Policies on parental involvement: the effectiveness of mandated parental involvement, 1999

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of policies for mandatory parental involvement in schools and to compare schools with mandated parental involvement to schools in which policy mandates were not in effect. This was a mixed methodological study which utilized survey research, individual and focus group interviews and document analysis. The instrument used for the survey was a modified version of the School and family Partnership Survey developed by the Center on Families, Communities, Schools, and Children's Learning. Utilizing ANOVA to test for differences in groups, the study compared the perceptions of parents and teachers in four schools with mandated parental involvement and four schools with permissive parental involvement. The dependent variables were: (1) parenting; (2) school-home communication; (3) volunteering in the school; (4) involvement in learning activities at home; (5) involvement in governance, decision making and advocacy; and (6) collaboration and exchanges with the community. The findings of the study were as follows: Parents in mandated parental policy an permissive parental policy schools differed significantly in all variables. Schools with mandated parental policies were more likely to create home-school- community partnerships than those with permissive policies. Teachers differed on four of the variables: parenting, school-home communications, volunteering, and involvement in decision making with more parent involvement in schools with mandates. Teachers did not differ on two variables: family involvement in learning activities at home and community service exchanges