in fundraising activities, involvement in advocacy groups, and disseminating information. The Parent Attitudes Toward Education instrument was used to measure the parents’ attitudes about education. The fourth instrument, the Parents’ Perceptions of Participation, was used to determine what Hispanic parents perceive as barriers to their involvement in their children’s education. Precautions were taken to promote the instruments’ reliability, such as conducting pilot interviews and using these test runs to modify the questions and coding, as well as using an examiner to read and fill out the questionnaire for the parents in order to minimize the effect of differences in the parents’ literacy level.

The study concludes that Hispanic parents with children in special education participate more in their children’s schooling than Hispanic parents with children in regular education. There were statistically significant differences between the two groups in relation to educational activities at home, attendance at parent meetings, parent-parent support, involvement with school administration, fundraising, and disseminating information. This may be due to the fact that parents with children in special education classes feel the need to assist their children more. There was no difference between the two groups, however, in relation to their attitudes about education. Both groups value education and would like to see their children succeed in school, but they face barriers to participation, such as language, child care, work commitments, and times of school meetings. More importantly, the study shows that Hispanics value education but feel it is the school’s job to teach their children. Interviewees felt that it was not their place to “interfere” and that the “teachers know best.”

Precautions were used to provide reliability and validity, but a possible source of error is the interviews themselves. Parents might want to give “correct” answers to save face. A bilingual questionnaire could have been an effective alternative. This study, however, is relevant today because it points out barriers to Hispanic parental involvement. Knowing these barriers, possible solutions might be developed. This includes educating Hispanics about the need for parental involvement and developing school policies to facilitate Hispanic involvement (e.g., coordination of parent-teacher meetings for working parents).

Rosenthal, D. and S. Feldman. 1991. “The Influence of Perceived Family and Personal Factors on Self-reported School Performance of Chinese and Western High School Students.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 1 (2):135-154.

Authors Doreen A. Rosenthal and S. Shirley Feldman examine the influence of cultural values - in particular family environment and personal qualities - when comparing the school performance of second-generation Chinese students with their Western peers in Australia and the United States. Self-reports by high school students were used in this study. Measures of personal quality included restraint, initiative and industry. In Australia, the authors found that the Chinese students put more effort in their school work, yet the level of academic achievement was the same. In the United States both effort and levels of achievement were higher for the Chinese students. Interestingly, the self-reports also showed that parent involvement was less for the Chinese students. This may be due to the cultural differences or language barriers faced by the parents in a foreign country. This report worked well to explain cultural preconceptions in empirical terms (Asian-Americans’ academic success). It was particularly helpful in demonstrating the level of cultural awareness that should be considered when analyzing student achievement and the factors that influence it. Rycik, James A. 2007. “Focus on parent involvement.” American Secondary Education 36 (1): 47-8.

Rycik’s brief article looks at parental involvement through two examples which represent opposing views. The first example involves the difficulty in getting parents involved in the children’s education and one technique used by a teacher to raise involvement. The technique involved requiring parents to complete assignments that tied into their child’s class work and post there work on the teacher’s blog. Anyone who did not take part in this exercise would hurt their child’s grade. While the teacher did increase parental involvement, the article does indicate that many parents simply posted and explanation on why they could not complete the assignment. The second example by the author illustrates the opposite side of parental involvement, where parents in Japan have become increasing obstructive in their child’s education by constantly calling their child’s teacher to find out what their children are learning. Though the article gives no conclusions to these problems, the article does reveal a negative side to parental involvement.

Seitsinger, A. M.; R.D. Felner; S. Brand; et al. 2008. “A Large-scale Examination of the Nature and Efficacy of Teachers’ Practices to Engage Parents: Assessment, Parental Contact, and Student-Level Impact.” Journal of School Psychology 46 (4): 477-505.

