The regression coefficients in line 2 of Table 3.15 show that six variables in addition to race have significant independent effects on parents’ reports of their experiences with teachers’ practices of parent involvement. Parents report significantly more frequent requests for involvement from teachers if they have less formal education (PARED), have younger children (GRADE), have children whose teachers are leaders in parent involvement (TCHLDR), or whose teachers use specific strategies to build close family-school relationships. These interpersonal practices are: Parent feels comfortable and welcomed at school (PARCOMF); parent reports that teacher knows child’s individual learning needs (TKNOCH); and teacher talks to parent about how to help the child at home (TALKHLP). Separate analyses show that these variables are about equally important for black and white parents.

TABLE 3.14 Parents’ Reports of frequency of Teachers’ Use of Parent Involvement (12 Techniques) (Means, Standard Deviations, and Test Statistics from Multiple Comparaisons of Mean Scores of single vs. Married, Low-vs. High-Educated Parents, and Parents of Children in Classrooms of Confirmed Leader vs. Nonleader nTeacher in Parent involvement)

The percentage of variance explained in parents’ reports of teachers’ requests for their involvement improved markedly—from 5 to 30 percent—when we added detailed information on the actual practices that bring schools and families together. It is important, too, that even with teacher-parent interpersonal practices accounted for, teacher leadership in the use of specific practices continues to significantly affect parents’ reports of their experiences with learning activities at home.

In previous research, the limited focus on marital status veiled the importance of other variables that influence parents’ interactions with their children and their children’s schools. Single and married parents’ reports about their experiences with parent involvement are influenced by many family and school factors, not simply by the categorical label of marital status.

Single and married parents’ reports about what teachers ask them to do at home are one indicator of their treatment by the schools. The next two sections explore teachers’ evaluations of single and married parents’ abilities to conduct the requested activities and the quality of the homework that their children do.

TEACHERS’ REPORTS OF SINGLE AND MARRIED PARENTS’ HELPFULNESS AND FOLLOW-THROUGH

Parents’ marital status is believed to influence teachers’ opinions of parents and their children. Teachers were asked to rate the helpfulness and follow-through on home-learning activities of the parents of each student and the quality of homework completed by each student. In contrast to the laboratory study of Santrock and Tracy (1978), which asked teachers to rate hypothetical children from one- and two-parent homes, our questions were designed not to call teachers’ attention to the students’ living arrangements when the teachers rated parents and students. We were interested in whether, in a natural environment, teachers’ evaluations were affected by parent marital status (identified by the parent) or other family characteristics and practices. It is likely that elementary school teachers are aware of family living arrangements from information provided by parents on emergency cards each year, from informal exchanges with parents or children about their families, or from discussions with other teachers. However, our method for collecting information did not ask teachers to base their evaluations on the explicit criteria of the children’s living arrangements.

TABLE 3.15 Effects of Measures of Family, Student, and Teacher Characteristics on Parents’ Reports about Teacher Practices of Parent Involvement

Table 3.16 presents teachers’ evaluations of the quality of involvement of single and married parents. The ratings of parent helpfulness and follow-through on learning activities at home ranged from +1 to -1, with a mean of .18 and a standard deviation of .70, indicating that, on average, parents were perceived as neither particularly helpful nor inept, but more were helpful (35 percent) than not (17 percent). The comparisons in the first column of Table 3.16 show that teachers rated married parents significantly higher than single parents on helpfulness and follow-through on home-learning activities. The second column shows that single and married parents with more formal education received higher ratings from teachers on helpfulness. The difference in ratings was significant between low- versus high-educated married parents (.267 vs. .437) and single versus married high-educated parents (.302 vs. .437).

The third column offers important information about how teachers’ practices affected their evaluations of parents’ helpfulness. Teachers who were leaders in the use of parent involvement practices rated single parents with less formal education significantly higher in helpfulness and follow-through at home than did teachers who were not leaders in parent involvement (.366 vs. .102). The same pattern appeared for teachers’ ratings of single, highly educated parents (.483 vs. .234). Married parents with less formal education were considered less responsible assistants than more-educated married parents, regardless of the teachers’ leadership in the use of parent involvement.

If we had not included teachers’ practices in our comparisons, we would conclude that, regardless of education, teachers rate single parents as less cooperative and less reliable than married parents in assisting their children at home. What we see instead is that teachers’ own practices of parent involvement influence their ratings of the quality of parental assistance. Teachers’ frequent use of parent involvement practices reduces or eliminates the teachers’ differential evaluations of single and married parents.

Table 3.17 presents the results of the initial and the better specified models. The regression analyses summarized in the table show, as did the previous tables of simple mean scores, that there are significant independent effects of marital status, parents’ education, and teacher leadership in parent involvement on teachers’ ratings of their students’ parents on helpfulness and follow-through at home. Although each variable has significant, independent effects, the three-variable model explains only 4 percent of the variance in teachers’ reports of parent helpfulness.

On the second line of the table, other measures of family, student, and teacher characteristics that have been found important in other research on family-school connections are added to the basic model. These variables increase the explained variance to 23 percent. Most dramatically, student achievement levels and behavior in school affect how teachers evaluate the students’ parents. Teachers rate parents more positively if their children are high achievers or well behaved in school. Children may be successful in school because their parents help them at home, parents may give more help to children who are good students and easy to assist, or good students may be assumed by teachers to have good parents as part of a school/home “halo” effect.

Teachers of younger children and more experienced teachers tend to rate parents higher in helpfulness and follow-through than do other teachers. Teachers of the lower elementary grades tend to use more parent involvement techniques, and more experienced teachers may be more aware and appreciative of how the efforts of parents supplement the efforts of teachers (Becker and Epstein, 1982a, b). Although race was not an important variable overall for explaining teachers’ ratings of parent helpfulness, separate analyses of black and white parents revealed that marital status remained a modest but significant influence on the teachers’ ratings of white parents but not of black parents. White, single parents were rated lower in helpfulness and follow-through than white, married parents, with all other variables in the model statistically controlled. White, single parents may be the most distinct group in terms of their marital status because proportionately more white than black parents are married.

These analyses show that it is mainly the characteristics and needs of students—not the simple category of parental marital status—that best explain teachers’ evaluations of parents. However, teachers’ leadership remained an important influence on their ratings of parents, even after all other variables were statistically taken into account. Teachers who frequently use parent involvement techniques in their regular teaching practice acknowledge the help they receive and view single and married parents in a more positive light than do other teachers. When teachers involve parents in their children’s schoolwork on a regular basis, creating more family and school “overlap,” they tend to report that the amount and quality of help from single parents is comparable to that of married parents. When teachers use frequent activities as part of their teaching practice, they help parents build better skills to assist their children at home. At the same time, these activities may help teachers develop more positive expectations and appreciation of parents. Teachers who keep schools and families more separate and do not make parents part of their regular teaching practice tend to promote the stereotype of single parents. They rate single parents’ assistance and follow-through on learning activities at home lower in quality and quantity than that provided by married parents.

TEACHERS’ REPORTS OF THE QUALITY OF HOMEWORK BY CHILDREN FROM ONE- AND TWO-PARENT HOMES

Teachers were asked to rate the quality of homework completed by each of their students. Researchers identified the children from one- and two-parent homes from data provided by parents. Teachers identified the students who were homework “stars” and homework “problems.” Scores on the quality of homework ranged from +1 to -1, with a mean of -.01 and a standard deviation of .64, indicating that, on average, students were neither particularly outstanding nor inferior, with about equal numbers of homework stars (20 percent) and homework problems (21 percent). Teachers’ ratings of children’s homework are shown in Table 3.18 according to children’s living arrangements in one- or two-parent homes, parents’ education, and their teachers’ leadership in the use of parent involvement.

TABLE 3.16 Teachers’ Estimates of the Quality of Parents’ Responses to Requests for Involvement (Means, Standard Deviations, and Test Statistics from Multiple Comparisons of Mean Scores of Single vs. Married, Low-vs. High-Educated Parents, and Parents of Childre in Classrooms of Confirmed Leader vs. Nonleader Teacher in Parent Involvement)

TABLE 3.17 Effects of Measures of Family, Student, and Teacher Characteristics on Teachers’ Reports about Parent Helpfulness and Follow-Through on Learning Activities at Home

The first column of Table 3.18 shows that students from two-parent homes were more often rated as “homework stars” and were less often viewed as “homework problems” than were students from one-parent homes. The measures in the second column show that these ratings were linked to parent education. Children whose mothers had little formal education were rated lower in the quality of their homework than other children in one-parent homes (.057 vs. -.101 for more- vs. less-educated mothers) and in two-parent homes (.157 vs. .050). Family socioeconomic status in column 2 of Table 3.18 helps to explain teachers’ evaluations of children in one- and two-parent homes, as has been reported before (Barton, 1981; Laosa and Sigel, 1982; Scott-Jones, 1983).

Teachers’ practices of parent involvement are taken into account in column 3 of the table. Teachers who were not leaders in parent involvement held significantly lower opinions of the quality of homework of children from single-parent homes than of those from married-parent homes, at both levels of parent education. The results suggest that children from less-educated, single-parent families face disadvantages in school that may be exacerbated by teachers’ lack of leadership in organizing parent involvement in learning activities at home.

If estimates of homework quality reflect student achievement in general, children from one- and two-parent homes in teacher-leader classrooms should have more similar grades and achievement test scores, after other important characteristics are taken into account. In classrooms of teachers who are not leaders in parent involvement, children from one-parent homes may do less well than children from two-parent homes in their report card grades and other school achievements.

