School–family partnership procedures in urban secondary education, part B: implementing and testing alternative procedures

Particularly in urban schools, school–family partnerships can contribute to a student’s academic achievement and reduce educational disadvantage, regardless of the family’s socioeconomic background. Based on the recommendations of a former explorative field study (also published in this issue), conventional school–family partnership procedures were transformed to the following alternative partnership procedures: individual introductory conferences at school, home visits, alternative individual parent–teacher conferences, and alternative collective parent meetings. In this correlational study, parents at 10 secondary schools in the Netherlands where these interventions were implemented completed questionnaires. This article examines if parents who participated in one of the alternative school–family partnership procedures (the interventions) scored significantly better on three key topics compared to parents who attended a control activity: achieving a positive relationship between school and parents, positioning the student in school–family partnerships, and facilitating parents to support and guide their child at home. Significant positive relationships were found between the key topics and most of the interventions. Of the four, the individual introductory conferences explained the largest proportions of variance. The results give direction for further improvement of parental involvement in urban secondary education and can be used to develop a more coherent approach to improved school–family partnership procedures. http://www.schoolcommunitynetwork.org/SCJ.asp