Parent involvement is recognized as an important factor for academic achievement. The authors here take a closer look at how schools and teachers attempt to contact (and involve) parents. To accomplish this task, the authors developed a teacher-parent contact scale (TPCS). This tool was designed to be applicable with a wide range of teachers and schools in varying locations. It is somewhat surprising that within such a large and diverse scope the authors found consistency in their findings, which could serve as practical reminders of ways that schools can keep parents involved in their children’s development. First, the amount of effort teachers make to reach out to parents is proportionate to the amount of involvement the parents have with the schools. This is especially important when students reach middle and high school levels as the amount of contact that parents have with teachers generally tends to decrease at these points. Second, how a school is organized is also a key factor that influences contact. If a teacher is allowed to teach a smaller class at the middle and high school levels, it gives them a better opportunity to have more contact with their students and families.

Steinberg, L., et al.1992. “Impact of Parenting Practices on Adolescent Achievement: Authoritative Parenting, School Involvement, and Encouragement to Succeed.” Child Development 63 (5): 1266-1281.

This article suggests that there is a link between the authoritativeness of a parent and school success, and that this link is: causal, evident among both younger and older adolescents, evident across different types of authoritativeness, and evident across various ethnic, socioeconomic and family structured groups. Authoritative parenting is defined here by high levels of parental responsiveness and demand. Essentially, this includes direct involvement in school activities, encouragement of school success, and setting and maintaining high standards. In adolescents, it was proven that parental acceptance, behavioral supervision, strictness, and allowing for psychological autonomy were all factors of authoritativeness that created, to name just a few things: a better work orientation, greater engagement in classroom activities, higher aspirations, more positive feelings about school, and lower levels of misconduct. The study, in an attempt to examine the relationship between school performance and parental behavior over time, began with a letter sent out to all parents listing the study’s facts. Then, in order to not be biased towards obtaining information from parents who would be deemed as more engaged, parents were asked in the letter to call or write the school only if they did not want their child to participate. Students then had to complete certain “target” questions. Results regarding parental involvement showed that European-American, middle-class parents with younger children tended to be more involved, with Asian and Hispanic-Americans being least involved in school. Hispanic-Americans were also least likely to encourage their children regarding school, as well as the working-class, and parents of older children. Overall, students who described their parents as authoritative reported better school performance and stronger school engagement, and these findings cut across sex but clearly not across ethnic groups.

Sheldon, Steven B. (May-June 2007). Improving Student Attendance with School, Family, and Community Partnerships. Journal of Educational Research Volume: 100 Issue: 5 Pages: 267-275.

The Researcher reviewed the data correlation between student attendance and academic success. Previous literature showed that attendance can be improved by creating programs such as small schools or learning communities, connecting students to business partners, and increasing school-home connections. The Researcher used the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS) program impacted school attendance on Ohio. The Researcher compared schools participating in the NNPS program with a matched sample of schools that did not participate. He also looked at data from fourth graders who passed the math and reading achievement tests, the number of students enrolled at the school, the average daily attendance, and funding allocations. The schools had been NNPS schools for an average of 3-4 years. The control group had 69 non NNPS schools. The Researcher found that the NNPS schools had higher rates of attendance. The study showed that schools that worked to involve all families had an increase in attendance. Overall, schools that have a strong family, school, and community partnership benefit the students. Students have a higher rate of attendance may perform better on standardized tests. There is also a decrease in school drop out rates, and tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drug use.

Slaughter, D. (1991). Parental educational choice: some African American dilemmas. Journal of Negro Education, 60(3), 354-359.

The author uses retrospective accounts and two qualitative studies to argue that parental choice of schools and parental involvement in the educational process are vital to African American children’s schooling. The retrospective accounts of successful African American adults raised in diverse social strata indicate that parental involvement plays an important role in African American educational success. The first qualitative study demonstrates that lower- income African American children, whose families were voluntarily relocated to White, middle- class suburbs, improved significantly in school. The second study finds that middle- and upper- income African American children, who attended four private schools in Chicago with excellent reputations, performed at or above grade level in reading comprehension and mathematics computation on standardized tests. These studies were performed using tests as well as classroom observation. These studies, however, used small sample sizes as well as methods that are not available to the majority of the target population. The tests were intended to show that parental choice in schools is vital to African American education, but many African American parents cannot simply choose to send their children to a White, middle-class suburb or to a private school with an excellent reputation. It is possible that the studies did more to show the educational effects of economic status and school quality than parental involvement.