The regression analyses in Table 3.19 show how teachers’ ratings of the quality of students’ homework are influenced by other parent, teacher, and student characteristics. On the first line of the table, the familiar three-variable model shows that marital status and parent education have significant independent effects on teacher ratings of student homework. Students from one-parent homes or whose parents have less formal education are given lower ratings on homework quality. Teacher leadership in parent involvement is not a significant independent influence on teachers’ ratings of students, after the other variables are accounted for. The basic model, however, explains only 2 percent of the variance in teacher ratings of student homework.

The second line of Table 3.19 shows that 24 percent of the variance in teacher ratings of student homework is explained by other measures. The most important variables are the work students do in class and their classroom behavior. Brighter students—whatever their behavior or other characteristics—were rated higher on the quality of their homework, and well-behaved students—whatever their ability or other characteristics—were given higher ratings on homework quality. Black students were rated significantly higher in homework quality, after achievement level and behavior were taken into account. Even with these highly influential variables taken into account, the quality of homework of students from two-parent homes was still rated slightly higher by some teachers than that of students from one-parent homes.

Several researchers have questioned whether teachers base children’s grades and other ratings on criteria other than performance and whether their ratings reflect bias against children from single-parent homes (Barton, 1981; Boyd and Parish, 1985; Hammond, 1979; Lightfoot, 1978). Our data show that teachers base their judgments about the quality of children’s homework mainly on the performance of the children, rather than on other unrelated criteria. There is little bias evident against children in one-parent homes. When they do occur, biased reports are more likely by teachers who have less contact with parents. If teachers do not ask for and guide parent involvement, single parents and their children are assumed to be less qualified than married parents and their children.

TABLE 3.18 Teachers’ Estimates of the Quality Homework Completion (Means, Standard Deviations, and Test Statistics from Multiple Comparisons of Mean Scores by Family Structure, Family Education, and Teacher Leadership in Parent Involvement)

TABLE 3.19 Effects of Family, Student, and Teacher Characteristics on Teacher’s Ratings of Children on Their Homework Completion

The simple lines of inquiry in Tables 3.14, 3.16, and 3.18 suggest that there may be important statistical interactions of marital status, parent education, and teachers’ leadership in parent involvement in their effects on school and family communications. For example, when we graph the mean scores in these tables (not shown here), we see that teacher leadership matters more in determining teachers’ ratings of single parents’ helpfulness and follow-through on learning activities with their children at home and on their ratings of the homework quality of children in one-parent homes. Parent education matters more for married parents on how teachers rate parents’ helpfulness and children’s homework. New research is needed on the consequences for student learning of these potentially important interactions.

The full models in Tables 3.15, 3.17, and 3.19 reveal other important patterns. Parents’ reports of teachers’ practices of parent involvement are influenced by several characteristics of students, teachers, parents, and family-school communications. Teachers’ reports of parents are influenced especially by the teachers’ interactions with the child in school. It often is said that children are reflections of their parents, but it also seems to work the other way. Parents are evaluated, in part, on the basis of their children’s success and behavior in school. Teachers’ reports of children are mainly determined by the children’s schoolwork. However, even after achievement level is taken into account, some teachers report that children from one-parent homes have more trouble completing homework than do children from two-parent homes. The analyses show clearly that the ratings that parents and teachers give each other are significantly affected by teachers’ philosophies and practices of parent involvement.

On a related theme, in the full model we also found that whether or not mothers worked outside the home had no important effect on parents’ reports about teachers, teachers’ reports about parents, or teachers’ reports about the quality of children’s homework.

PARENTS’ AWARENESS, KNOWLEDGE, AND EVALUATIONS OF TEACHERS

Are single and married parents equally aware of their children’s instructional program? Is marital status an important variable for explaining parental receptivity to teachers’ requests to help their children? Epstein (1986) shows that teachers’ practices influenced parental reactions to their children’s teachers and schools. In this reading, we examine whether single and married parents react differently to teachers’ efforts to involve and inform parents.

The exploration of previous analyses shows that marital status had no significant effect on whether parents think the child’s teacher works hard to get parents “interested and excited about helping at home.” Rather, frequent experience with teachers’ requests to become involved in learning activities at home had a strong effect on parent awareness of the teacher’s efforts. Other variables—less formal education of parents, parents’ belief that teachers know the individual needs of their children, and teachers’ direct conversations with parents about helping their own child at home—also had significant, independent effects on parents’ awareness of teachers’ efforts to involve parents.

Similarly, teachers’ frequent requests for parent involvement in learning activities at home—not marital status—had strong effects on single and married parents’ reports that they get many ideas from teachers about how to help at home; the teacher thinks parents should help at home; they know more about the child’s instructional program than they did in previous years; and the teacher has positive interpersonal skills and high teaching quality.

OTHER REPORTS ABOUT SCHOOL FROM SINGLE AND MARRIED PARENTS

Other data collected from parents also help explain some of the results reported in the previous tables.

 

Single parents reported significantly more often than married parents that they spent more time assisting their children with homework but still did not have the “time and energy” to do what they believed the teacher expected. Single parents felt more pressure from teachers to become involved in their children’s learning activities. It may be that their children required or demanded more attention or needed more help to stay on grade level. Or it may be that parents who were separated, divorced, or never married felt keenly their responsibility for their children and the demands on their time. Single parents divide their time among many responsibilities for family, work, and leisure that are shared in many two-parent homes (Glasser and Navarre, 1965; Shinn, 1978).

Requests from teachers for parents to help with home-learning activities may make more of an impression on and may be more stressful for single parents (McAdoo, 1981). Our data show, however, that single parents respond successfully to teachers who involve all parents as part of their regular teaching practice. Like other parents, single parents who were frequently involved by the teacher felt that they increased their knowledge about the child’s instructional program. Indeed, teachers who organize and guide home-learning activities may especially help single parents make efficient and effective use of often limited time. When teachers convey uniform expectations and guidance for involvement by all parents, single parents receive an important message about their continuing responsibility in their children’s education.

 

Married parents spent significantly more days in the school as volunteers, as classroom helpers, and at PTA meetings than did single parents. Teachers may be more positive toward parents whom they meet and work with in the school building and classroom. These positive feelings may influence some teachers’ ratings of the quality of parental assistance at home. An important fact, however, is that the teacherleaders—whose philosophy and practices emphasized parent involvement at home—did not give significantly lower ratings to single parents or less-educated parents on their helpfulness or follow-through on home-learning activities, despite those parents’ lower involvement at the school building. Because many single parents work full- or part-time during the school day or have other demands on their time that keep them away from school, it is important for teachers to emphasize practices that involve all parents with their children’s education at home. If all involvement occurs during school hours, single parents and working parents are excluded from school activities.

 

There were several measures on which there were no significant differences in the reports of single and married parents. Some common beliefs about single and married parents were not supported statistically. For example, single and married parents gave similar evaluations of the overall quality of their children’s teachers, the extent to which the teacher shares the parents’ goals for their child, their child’s eagerness to talk about school, their child’s level of tenseness about homework activities, the appropriateness of the amount and kinds of homework that their children’s teachers assigned, and the frequency of most communications (e.g., notes, phone calls, and memos) from the school to the home. These findings support Snow’s (1982) conclusion that single and married parents had similar contacts with teachers and similar evaluations of teachers, and that socioeconomic status was more predictive than marital status of parents’ contacts with teachers. We show, however, that the SES is not the most important variable. Rather, school and family communications of several types reduce or eliminate the importance of marital status and SES.

Marital status is not significantly related to the severity of discipline problems in class. The belief that children from one-parent homes tend to be disruptive in school may be one of the “myths” that has been perpetuated from earlier studies based on “special problem” populations and from studies that did not include measures of student, family, and teacher characteristics and practices—all of which are more important influences than marital status on children’s classroom behavior. In our study, children’s disciplinary problems in the classroom are significantly correlated negatively with gender (r = -.262), academic achievement (r = -.147), and whether the child likes to talk about school at home (r = -.124), as might be expected. Male students, low-achieving students, and those who do not like to talk about school or homework with their parents are more likely than other students to be disciplinary problems in class. But parents’ marital status is not significantly associated with behavior problems in class (r = -.056).

Marital status is not correlated with parents’ willingness to help at home, feeling welcome at the school, or reports that someone at home reads regularly with the child. Indeed, single and married parents are remarkably positive about the general quality of their children’s elementary schools and teachers (see Epstein, 1986). As in earlier reports by Eiduson (1982), Keniston et al. (1977), and Sanick and Maudlin (1986), our survey shows that, like married parents, single parents are concerned about their children’s education, work with their children, and are generally positive about their children’s elementary schools and teachers.

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

Researchers have contributed three types of information on single parents. First, descriptive reports offer statistics about single parents and their children. Many reports have focused on the dramatic increase over the years in the prevalence of single parents; the number of children in single-parent homes; racial differences in marital patterns; and the economic disparities of single- versus two-parent homes, especially single-mother homes versus other family arrangements (Bane, 1976; Cherlin, 1981; Newberger et al., 1986; Weitzman, 1985). It is important to continue to document and monitor the trends in separation and divorce, the numbers of children affected, and the emergence and increase of special cases such as teenage single parents (Mott Foundation, 1981) and never-married parents (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1982).

Second, analytic studies of the effects of family structure on children or parents go beyond descriptive statistics to consider family conditions and processes that affect family members. Research of this type has measured a range of family-life variables, such as socioeconomic status, family history, family practices, and attitudes such as parental commitment to their children (Adams, 1982; Bane, 1976; Epstein, 1983; Furstenburg et al., 1983; Marjoribanks, 1979; Svanum et al., 1982; Zill, 1983). These studies increase our understanding of the dynamics of family life under different social and economic conditions.

Third, integrative, ecological studies of the effects of family structure on children and parents go beyond the boundaries of family conditions to include other institutions that affect family members (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Epstein, 1987; Leichter, 1974; Litwak and Meyer, 1974; Santrock and Tracy, 1978). These studies show that effects of family structure are, in large part, explained by other variables, including teachers’ practices of parent involvement and other measures of family and school interaction.

