Exploring a high school community relations and parent involvement program

There are few issues in education that get as much attention as the need for improvement of parental and community involvement in and support for local schools. School faculties want to know how to improve the way they work with families and community members to better meet the needs of their students and parents want to find how to best communicate with the schools to help their children succeed. Even though there is extensive research and agreement about the importance of this topic, many schools continue to labor with these partnerships. This exploratory correlational research study employed a pre-test/post-test and surveys to assess methods of improving one high school’s relations with its students, parents and, community. The hypothesis was, Implementation of a community relations and parent involvement program will improve community relations, parent involvement, participation in parent/teacher conferences, and student achievement at the high school. The results was parent involvement improved as measured by participation in parent/teacher conferences, the independent variables (The Action Team for Partnership, parent call list, Parents in Education [PIE], parent newsletter, school website, staff websites, Responses Now System, and the community service organizations and agencies database) had a positive and statistically significant influence on the dependent variable, parent involvement as measured by increased participation in parent/teacher conferences. On the other hand student achievement did not improve as measured by grade point average; the independent variables listed in the previous sentence did not have a positive and statistically significant influence on the dependent variable, student achievement. The most salient finding of the study pointed to the challenges of finding time for teachers and the high school staff to communicate and fully engage in a process of collaboration with parents and the greater community. The conclusions also suggested that improvements in communication between the school and home need to be attained; and that the high school stands to substantially benefit from a well-planned and continuous parent and community involvement partnership program