Stevenson, D. & Baker, D. (1987). The family-school relation and the child’s school performance. Child Development 58(5), 1348-1357.

This study uses a nationally representative data set of American household to try to answer three hypotheses: Does the level of education of the parent increase the level of involvement of the parent in school activities, is there a correlation between the age of the child and parental involvement, and does greater involvement by the parent directly relate to a child doing better in school. The parental involvement was based directly on teacher questionnaires. The type of analysis was a cross-sectional analysis done in two steps: First, in a zero-order correlation framework, secondly examining the multiple correlations by uses multiple regression equations. They found the parents with a greater educational background were more involved in their child’s education. The age of the child had a strong influence on parental involvement, mostly becoming less as the child grew older.

Stone, S., (2006). Correlates of change in student reported parent involvement in schooling: A new look at the national education longitudinal study of 1988. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 76(4), 518-530.

This study tries to answer of what causes student reported parental involvement in schooling to change over the transition to high school. The purpose of this study is to add to the surprising small amount of research focused specifically on parent involvement in schooling during the high school year and the changes over the transition to high school. This study uses Eccles & Harold’s framework of parental involvement because it is the broadest conceptual map and because it has been empirically tested specifically on early adolescent populations. This study also uses and builds upon the study of Green & Walker by examining some of the motivations for parental involvement. The two main hypotheses of this study are: a) high school characteristics and practices would influence changes in parent involvement in addition to the relevant child and family characteristics and b) changes in these forms of involvement would be associated with adolescent school outcomes. The four broad variables of parental involvement are: child characteristics, parent/family characteristics, school and teacher characteristics and practices, and community characteristics. The authors go on to explicitly describe what they mean by these characteristics and how they are measured. The four variables are used to describe change in home communication about school, change in parent monitoring, and change in direct interaction with schools. Parental/Family characteristics also rely on Hoover Dempsey & Sandler’s framework of motivations of parental involvement. This study uses secondary analysis of the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988 by drawing from a subsample from the NELS database. The results found that there are significant, but extremely modest, across-school variation in change in home support for learning and direct parent interaction with schools. On the other hand, student reported changes in monitoring do not significantly vary across schools. This study also examines the relationships between changes in these types of parent involvement and student academic outcomes, such as GPA and dropout. Change in communication about school and direct interactions with school were positively related to eighth grade GPA and SES. Most of the variation in change in the types of involvement relates to child and parent/family factors, and not school factors. The author makes note of the limitations of her research. With the limitations in mind, the study still suggests that sustained home communication appears to somewhat enhance adolescent school success. A suggestion would be to implement programs that cater to home communication, even though such programs are typically uncommon at the high school level.

Tudor, KP. 1977. "Exploratory-Study of Teacher Attitude and Behavior Toward Parent Education and Involvement." Educational Research Quarterly 2, 3: 22-28.

There were four main points to this study; 1, to determine the attitudes of teachers in regards to parental involvement in kindergarten through third grade education (early childhood education. 2, what the relationship between attitude and behavior among teachers toward parental involvement. 3, to determine if differences exist between expressed attitudes and actual behavior of teachers toward parental involvement in both publicly funded and privately funded programs. 4, how this study compares to a study by the same author three years prior. The subjects consisted of 130 teachers from two regions in California among who were selected at random. All participating subjects were female with 85% being married. The author used a Likert-type scale with a high number meaning most favorable attitudes. The results of the study showed that teachers from publicly funded schools were more likely to involve parents in the early childhood preparation process as compared to privately funded schools. Limiting the study to only female teachers seems limiting for this study.