The present study contributes new knowledge based on data from parents and teachers about single parents and their children’s schools.

 

1. Single parents are not a single group. Single parents are highly diverse in their education, family size, family resources, occupational status, confidence in their ability to help their children, and other family practices that concern their children. The diversity in single-parent homes means that we cannot fully understand families by measuring only the simple category of marital status.

 

2. There is diversity in teachers’ practices that concern families. Some teachers’ philosophies and practices lead them toward more positive attitudes about single parents and about how all parents can assist the teacher as knowledgeable partners in their children’s education. Some teachers’ practices exemplify the theory that families and schools are overlapping spheres of influence for children, whereas other teachers’ practices exemplify the belief that families and schools are better off when teachers and parents conduct separate and different activities.

Some teachers involve all or most parents successfully. Other teachers demand more but expect less of single parents and their children. Single parents’ abilities to help their children may be affected by the teachers’ abilities to inform and direct parents about productive activities for parent involvement at home.

Santrock and Tracy (1978) found that teachers rated hypothetical children from two-parent homes higher on positive traits and lower on negative traits than children from one-parent homes. Levine (1982) reported that teachers had lower expectations for children from one-parent homes. In actual school settings, we found that teachers differed in their evaluations of children from one- and two-parent homes. Teachers tend to rate children from one-parent homes lower on the quality of their homework, and teachers who were not leaders made even greater distinctions between children from one- and two-parent homes.

 

3. Teacher leadership, not parent marital status, influenced parents’ knowledge about the school program and the teachers’ efforts. Single and married parents whose children were in the classrooms of teachers who were leaders in parent involvement were more aware of teachers’ efforts in parent involvement, improved their understanding of their children’s school programs, and rated teachers’ interpersonal and teaching skills higher than did parents of children in other teachers’ classrooms. Evidence has been accumulating in many studies that daily practices are more important than static measures of family structure for understanding children’s experiences. This has often been interpreted to refer to practices that parents might conduct on their own. However, parent involvement in school is not the parents’ responsibility alone. Contexts influence practice. Kriesberg (1967) found a neighborhood effect on parents’ practices. He noted that disadvantaged single mothers in middle-class neighborhoods gave more educational support to their children than similar mothers in poor neighborhoods. Our study reports a school effect on parents’ practices. Teachers’ practices that support and guide parents boost the involvement of all parents, including single parents—the same parents that other teachers believe cannot or will not help their children.

 

4. Research on single parents and their children must include measures of family and school structure and processes that affect the interactions of parents, teachers, and students. Marital status will look more important than it is unless studies include measures of teachers’ practices. In this study, teachers’ approaches to parent involvement; other teacher, parent, and student characteristics; and specific family-school communications were more important and more manipulable variables than marital status or mother’s education for explaining parents’ and teachers’ evaluations of each other. Studies of school and family connections must go beyond simple structural labels such as marital status and education and include measures of the practices and attitudes of parents, teachers, and students. During the school years, it is necessary to measure the characteristics of all overlapping institutions that influence student behavior and particularly the family and the school. This is especially true for particular outcomes such as student learning and development or parental understanding and practices concerning their children as students.

 

5. Schools’ interactions with families need to change because families are changing. Teachers must consider how they perceive and interact with single parents to minimize bias and maximize the support that all parents give their children. Family members may recover relatively rapidly from the disruption caused by divorce or separation (Bane, 1976; Hetherington, Cox, and Cox, 1978; Zill, 1983). But teachers who favor traditional families may have difficulty dealing with families who differ from their “ideal.” Some administrators and teachers still consider the primary, two-parent family as the model by which other families should be judged (Bernard, 1984). The primary family—two natural parents and their children—may be an ideal type, but it is no longer the “typical” family for all school-aged children. In 1980, 63 percent of white children and 27 percent of black children lived in primary families; 14 percent of all white children and 43 percent of all black children lived in one-parent homes with their mothers.¹⁰ Most of the others lived in “blended” families in which at least one parent had remarried (Hernandez and Meyers, 1986). Demographic trends indicate that the one-parent home will be “the new norm” because over half of all children will live in a one-parent home for some of their school years. During that time, teachers’ practices to assist and involve all parents can help reduce single parents’ stress about their children’s well-being and help children’s learning and attitudes about school and homework.

Schools need to change their understanding of single parents to better meet the parents’ concerns and children’s needs. Most suggestions about how the school should assist single parents and their children focus on providing psychological services, family therapy, discussion groups, or individual counseling for children who experience divorce in their families (Brown, 1980). Although discussion or therapy sessions may help children adjust to family disruptions, this study suggests that a more important general direction is to assist all parents in how to help their children at home in ways that will improve their children’s success in school. This includes helping parents make productive use of small amounts of time at home for school-related skills, activities, and decisions.

School policies and practices can minimize or exaggerate the importance of family structure. Although school practices cannot solve the serious social and economic problems that single parents often face, our data show that teachers play a pivotal role in the lives of children from one-parent homes and in their parents’ lives as well.

REFERENCES

Adams, B. (1982). Conceptual and policy issues in the study of family socialization in the United States. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York.

Baker, D. P., and D. L. Stevenson. (1986). Mothers’ strategies for children’s school achievement: Managing the transition to high school. Sociology of Education 59: 156-166.

Bane, M. J. (1976). Here to stay: American families in the twentieth century. New York: Basic Books.

Barton, W. A. (1981). The effects of one-parentness on student achievement. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Pennsylvania State University.

Becker, H. J., and J. L. Epstein. (1982a). Influences on teachers’ use of parent involvement. Report 324. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Center for Social Organization of Schools.

———. (1982b). Parent involvement: A study of teacher practices. Elementary School Journal 83: 85-102. (Reading 3.1).

Bernard, J. M. (1984). Divorced families and the schools. In J. H. Cansen (Ed.), Family therapy with school related problems (pp. 91-101). Rockville, MD: Aspen Systems Corporation.

Blanchard, R. W., and H. B. Biller. (1971). Father availability and academic performance among third-grade boys. Developmental Psychology 4: 301-305.

Boyd, D. A., and T. S. Parish. (1985). An examination of academic achievement in light of familial configuration. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Brown, B. F. (1980). A study of the school needs of children from one-parent families. Phi Delta Kappan 61: 537-540.

Carew, J., and S. L. Lightfoot. (1979). Beyond bias: Perspectives on classrooms. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cherlin, A. J. (1981). Marriage, divorce, remarriage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Clay, P. L. (1981). Single parents and the public schools: How does the partnership work? Columbia, MD: National Committee for Citizens in Education.

Coleman, J. S. (1974). Power and structure in society. New York: W. W. Norton.

Coleman, J. S., E. Q. Campbell, C. J. Hobson, J. M. McPartland, A. Mood, F. D. Weinfield, and R. L. York. (1966). Equal educational opportunity. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Dauber, S. L., and J. L. Epstein. (1989). Parents’ attitudes and practices of involvement in inner-city elementary and middle schools. CREMS Report 33. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools. (Reading 3.6).

Dokecki, P. R., and R. M. Maroney. (1983). To strengthen all families: A human development and community value framework. In R. Haskins and D. Adams (Eds.), Parent education and public policy (pp. 40-64). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Eiduson, B. T. (1982). Contemporary single mothers. In L. G. Katz (Ed.), Current topics in early childhood education (pp. 65-76). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Engan-Barker, D. (1986). Family and education: The concepts of family failure and the role it plays in national educational and family policy—A review of the literature. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Minnesota.

Epstein, J. L. (1983). Longitudinal effects of person-family-school interactions on student outcomes. In A. Kerckhoff (Ed.), Research in sociology of education and socialization, Vol. 4 (pp. 101-128). Greenwich, CT: JAI.

———. (1986, January). Reactions of parents to teacher practices of parent involvement. Elementary School Journal 87: 277-294. (Reading 3.4).

———. (1987). Toward a theory of family-school connections: Teacher practices and parent involvement across the school years. In K. Hurrelmann, E. Kaufmann, and F. Losel (Eds.), Social intervention: Potential and constraints (pp. 121-136). New York: De-Gruyter. (Reading 2.1).

———. (1989). Schools in the center: School, family, peer, and community connections for more effective middle grade schools and students. Paper prepared for the Carnegie Task Force for the Education of Young Adolescents. Baltimore: Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools, Johns Hopkins University.

———. (1990). School and family connections: Theory, research and implications for integrating sociologies of education and family. Marriage and Family Review 15(1/2): 96-126.

———. (1991). Effects on student achievement in reading and math of teachers’ practices of parent involvement. In S. Silvern (Ed.), Advances in reading/language research, Vol. 5: Literacy through family, community, and school interaction (pp. 261-276). Greenwich, CT: JAI. (Reading 3.7).

Epstein, J. L., and H. J. Becker. (1982, November). Teacher reported practices of parent involvement: Problems and possibilities. Elementary School Journal 83: 103-113. (Reading 3.2).

Epstein, J. L., and J. M. McPartland. (1979). Authority structures. In H. Walberg (Ed.), Educational environments and effects (pp. 293-312). Berkeley: McCutcheon.

Furstenburg, F. F., Jr., and J. A. Seltzer. (1983). Encountering divorce: Children’s responses to family dissolution and reconstitution. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Detroit.

Furstenburg, F. F., C. W. Nord, J. L. Peterson, and N. Zill. (1983). The life course of children of divorce: Marital disruption and parental contact. American Sociological Review 48: 656-668.

Garbarino, J. (1982). Children and families in the social environment. New York: Aldine.

Garfinkle, I., and S. S. McLanahan. (1986). Single mothers and their children: A new American dilemma. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.

Glasser, P., and E. Navarre. (1965). Structural problems of the one parent family. Journal of Social Issues 21: 98-109.

