Parental empowerment through involvement : presented to ...

The purpose of my research was to investigate the effect of an adaptation of a parent involvement program model for the families and students in the middle school. By means of the parent involvement program, my goal was to assess and improve the relationship between the school and parents. Crossing the bridge between different cultures and closing the gap for minority-low socio economic families presents yet another challenge for schools. Therefore, increasing parent involvement can be problematic for educators and administrators who work with disadvantaged families. Given the need for an increased amount of parent involvement, I decided to create and monitor a parent action team that would determine goals to try and implement schoolwide by April 2006. Due to language and time restrictions, the groups were separated into two: one consisting of a parent-teacher group with set goals to increase parent communication through the use of the school agenda and positive phone calls; the other was a parent action team which never made it off the ground due to complications and lack of follow through. I collected data using interviews, and interactive journals during group meetings to document and analyze the success of the parent action teams. The main finding in my research was that with increased parent communication and involvement in the student\u27s education, student achievement drastically improved. Barriers to increased communication and parent involvement were time, school protocol and hierarchies, culture, teacher training and teacher attitudes