Walker, J., Wilkins, A., Dallaire, J., Sandler, H. & Hoover-Dempsey, K. (2005). Parental involvement: model revision through scale development. Elementary School Journal106(2), 85-104.

This is an analysis of a theoretical model of the parental involvement process. This model has multiple levels; the first identifies four psychological factors to parental involvement. The second, once the parent is involved, how does the day-to-day time constraint influence the parent’s level of involvement? The third identifies specific method of the parental influence and its effect. Waugh, T., and D Kjos. 1992. “Parental Involvement and the Effectiveness of an Adolescent Day Treatment Program.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 21: 487– 497.

The authors of this study took a different approach to studying the effects of parental involvement. They studied two groups of children aged 13-17 that were in partial hospitalization programs. One group had high parental involvement in the recovery process while the other had low parental involvement. The group with the high parental involvement was less likely to be readmitted to the hospital. The study looked at improvements in the child’s physical condition as well as academic achievement. The study looked towards both the student and parent for opinions on recovery and improvement in both areas. This study really points out the difference a parent can make in their child’s life. The unfortunate part of the study is some of the numbers diminish at the end because many of the parents did not finish the program while all of the students stayed with it until completion.

Wherry, J. 2007. “Is Parent Involvement Still Important?” Principal 86 (4): 8.

The author discusses how in the 1970s the public confidence in U.S. education was dwindling. The schools responded by making the education more demanding and the performance of students increased. However, in the 1980s, the confidence levels continued to decline. The author goes on to say that it was because parents needed to be involved in the child’s education. The schools had been focusing on improving the academics and neglected the roles parents play in their child’s academic success. He discusses the Coleman Report of 1966 which reported that families have the profound influence to affect their child’s level of academic development. He concludes his brief article by discussing the current focus on the accountability of the schools and how they focus on testing as a measurement of academic success. He criticizes this approach because it ignores the importance of parental involvement. Parents play the most critical role in their child’s academic achievement.

Zhan, Min. 2006. Assets, Parental Expectations and Involvement, and Children’s Educational Performance. Children and Youth Services Review 28, 8: 961-975.

The Researcher studied the relationship between parental assets with their expectations and involvement of children’s education and children’s educational performance measured 2 years later. Through the analysis of the mother-child data set of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), results indicate that after controlling for family income and other parental characteristics, parental assets were positively related to children’s math and reading scores. Parental assets were also positively associated with their expectations and involvement of school activities. The findings found that the relationship between parental assets and children’s education remained statistically significant. The results also tentatively suggested that the relationship between mothers’ assets and children’s educational outcomes operations partially though expectations. The findings indicated that in order to improve children’s education, parental assets enhancement warrants the consideration of public policy Zick, C.; W. Bryant; and E. Osterbacka. 2001. “Mothers’ Employment, Parental Involvement, and the Implications for Intermediate Child Outcomes. Social Science Research 30:25–49.

Parents often allocate their time and monetary resources among various household activities according to need. Within the realm of parental involvement, the researchers were looking to measure those parental activities that have a strong potential of enhancing a child’s human capital. The sample was restricted to households where: there was a husband and wife, the father worked more than 35 hours per week, the selected focal child for questioning was the biological child for both parents, and both parents were non-Hispanic Caucasians. Mothers in the study reported being more involved in both playing and reading/helping with homework than did fathers, with the mean age of the focal child being between 9 and 10 years. Additionally, contrary to popular belief, as the mother’s probability of employment rose, the frequency with which both parents engaged in reading and homework activities also rose. So while employed mothers may decrease the time they spend in physical contact with their children, they attempted to compensate by increasing more activities that they perceived to be enriching. Likewise, fathers also increased certain types of parent-child activities to compensate for the mother’s employment. Overall, mothers’ interactions increased academic performance and decreased behavioral problems more so than fathers’, perhaps due to different teaching styles, or more time spent. Lastly, employed mothers were actually proven to have engaged in reading/homework activities with their children more frequently than non-employed mothers, and this did lead to higher grades overall

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