Glick, P. C. (1979). Children of divorced parents in demographic perspectives. Journal of Social Issues 35: 170-182.

Hammond, J. M. (1979, November). A comparison of elementary children from divorced and intact families. Phi Delta Kappan 61: 219.

Hanson, S. L., and A. Ginsburg. (1986). Gaining ground: Values and high school success. Washington, DC: Decision Resources Corporation.

Hernandez, D. J., and D. E. Myers. (1986). Children and their extended families since World War II. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in San Francisco.

Hetherington, E. M., and K. A. Camara. (1984). Families in transition: The process of dissolution and reconstitution. In R. D. Parke (Ed.), Review of child development research: Vol. 7 (pp. 398-440). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hetherington, E. M., K. A. Camara, and D. L. Featherman. (1981). Cognitive performance, school learning, and achievement of children for one parent households. Washington, DC: National Institute of Education.

Hetherington, E. M., M. Cox, and R. Cox. (1978). The aftermath of divorce. In J. H. Stevens Jr. and M. Matthews (Eds.), Mother-child, father-child relations (pp. 149-176). Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Kamerman, S. B., and C. D. Hayes. (1982). Families that work: Children in a changing world. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Kelly, F. J., J. North, and H. Zingle. (1965). The relation of the broken home to subsequent school behaviors. Alberta Journal of Educational Research 11: 215-219.

Keniston, K., and the Carnegie Council on Children. (1977). All our children: The American family under pressure. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Kriesberg, L. (1967). Rearing children for educational achievement in fatherless families. Journal of Marriage and the Family 29: 288-301.

Kurdek, L. A., and D. Blisk. (1983). Dimensions and correlates of mothers’ divorce experiences. Journal of Divorce 6: 1-24.

Laosa, L. M. (1983). Parent education, cultural pluralism, and public policy. In R. Haskins and D. Adams (Eds.), Parent education and public policy (pp. 331-345). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Laosa, L. M., and I. E. Sigel. (1982). Families as learning environments for children. New York: Plenum Press.

Leichter, Hope Jensen. (Ed.). (1974). The family as educator. New York: Teachers College Press.

Leler, H. (1983). Parent education and involvement in relation to the schools and to parents of school-aged children. In R. Haskins and D. Adams (Eds.), Parent education and public policy (pp. 114-180). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Levine, E. R. (1982). What teachers expect of children from single parent families. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April, in New York.

Lightfoot, S. L. (1978). Worlds apart: Relationships between families and schools. New York: Basic Books.

Litwak, E., and H. J. Meyer. (1974). School, family, and neighborhood: The theory and practice of school-community relations. New York: Columbia University Press.

Marjoribanks, K. (1979). Families and their learning environments: An empirical analysis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Marotz-Bader, R., G. R. Adams, N. Bueche, B. Munro, and G. Munro. (1979). Family form or family process? Reconsidering the deficit family model approach. Family Coordinator 28: 5-14.

Masnick, G., and M. J. Bane. (1980). The nation’s families: 1960-1990. Cambridge, MA: Joint Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard University.

McAdoo, H. (1981). Levels of stress in single black employed mothers of school-aged children. Washington, DC: Howard University. Mimeographed.

McDill, E. L., and L. Rigsby. (1973). Structure and process in secondary schools: The academic impact of educational climates. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Milne, A., D. Myers, A. Rosenthal, and A. Ginsburg. (1986). Working mothers and the educational achievement of school children. Sociology of Education 59: 125-139.

Mott Foundation. (1981). Teenage pregnancy: A critical family issue. Flint, MI: The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

National Public Radio (NPR). (1980, November). Single parent families, Parts 1-4, programs 272-275. Washington, DC: National Public Radio.

Newberger, C. M., L. H. Melnicoe, and E. H. Newberger. (1986). The American family in crisis: Implications for children. Current Problems in Pediatrics, Volume 16, Number 12. Chicago: Yearbook Medical Publishers.

Ogbu, J. V. (1974). The next generation: An ethnology of education in an urban neighborhood . New York: Academic Press.

Parsons, T. (1959). The school class as a social system: Some of its functions in American society. Harvard Educational Review 29: 297-318.

Sanick, M. M., and T. Maudlin. (1986). Single vs. 2-parent families: A comparison of mothers’ time. Family Relations 35: 53.

Santrock, J. W., and R. L. Tracy. (1978). Effects of children’s family structure on the development of stereotypes by teachers. Journal of Educational Psychology 20: 754-757.

Scott-Jones, D. (1983). One-parent families and their children’s achievement. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh. Mimeographed.

Sewell, W. H., and R. M. Hauser. (1975). Occupation and earnings: Achievement in the early career. New York: Academic Press.

Shinn, M. (1978). Father absence and children’s cognitive development. Psychological Bulletin 85: 295-324.

Snow, M. B. (1982). Characteristics of families with special needs in relation to school. AEL Report Series. Charleston, WV: Appalachian Educational Laboratory.

Svanum, S., R. G. Bringle, and J. E. McLaughlin. (1982). Father absence and cognitive performance on a large sample of six-to-eleven-year old children. Child Development 53: 136-143.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1982). Marital status and living arrangements: March 1982. Current Population Report Series. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

U. S. Census Bureau. (2009). America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2007. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce (P20-56). (Updated reference.)

U.S. House of Representatives. (1986, June 17). Divorce: A fact sheet. Washington, DC: Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families.

Waller, W. (1932). The sociology of teaching. New York: Russell and Russell.

Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization. New York: Oxford University Press.

Weitzman, L. (1985). The divorce revolution: The unexpected social and economic consequences for women and children in America. New York: Free Press.

Zajonc, R. (1976). Family configuration and intelligence. Science 192: 227-236.

Zill, N. (1983, March). Perspectives: Mental health of school children from single-parent families. Paper presented at the National Conference of Single Parents and the Schools, Washington, DC.

READING 3.6

Parents’ Attitudes and Practices of Involvement in Inner-City Elementary and Middle Schools¹¹

Parent involvement—or school and family connections—is a component of effective schools that deserves special consideration because it contributes to successful family environments and more successful students. Research conducted for nearly 25 years has shown convincingly that parent involvement is important for children’s learning, attitudes about school, and aspirations. Children are more successful students at all grade levels if their parents participate at school and encourage education and learning at home, whatever the educational background or social class of their parents.

Most research on parent involvement has focused on parents who become involved on their own, without connecting parents’ actions to the practices of their children’s teachers. Some research on parent involvement conducted in the late 1980s asks more crucial questions by focusing on the actions of the schools: Can schools successfully involve all parents in their children’s education, especially those parents who would not become involved on their own? How can schools involve parents whose children are at risk of failing in school? If schools involve all parents in important ways, are there measurable benefits to students, parents, and teaching practice?

From research we have learned that schools’ programs and teachers’ practices to involve parents have important positive effects on parents’ abilities to help their children across the grades; on parents’ ratings of teachers’ skills and teaching quality; on teachers’ opinions about parents’ abilities to help their children with schoolwork at home; on students’ attitudes about school, homework, and the similarity of their school and family; and on students’ reading achievement (Becker and Epstein, 1982 [Reading 3.1]; Epstein, 1982 [Reading 3.9], 1986 [Reading 3.4], 1991 [Reading 3.7]; Epstein and Dauber, 1991 [Reading 3.3]).

However, few studies focused on schools with large populations of educationally disadvantaged students or hard-to-reach parents (Epstein, 1988a). A recurring theme in some studies is that less-educated parents do not want to or cannot become involved in their children’s education (Baker and Stevenson, 1986; Lareau, 1987). However, other research challenges this assumption by showing that some teachers successfully involve parents of the most disadvantaged students in important ways (Clark, 1983; Comer, 1980; Epstein, 1990 [Reading 3.5]; Epstein and Dauber, 1991; Rich, Van Dien, and Mattox, 1979; Rubin, Olmsted, Szegda, Wetherby, and Williams, 1983; Scott-Jones, 1987).

Earlier studies of teachers and parents focused on one level of schooling, either elementary schools (see Becker and Epstein, 1982; Epstein, 1986, 1990, 1991); middle or junior high schools (Baker and Stevenson, 1986; Leitch and Tangri, 1988); or high schools (Bauch, 1988; Clark, 1983; Dornbusch and Ritter, 1988). This study used comparable data from two levels of schooling: elementary and middle grades. The study asked inner-city parents in economically disadvantaged communities how they are involved or want to be involved and how family involvement differs in the elementary and middle grades.

STUDY DESIGN

Eight Title I schools in the Baltimore area were involved in an “action research” program in cooperation with a local foundation. The Fund for Educational Excellence in Baltimore made small grants directly to schools to help teachers increase and improve parent involvement. Teacher representatives for parent involvement from the eight schools attended a two-day summer workshop on school and family connections. They helped design questionnaires for teaches and parents (Epstein and Becker, 1990) for use in each school to identify where schools are starting from on five major types of parent involvement (Epstein, 1987). The teachers were provided with small planning grants to help them distribute and collect the surveys.

Each school was given nontechnical “clinical summaries” of the data from teachers and from parents to help them understand their strengths and weaknesses in parent involvement (Epstein, 1988b; Epstein and Salinas, 1988). The schools used the data to develop action plans for improving parent involvement programs and practices. The teachers who are directing the projects are supported by small grants ($1,000) each year to cover expenses to implement and evaluate the activities they designed.

Data from 171 teachers in these schools on their attitudes and practices of parent involvement were reported in a separate paper (see Epstein and Dauber, 1991 [Reading 3.3]). The data from teachers showed that:

• Teachers generally agreed that parent involvement is important for student success and teacher effectiveness.

• Teachers were more sure about what they wanted from parents than about what they wanted to do for parents. Almost all teachers reported that they expected all parents to fulfill 12 responsibilities, ranging from teaching their children to behave, to knowing what children are expected to learn each year, to helping their children with homework. Few teachers, however, had comprehensive programs to help parents attain these skills.

• Elementary school practices were stronger, more positive, and more comprehensive than those in the middle grades.

• The individual teacher was a key, but not the only, factor in building strong school programs. Analyses of “discrepancy scores” showed that perceived similarities between self and principal, self and teacher-colleagues, and self and parents were significantly associated with the strength of schools’ parent involvement programs. Programs and practices were stronger in schools where teachers perceived that they, their colleagues, and parents all felt strongly about the importance of parent involvement.

The reports about parent involvement from teachers in inner-city elementary and middle schools are important but tell only half the story about what is happening in any school. Data from parents are needed to understand fully where schools are starting from and their potential for improving parent involvement practices. This reading combines the data from the parents in all eight schools to study the present practices and patterns of parent involvement in inner-city elementary and middle grades. We examine parents’ reports of their attitudes about their children’s schools, their practices at home, their perceptions of how the schools presently involve parents, and their wishes or preferences for actions and programs by the schools.

The questionnaires included more than 75 items of information on parent attitudes toward their children’s school; the school subjects that parents want to know more about; how frequently the parents are involved in different ways in their children’s education; how well school programs and teacher practices inform and involve them in their children’s education; what workshop topics they would select; the times of day that parents prefer meetings or conferences at school to take place; how much time their children spend on homework and whether the parents help; and background information about parents’ education, work, and family size.

Parents responded in large numbers to the opportunity to give their opinions about their involvement and school practices. More than 50 percent of the parents in each school returned the questionnaires (N = 2,317), a respectable rate of return given that no follow-ups were possible because of school schedules and budget constraints.

The eight Title I inner-city schools, five elementary and three middle schools, were selected at random from sets of similar Title I schools that serve children and families who live in public housing projects, rental homes and apartments, and privately owned homes in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Table 3.20 outlines the characteristics of the parent population. Although parents of both elementary-and middle-grade students are well represented, the sample includes almost twice as many single parents as the national average, more parents without high school diplomas, and larger family sizes than in the general population.

It is possible, of course, that the 50 percent who did not respond are among the least involved or lowest in literacy. They include parents whose children did not bring the questionnaires home or did not return them, parents who chose not to answer questionnaires, or parents who cannot read well enough to answer the questions. The surveys were written, rewritten, and tested for use in Title I schools. More than 30 percent of the parents who returned the surveys did not complete high school; more than 40 percent are single parents. Thus, despite some under-representation of the most educationally disadvantaged families in these schools, the sample is highly diverse and highly representative of the schools.

TABLE 3.20 Characteristics of the Sample of Parents*

		Percent
Elementary school parents (N = 1,135)		49.0
Middle school parents (N = 1,182)		51.0
Single parents		43.4
Working outside home (full- or part-time)		63.7
Did not complete high school		31.0
Completed high school		40.6
Beyond high school		28.3
Average family size (adults and children)		4.4
Parent rating of student ability:
	Top student	7.6
	Good student	32.4
	Average/OK student	35.2
	Fair student	21.8
	Poor student	3.0
* N = 2,317.

Despite some limitations of the sample, this study offers unique comparable data from parents with children in elementary and middle schools. Indeed, because of the educational and economic disadvantages of the sample, we can put questions of parent involvement to a stringent test.

MEASURES

Parents’ Reports of Their Involvement

Parents rated the frequency of their involvement in conducting 18 different practices included under five major types of parent involvement: parenting and supervising at home, communicating with the school, volunteering at the school, conducting learning activities at home, and participating in PTA or parent leadership activities. The main measures of parents’ practices are:

Parent Involvement at the School (PINVSCH)—a five-item measure of the frequency of helping (never, not yet, one to two times, many times) at the school building.

Parent Involvement with Homework (PINVHW)—a five-item measure of the frequency of assisting and monitoring homework.

Parent Involvement in Reading Activities at Home (PINVREAD)—a four-item measure of the frequency of parent help to students in reading.

Total Parent Involvement (PINVIOT)—an 18-item measure of the frequency of parents’ use of all types of parent involvement at home and school, including the 14 items in the three scales listed previously and four other items on games, chores, and trips that involve parents and children in communication and learning activities at home.

Parents’ Reports of Schools’ Practices to Involve Parents

Parents rated their children’s schools on whether and how well the schools conduct nine parent involvement practices. The activities include the five types of parent involvement, ranging from the school telling parents how the child is doing in school to giving parents ideas of how to help at home. The main measures of school practices as reported by parents are:

School Practices to Communicate with Parents and Involve Them at School (SCHCOMMPI)—a five-item measure of how well the school communicates with parents to provide information about school programs and activities.

School Practices to Involve Parents at Home (SCHHOMEPI)—a four-item measure of how well the school contacts and guides parents to help their own children at home.

Total School Program to Involve Parents (SCHTOTPI)—a nine-item measure of the extent to which the school contacts and guides parents to involve them in their children’s education at home and at school.

TABLE 3.21 Measures of Parent Involvement and Attitudes

Other measures are:

Parent Attitudes about the School (PATT)—a six-item measure of the quality of the child’s school.

Family Background Measures—Parent Education, Marital Status, Family Size, Parent Work outside the Home, and Parent Ratings of Student Ability.

The several scales of parents’ reports of their practices, the schools’ practices to involve them, and their attitudes toward their children’s school have modest to high reliabilities. These are reported in Table 3.21.

EFFECTS ON PARENT INVOLVEMENT

Table 3.22 summarizes analyses of the effects of parent and student characteristics, school level, and school practices to involve families on parents’ reported involvement at school and at home. The four columns of the table report the variables that significantly explain parent involvement at school (column 1); at home on homework (column 2); at home on reading in particular (column 3); and on total parent involvement at school, with homework, with reading, and in all activities (column 4).

Level of Schooling (Elementary or Middle School)

School level has strong independent effects on all measures of involvement reported by parents. Parents of children in the elementary grades are more involved than parents of children in the middle grades. According to the parents’ reports, elementary school teachers do more and do better to involve parents in their children’s education at school (ß = -.13), at home with homework (ß = -.14), with reading activities at home (ß = -.08), and with all types of involvement (ß = -.16).

Within middle schools, parents of sixth and seventh graders are more likely to be involved in their children’s education at home. Parents of eighth graders are more involved at the school building. Because these data were collected early in the school year, parents of sixth graders were still relatively new to the school and may not have been included in the small core of parent volunteers in middle schools. Sixth-grade students may be more apt to ask for help at home if they are still unsure of themselves in a new school setting. Older students (eighth graders) may feel that they are more knowledgeable than their parents about schoolwork and school decisions.

Family Characteristics

In all cases, parents who are better educated are more involved at school and at home than parents who are less educated. Other family characteristics affect different types of involvement. Parents with fewer children are more involved with their children at home (ß = -.07), but family size is not a significant factor for explaining parent involvement at school. Parents who work are significantly less likely to participate at the school building (ß = -.06), but working outside the home is not a significant predictor of involvement at home. Marital status had no significant effects on the extent of involvement either at school or at home. These results confirm other reports at the elementary level (see Epstein, 1986) and at the middle level (Muller, 1991).

TABLE 3.22 Effects on Extent of Parents’ Involvement of School Level, Family Characteristics, and Reported Teacher Practices to Involve Parents

Student Characteristics

In all analyses, parents were more involved in their children’s education if the children were better students. These cross-sectional data cannot be interpreted to mean that students whose parents are involved become better students. However, the results of earlier studies that used fall-to-spring test scores over one school year suggest that teachers’ practices to involve parents in reading resulted in greater reading gains for children in those teachers’ classrooms (Epstein, 1991). Parents whose children are doing well or are doing better in school are more likely to do more to ensure their children’s continued success.

School Programs and Teachers’ Practices

The strongest and most consistent predictors of parent involvement at school and at home are the specific school programs and teacher practices that encourage and guide parent involvement. Regardless of parent education, family size, student ability, or school level (elementary or middle school), parents are more likely to become partners in their children’s education if they perceive that the schools have strong practices to involve parents at school (ß = .27), at home with homework (ß = .18), and at home with reading activities (ß = .16). The sum of all nine school practices has the strongest effect on parents’ total involvement (ß = .30) after all other factors have been statistically controlled.

When parents believe the schools are doing little to involve them, they report doing little at home. When parents perceive that the school is doing many things to involve them, they are more involved in their children’s education at school and at home. The schools’ practices, not just family characteristics, make a difference in whether parents become involved in and feel informed about their children’s education.

CLASSROOM-LEVEL REPORTS OF SCHOOL PRACTICES

Individual parents in one teacher’s class may view the teacher’s practices from a personal perspective. For example, one parent may receive special advice from a teacher about how to help a child at home or become involved at school. Or all parents of students in a classroom may report the teacher’s practices similarly if they recognize that the teacher’s regular practice is to involve all parents. We checked to see how individual parent reports compared to the reports of other parents in the same classroom. We can begin to understand whether parent involvement is a phenomenological process or a general classroom process by examining how parents of entire classrooms of students report the teacher’s requests for involvement.

In this sample, only parents of children in the elementary grades could be identified by classroom for aggregated reports. The 1,135 parents of children in 86 classrooms provided assessments of school practices to inform and involve parents. An average or “consensus” score was calculated for each classroom and merged with the individual parent records.

Individual reports were significantly and positively correlated with the reports of other parents in the classroom (between r = .28 and r = .44). The highest agreement among parents came on the parents’ reports about the amount of time that their children spend on homework (r = .44). Individual and aggregate scores were correlated slightly lower on whether the teacher guides parents on how to help with homework (r = .32).

TABLE 3.23 Comparison of Effects of Individual-Level and Classroom-Level Reports of Teacher Practices to Involve Parents (Elementary School Level Only)

Parents also were in high agreement about the overall quality of their children’s school. The correlation was +.38 between an average parent’s report that a school was good or poor and the reports of all the parents in the same classroom. The modest but significant correlations suggest that there is agreement about school and teacher practices to involve parents. The figures also show considerable variation in the interpretations of teacher practices by individual parents in the same classroom.

Classroom averages of parents’ reports may be more objective measures than one parent’s report of a teacher’s practices. We compare the effects of the classroom-level and individual-level measures on parents’ practices in Table 3.23. The first line shows the individual effects; the second line shows the effects on parent involvement of the classroom aggregate measures of teachers’ practices. On all types of involvement, the individual reports have stronger effects than the aggregated reports on parents’ practices at school and at home. Line 2 substitutes the average of the parents’ reports for that classroom, but retains the parents’ individual background variables. This analysis uses the aggregate report as an alternative “truth” about the teacher’s practices as if all parents received and interpreted the same information about involvement from the teacher. The results in lines 1 and 2 can be viewed as providing a “range of effects,” with the “truth” somewhere between the two coefficients. Line 3 is a classroom analysis. It uses the average reports of all parents in a classroom about teacher practices and the average family background variables. These effects are highly consistent with the individual analyses. Importantly, they show that when classroom agreement about specific teachers’ practices is high, individual parents tend to respond with those practices at home.

The differences raise two questions for future studies: How accurately does any one parent report a teacher’s practices? Do teachers treat all parents in a classroom similarly to involve them at school and at home? The coefficients in Table 3.23 suggest that despite some consensus about teachers’ practices among parents in a class, there is considerable evidence of individual interpretation of teacher practices and the translation of those practices into parent practices. All parents of children in a classroom may not be treated the same by a teacher, and they may not interpret messages, requests, and opportunities in the same way. The strongest effects on parent involvement at school and at home are demonstrated by parents who personally understand and act on the teacher’s practices that encourage their involvement.

We believe that in strong or “improving” schools, the correspondence between one parent’s report and those of all other parents in the class should increase over time. This would indicate that parents were becoming increasingly similar in how they perceived and understood the teacher’s practices. There would, of course, always be some differences in individual responses to requests for involvement.

STUDENT TIME ON HOMEWORK AND PARENT INVOLVEMENT

Helping with homework is one common and important means by which parents become involved in what their children are learning in school. We asked parents several questions about their children’s homework practices and their own involvement in homework activities. Table 3.24 shows comparisons of homework activities of elementary and middle school students and the help they receive from parents. According to parents:

• Middle school students spend more time doing homework on an average night than do elementary students.

• Parents of elementary school children help their children for more minutes and feel more able to help with reading and math than do parents of middle school students.

• Parents of children at both levels of school say they could help more (up to 45-50 minutes, on average) if the teacher guided them in how to help at home.

• Parents of children at both levels of school say they have time to help on weekends. Often, students are not assigned homework on weekends, when many parents have more time to interact with their children.

• More parents of elementary school students than parents of middle school students report that their children’s schools and teachers have good programs that guide them in how to help at home to check their child’s homework. Even at the elementary level, only 35 percent of the parents think their school “does well” on this. At the middle level, only 25 percent believe their school does well to help them know what to do.

• More parents of elementary school students than parents of middle school students report that their child likes to talk about school at home. But even at the elementary level, many parents, close to 40 percent, do not think that their children really enjoy such discussions.

Other data (not reported in Table 3.24) indicate that parents with more formal education say that their children spend more time on homework. These parents may be more aware of the homework that their children have to do, the parents may make sure the children do all of their homework, or the children may be in classrooms where the teachers give more homework. Parents with less formal education say they could help more if the teachers told them how to help. Those with more education may believe they are already helping enough or that they are already receiving good information from the teacher on how to help.

Table 3.25 reports the results of multiple-regression analyses conducted to determine the factors that affect how much time parents spend monitoring, assisting, or otherwise helping their children with homework. As noted, level of schooling affects the amount of time parents spend helping at home. With all other variables statistically controlled, parents of elementary students spend more time helping on homework (ß = -.18). Regardless of school level, parents help for more minutes if their children spend more time on homework. Alternative explanations are that when parents help, it takes students more time to do their homework, or parents help when their children have a lot of homework assigned by the teacher.

Parents’ education, family size, and marital status—all indicators of family social class and social structure—are not significantly associated with the amount of time parents help with homework. Parents who work outside the home spend fewer minutes helping their children than do other parents. Parents whose children need the most help in schoolwork (rated by parents as “fair” or “poor” students) spend more minutes helping with homework (ß = -.08). Other analyses show that this is especially true in the elementary grades. Parents of struggling students may believe that if they give their children extra help on homework, the students have a chance to succeed in school. By the middle grades, parents who rate their children as “poor” students do not help their children as much as parents of “average” students. In the middle grades, parents may feel they are not able to help their academically weak children without special guidance from teachers about how to help. Parents of top students do not help for as many minutes in the middle grades, in part because the students do not need or ask for assistance and in part because teachers do not guide parents’ involvement.

TABLE 3.24 Parents’ Reports about Homework

	School Level
	Elementary (N = 1,135)	Middle (N = 1,182)
Average time on homework	30-35 min.	35-40 min.
Average time parent helps	30-35	25-30
% Strongly agree they are able to help with reading	75.9	67.1
% Strongly agree they are able to help with math	71.8	55.4
Average time parent could help if teacher gave information	45-50 min.	45-50 min.
% Have time to help on weekends	95.3	91.9
% Report school explains how to check child’s homework	35.7	25.0
% Strongly agree child should get more homework	40.0	35.6
% Strongly agree child likes to talk about school at home	62.4	45.3

TABLE 3.25 Effects on Minutes Parents Help with Homework of School Level, Family Characteristics, Students’ Homework Time, and Teachers’ Practices to Involve Parents in Homework

		ßa, b
School level (elementary or middle)		-.18
Students’ homework time		.51
Parent education		NS
Family size		NS
Single parent		NS
Parent works outside home		-.08
	Rating of student ability	-.08
Teachers’ practices to guide parent help on homework		.10
	N	1,560
	R2	.28
a Standardized beta coefficients for listwise regression analyses are reported.
b All reported coefficients are significant at or beyond the .05 level; coefficients of .10 are particularly important.

Other analyses show that in the middle grades, struggling students spend the least amount of time on homework. Thus, there is less investment in homework time by middle-grade students who are academically weak, less investment in helping behavior by parents of these students, and less investment by middle-grade teachers in informing parents about how to help their children at this level.

Even after all family and student characteristics are statistically accounted for, there is a significant, positive, and important effect of teachers’ reported practices to guide parents in how to help their children with homework (ß = .10). Teachers who more often conduct practices that involve families influence parents to spend more time with their children on homework. The variables in these analyses explain about 28 percent of the variance in the amount of time parents spend helping on homework.

There is an interesting contrast between Tables 3.22 and 3.25 concerning parent involvement at home with homework. Table 3.22 shows that parents with more formal education and parents of more successful students report that they are involved in more and different ways of helping at home with homework. Table 3.25 reports that parents of weaker or academically struggling students spend more minutes helping their children on an average night. Types of help and time spent helping are different indicators of involvement. It may be that, over time, many different ways of helping and more minutes spent helping lead to more success for students on schoolwork.

The different patterns suggest that students’ different needs are being addressed by parents. Students who need more help take more minutes of their parents’ time. Students who are better students may require different kinds of assistance. The important similarity between the two tables is that the specific practices of teachers to guide parents in how to help at home increase the types of help parents say they give and the time they give to help their children.

DISCUSSION

Several other findings from the data regarding inner-city parents increase our understanding of parent involvement in children’s education in the elementary and middle grades:

• Most parents believe that their children attend a good school and that the teachers care about their children, and the parents feel welcome at the school. However, there is considerable variation in these attitudes, with many parents unhappy or unsure about the quality of schools and teachers. Interestingly, parents’ attitudes about the quality of their children’s school are more highly correlated with the school’s practices to involve parents (.346) than with the parents’ practices of involvement (.157). Parents who become involved at home and at school say that the school has a positive climate. Even more so, parents who believe that the school is actively working to involve them say that the school is a good one. This connection supports earlier findings that parents give teachers higher ratings when teachers frequently involve parents in their children’s education (Epstein, 1985 [Reading 4.3], 1986).

• Parents report little involvement at the school building. Many parents work full-time or part-time and cannot come to the school during the school day. Others report that they have not been asked by the school to become volunteers, but would like to be.

• Parents in all the schools in this sample are emphatic about wanting the school and teachers to advise them about how to help their children at home at each grade level. Parents believe that the schools need to strengthen practices such as giving parents specific information on their children’s major academic subjects and what their children are expected to learn each year.

• Parents of young children and parents with more formal education conduct more activities at home that support their children’s schooling.

• Parents who were guided by teachers on how to help at home spent more minutes helping with homework than other parents.

• In many schools, parents are asked to come to the building for workshops. An interesting sidelight in these data is that in all eight schools, elementary and middle, parents’ top request for workshop topics was “How to Help My Child Develop His/Her Special Talents.” Across the schools, from 57 to 68 percent of parents checked that topic (average 61 percent). By contrast, an average of 54 percent were interested in workshops on helping children take tests, and an average of 45 percent checked interest in discipline and control of children.

• Inner-city parents need information and assistance to help develop the special qualities they see in their children. Time and resources to develop talent may be as important as time for homework for helping children’s self-esteem and commitment to learning. The parents’ requests for help from the schools on the topic of developing children’s special talents are important calls for action, along with their requests for schools to increase information on how to help on homework.

Most important for policy and practice, parents’ level of involvement is directly linked to the specific practices of the school that encourage involvement at school and guide parents in how to help at home. The data are clear that the schools’ practices to inform and involve parents are more important than parent education, family size, marital status, and even grade level in determining whether inner-city parents stay involved with their children’s education through the middle grades.

Although teachers in these urban Title I schools reported that most parents are not involved and do not want to be (see Epstein and Dauber, 1991), parents of students in the same schools tell a different story. They say that they are involved with their children but that they need more and better information from teachers about how to help at home. Parents and teachers have different perspectives that must be recognized and taken into account in developing activities to improve parent involvement.

Earlier research showed that some of the strongest immediate effects of teachers’ practices of parent involvement are on parents’ attitudes and behaviors (see Epstein, 1986). This study suggests that the same is true for inner-city parents. Parents are more involved at school and at home when they perceive that the schools have strong programs that encourage parent involvement. The implication is that all schools, including inner-city schools, can develop more comprehensive programs of parent involvement to help more families become knowledgeable partners in their children’s education.

In these schools the survey data were used to help the schools plan three-year programs to improve their parent involvement practices to meet the needs and requests of the parents and the hopes of the teachers for stronger partnerships. The data served as Time 1, the starting point, for a longitudinal study of the impact of three years of work to improve practices. In this and in other research, the next questions must deal with the results of efforts to improve school and family partnerships.

REFERENCES

Baker, D. P., and D. L. Stevenson. (1986). Mothers’ strategies for children’s school achievement: Managing the transition to high school. Sociology of Education 59: 156-166.

Bauch, P. A. (1988). Is parent involvement different in private schools? Educational Horizons 66: 78-82.

Becker, H. J., and J. L. Epstein. (1982). Parent involvement: A study of teacher practices. Elementary School Journal 83: 85-102. (Reading 3.1).

Clark, R. (1983). Family life and school achievement: Why poor black children succeed and fail. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Comer, J. P. (1980). School power. New York: Free Press.

Dornbusch, S. M., and P. L. Ritter. (1988). Parents of high school students: A neglected resource. Educational Horizons 66: 75-77.

Epstein, J. L. (1982). Student reactions to teacher practices of parent involvement. Parent Involvement Report Series P-21. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools. (Reading 3.9).

———. (1985). A question of merit: Principals’ and parents’ evaluations of teachers. Educational Researcher 14(7): 3-10. (Reading 4.3).

———. (1986). Parents’ reactions to teacher practices of parent involvement. Elementary School Journal 86: 277-294. (Reading 3.4).

———. (1987). What principals should know about parent involvement. Principal 66(3): 6-9.

———. (1988a). How do we improve programs in parent involvement? Educational Horizons (special issue on parents and schools) 66(2): 58-59.

———. (1988b). Sample clinical summaries: Using surveys of teachers and parents to plan projects to improve parent involvement. Parent Involvement Series, Report P-83. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools.

———. (1990). Single parents and the schools: Effects of marital status on parent and teacher interactions. In M. T. Hallinan, D. M. Klein, and J. Glass (Eds.), Change in societal institutions (pp. 91-121). New York: Plenum. (Reading 3.5).

———. (1991). Effects of teacher practices of parent involvement on student achievement in reading and math. In S. Silvern (Ed.), Advances in reading/language research, Vol. 5: Literacy through family, community, and school interaction (pp. 261-276). Greenwich, CT: JAI. (Reading 3.7).

Epstein, J. L., and H. J. Becker. (1990). Hopkins Surveys of School and Family Connections: Questionnaires for teachers, parents, and students. In J. Touliatos, B. Perlmutter, and M. Straus (Eds.), Handbook of family measurement techniques (pp. 345-346). Parent Involvement Series, Report P-81. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Epstein, J. L., and S. Dauber. (1991). School programs and teacher practices of parent involvement in inner-city elementary and middle schools. Elementary School Journal 91: 289-303. (Reading 3.3).

Epstein, J. L., and K. Salinas. (1988). Evaluation report forms: Summaries of school-level data from surveys of teachers and surveys of parents. Parent Involvement Report Series P-82. Baltimore: Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools, Johns Hopkins University.

Lareau, A. (1987). Social class differences in family-school relationships: The importance of cultural capital. Sociology of Education 60: 73-85.

Leitch, M. L., and S. S. Tangri. (1988). Barriers to home-school collaboration. Educational Horizons 66: 70-74.

Muller, C. (1991). Maternal employment, parental involvement, and academic achievement: An analysis of family resources available to the child. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Cincinnati.

Rich, D., J. Van Dien, and B. Mattox. (1979). Families as educators for their own children. In R. Brandt (Ed.), Partners: Parents and schools (pp. 26-40). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Rubin, R. I., P. P. Olmsted, M. J. Szegda, M. J. Wetherby, and D. S. Williams. (1983). Long-term effects of parent education on follow-through program participation. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association in Montreal.

Scott-Jones, D. (1987). Mother-as-teacher in families of high- and low-achieving low-income black first graders. Journal of Negro Education 56: 21-34.

READING 3.7

Effects on Student Achievement of Teachers’ Practices of Parent Involvement¹²

ABSTRACT

This study uses longitudinal data from 293 third- and fifth-grade students in Baltimore City who took the California Achievement Test (CAT) in the fall and spring of the 1980-1981 school year. The students were in the classrooms of 14 teachers who varied in their use of techniques to involve parents in learning activities at home. With data from parents, students, and teachers, we examine the effects over time of teachers’ practices of parent involvement on student achievement test scores.

INTRODUCTION

Social science research on school and family environments has documented the importance for student development and achievement of family conditions and practices of parent involvement in school (Clausen, 1966; Coleman et al., 1966; Epstein, 1983; Heyns, 1978; Leichter, 1974; Marjoribanks, 1979; Mayeske, 1973; McDill and Rigsby, 1973; Gordon, 1979; Henderson, 1987; Sinclair, 1980). There is consistent evidence that parents’ encouragement, activities, interest at home, and participation at school affect their children’s achievement, even after the students’ ability and family socioeconomic status are taken into account. Students gain in personal and academic development if their families emphasize schooling, let their children know they do, and do so continually over the school years.

The earlier research considers family practices that vary naturally in the study samples. It recognizes that in any population some parents become involved in their children’s education, based on their own knowledge about school and their ability to guide and encourage their children. This study examines parent involvement that results from teachers’ efforts to involve more parents in their children’s education, not just those who would become involved on their own. We want to know what happens if we change the expected variation among families to increase the number of parents who can knowledgeably assist their children to improve or maintain their academic skills. We need to know: Are there ways to increase the number of parents who become involved in their children’s learning activities at home? If teachers and administrators take the responsibility to involve all parents, are there measurable effects on student achievement test scores and other important school outcomes?

Over the years there have been many programs and practices designed to increase home-school cooperation to improve students’ academic skills and attitudes or parents’ attitudes (Collins, Moles, and Cross, 1982). Few programs or practices, however, have been systematically evaluated for their effects on students. Tidwell (1980) describes positive effects on parents, although the data to evaluate Los Angeles’s “Project AHEAD” were admittedly poor. Gotts (1980) reports small effects on “adaptability to school” for children in family-school preschool programs. Cochran (1986) describes a preschool program designed to “empower” parents, but the linkages in the model to the children’s schools and teachers’ practices are weak. Rich and Jones (1977) present important early evidence suggesting that extra learning time at home produces gains in early elementary students’ reading scores equivalent to those made by students under more expensive “pull-out” programs in schools. The data, statistical controls, and methods of analysis in these studies, however, were seriously limited. Gordon (1979) reviews several studies and unpublished dissertations suggesting that there are generally positive effects of the programs on parents and on young children, but the measures of parent involvement in these studies are incomplete and the connections to schools and instructional programs are unmeasured.

Several Follow-Through models emphasized parent involvement at school and at home (Rivlin and Timpane, 1975), but in all cases the effects of the parent involvement components were poorly measured. The most reliable data and consistent results from the Follow-Through studies seem to be effects on parents’ attitudes and parent-teacher relations. (See the exchange in the Harvard Educational Review by Anderson, St. Pierre, Proper, and Stebbins, 1978; Hodges, 1978; Wisler, Burnes, and Iwamoto, 1978.) Other studies and commentaries suggest that direct contact of parents with their own children on learning activities at home (as opposed to the contact of a few parents in the school building) should have important consequences for student achievement and other outcomes such as school attendance and classroom behavior (Comer, 1980; Gillum, Schooley, and Novak, 1977; Rich, Van Dien, and Mattox, 1979).

Previous studies did not link specific teachers’ practices with their own students and parents, and there was little information on characteristics of the teachers, parents, or students for even cursory controls on other influences on achievement. Few studies focused on upper elementary school or older students. Overall, there is little “hard” data that address the question of whether teachers’ practices of parent involvement directly influence student achievement (Olmsted, Wetherby, Leler, and Rubin, 1982). This study begins to fill some of the gaps in the earlier work by focusing on the effect of teacher practices of parent involvement on gains in reading and math achievement test scores over one school year.

DATA AND APPROACH

We use longitudinal data from 293 third- and fifth-grade students in Baltimore City who took the California Achievement Test (CAT) in the fall and spring of the 1980- 1981 school year. The full study involved many districts in the state of Maryland, but only one district administered fall and spring achievement test scores to permit analyses of change in math and reading scores over one school year.

The students were in the classrooms of 14 teachers who varied in their emphases on parent involvement. The continuum ranged from “confirmed leaders”—teachers who reported frequent use of parent involvement in learning activities at home and who were confirmed by their principals as leaders in these practices—to infrequent users, to confirmed nonusers of parent involvement in learning activities at home—teachers who reported, and whose principals confirmed, their lack of emphasis on parent involvement (see Becker and Epstein, 1982 [Reading 3.1]). The parents of students in these teachers’ classrooms were surveyed about their reactions to and experiences with teacher practices of parent involvement (see Epstein, 1986 [Reading 3.4]). The data link teacher practices to the families’ responses and to the achievement of students, and enable us to analyze the consequences of teachers’ uses of instructional strategies that emphasize parent involvement at home.

Several types of variables that theoretically could influence change in achievement scores are included in the analyses: student and family background (sex, race, and grade level of students, parent education, and students’ fall achievement test scores), teachers’ characteristics and practices (overall teaching quality as rated by the principal, years of experience, and teachers’ and principals’ reports of the teachers’ leadership in parent involvement), parent reactions (parents’ reports of teacher requests for involvement and parents’ rating of the quality of homework assigned by the teacher), and student effort (teachers’ rating of the quality of homework completed by the students). The variables are described in detail in Becker and Epstein (1982) and Epstein (1985 [Reading 4.3], 1986, 1990 [Reading 3.5]). Multiple regression analysis is used to identify the important independent effects of these variables on gains in reading and math achievement. We are especially interested in whether teacher practices of parent involvement affect reading and math achievement, after the other potentially influential variables are taken into account.

We use students’ residual gain scores as our measure of growth or change over the school year. Because earlier family and school factors influenced prior student achievement, we must statistically control the students’ initial, fall achievement test scores that reflect the earlier influences. Then we examine the effects of the ongoing teachers’ practices on change in reading and math skills over the school year in our study. As Richards (1975, 1976) showed, changes in scores over a reasonable interval, such as a school year, measure school impact and individual growth as accurately as other methods (Cronbach and Furby, 1970). Changes in scores also have the conceptual advantage of giving a clear picture of growth from pretest to posttest.

Ideally, we would like to have more measures of teachers’ classroom practices. It may be, for example, that teachers who frequently use parent involvement strategies also differ from infrequent users or nonusers in their other classroom activities and instructional methods. In this study we control for differences in teachers’ quality and approaches by taking into account principals’ ratings of the teachers’ skills, including their preparation of lessons, knowledge of subject, classroom discipline, and creativity. We focus, then, on the effects of teacher practices of parent involvement, net of overall teacher quality. Although new studies of parent involvement and achievement may add other measures of specific teacher practices, our statistical controls on teacher quality and early student achievement greatly strengthen the models, measures, and methods used in previous studies.

RESULTS

Effects on Change in Reading Achievement

Table 3.26 shows the significant correlates of gains in reading achievement and the results of the regression analysis to identify the significant, independent effects of these variables on achievement gains. The variables were entered in four steps to illustrate the type, magnitude, and persistence of influence. Line 1 of the table shows the effects on change in reading scores of initial or starting characteristics of students and teachers: the students’ initial, fall reading scores and the overall quality of the teacher as rated by the principal. Students with lower reading scores in the fall make greater gains by the spring than do other students (ß = -.259). This effect is partly a “regression to the mean” but is also partly a consequence of the room to change and the need to change. Students who are initially low may be able to move their scores more easily than those who are at or near the “ceiling” in a range of scores, and, we assume, they and their teachers are working to improve the students’ basic skills. The positive effect of teacher quality (ß = +.157) shows that, independent of students’ starting scores, teachers whose principals give them high ratings in classroom management, control, instructional effectiveness, and creativity help students make greater gains in reading than do teachers who receive lower ratings for teaching quality. These two variables explain 10 percent of the variance in change in reading scores.

Line 2 of the table reports that teacher leadership in parent involvement in learning activities at home positively and significantly influences change in reading achievement, adding about 4 percent to the variance explained by the initial characteristics of students and teachers.

Line 3 of the table takes into account two measures of parental resources and responses. Parents with more formal education and parents who report that they have learned more this year than they knew previously about their child’s instructional program positively influence change in the reading achievement of their children.

Thus, we see that student gains in reading achievement are influenced by parents who usually help their children (i.e., those with more formal education) and, importantly, parents who are helped to help their children (i.e., those whose children’s teachers involve parents in learning activities at home to increase their knowledge about the school program). An additional 4 percent of the variance is explained by these parental characteristics.

TABLE 3.26 Influence on Change in Reading Achievement Test Scores from Fall to Spring*

Teachers rated their students as homework stars, homework problems, or as neither stars nor problems. We see in line 4 of the table that students who complete their homework well gain more in reading achievement than do other students. When homework quality is added to the equation in Table 3.26, its effects on achievement are clearly important, and the effects of teachers’ practices and parents’ responses decrease slightly but remain significant. This indicates not only the generally robust importance of these variables but also the crucial contribution of students’ investments in schoolwork for improving their own achievement.

Although many factors influence learning, we were especially interested in whether teachers’ practices of involving parents have persistent, independent effects on student achievement. We see that teachers’ leadership in parent involvement in learning activities at home contributes independently to positive change in reading achievement from fall to spring, even after teacher quality, students’ initial achievement, parents’ education, parents’ improved understanding of the school program, and the quality of students’ homework are taken into account. Indeed, the influence of teachers’ practices of parent involvement may be even more important than the coefficient suggests, because improved parents’ understanding and better homework quality are also influenced by these practices (Epstein, 1982 [Reading 3.9], 1986).

Effects on Change in Math Achievement

Table 3.27 tells a different story about change in math achievement scores. Again, all variables are included in this analysis that are significantly correlated with change in math achievement. We also include teachers’ leadership in parent involvement, despite its low correlation, to compare its effects on math with those reported for reading.

Line 1 of Table 3.27 shows that students who start with lower math scores in the fall change more in math skills over the school year. In part this reflects regression to the mean, but also, as in reading, slower students with more room to change and greater need to change make greater gains by spring than do students who score well. Students also gain more if they have relatively new, recently trained teachers, or if they are in the younger grades (i.e., here, grade 3 rather than grade 5). It may be that making progress in math is easier for students in the lower grades, where teachers tend to help students master basic skills and do not stress the swift coverage and competitive knowledge of more advanced math topics. Younger students and their teachers may be able to improve needed math skills more easily than can older students who have, with each passing year, more skills to cover and more ground to make up if they have fallen behind. The overall quality of the teacher, as rated by the principal, is a significant correlate of students’ growth in math but does not have an independent influence on change in math achievement after other measures of student and teacher characteristics are accounted for. The four characteristics of students and teachers shown in line 1 of the table explain approximately 25 percent of the variance in math gains.

TABLE 3.27 Influence on Change in Math Achievement Test Scores from Fall to Spring¹

Line 2 of the table shows that teachers’ leadership in the use of parent involvement is not an important variable for understanding change in math scores. In contrast to its influence on reading achievement gains in Table 3.26, teachers’ parent involvement practices are neither correlated with math gains nor significantly affected by other variables in this model.

Line 3 of the table suggests that parents’ reports that teachers assign purposeful homework (not busy work) have a small, positive effect on change in math achievement, but explains only an additional 1 percent of the variance in math gains. This measure may reflect a combination of parents’ awareness of their children’s math work, the parents’ general acceptance of their children’s school programs, better quality of the teachers’ decisions about homework assignments, and the students’ interest and investment of time at home on their homework. New research should look into these components of homework assignments by teachers, as well as aspects of homework completion by students discussed in Table 3.26.

Comparing Effects on Change in Reading and Math Scores

Table 3.28 shows a common model consisting of variables from Tables 3.26 and 3.27 used to compare effects on changes in reading and math achievement. Two variables—student sex and race—have been added to Table 3.28 even though they lack a significant zero-order correlation with the dependent measure. We include them here to show that although sex and race are usually of interest in studies of reading and math achievement, they are not important explanatory variables for students’ growth over the school year. The table presents the standardized regression coefficients and identifies the independent influences of the variables on change in reading and math over one school year. We have arranged the variables to focus on student and family background factors, teacher characteristics, and home-learning activities.

The top section of the table focuses attention on student and family background variables. As in the earlier tables, we see that initial (fall) scores influence change in both reading and math scores: Students who initially have low scores change more from fall to spring. Neither sex nor race of students influences changes in scores in either subject. Parent education and grade level are important independent influences, but for different subjects. Parents with more formal education independently influence positive change in reading scores, but parents’ education is not an important influence on students’ math gains. Younger students (in grade 3) make greater gains in math than do students in grade 5, but grade level is not an important independent influence on change in reading achievement.

The middle section of the table presents the variables in the model that concern the teachers’ background and skills. The two variables have important independent effects, but on different subjects. Overall teacher quality—the reputational index based on principals’ ratings of four instruction and management skills—influences change in students’ reading scores but not math. More recent teacher training (reflected in fewer years of teaching) promotes greater gains in math but does not influence change in reading.

TABLE 3.28 Comparing a Common Model of Effects on Change in Reading and Math Scores

The bottom section of the table focuses attention on two types of home-learning activities. Teacher leadership in the use of parent involvement in learning activities at home has a positive influence on change in reading scores, but not in math scores. Parents’ reports of pertinent homework assignments influence positive change in students’ math scores, but not reading scores.

The common model explains 17 percent of the change in students’ reading scores compared to 27 percent of the variance in the change in math scores. The different explanatory power of the model is due mainly to the impact of low initial scores and younger grade level on growth in math skills. Table 3.26 shows more variance explained (about 22 percent) in change in reading achievement because the equation included parents’ increased understanding of their children’s instructional program and the quality of students’ completed homework, two measures that are, in part, explained by teachers’ practices of parent involvement and that, in part, boost reading achievement.

DISCUSSION

Why do teachers’ practices of parent involvement influence change in reading but not math scores? Why should changes in reading and math achievement test scores be influenced by different variables? And what do these patterns mean for understanding parent involvement and student achievement?

We have some clues about these questions from other data collected from the teachers and parents in the study. For example, teachers report that reading activities are their most frequently used and most satisfying parent involvement practices, and principals report that they encourage teachers to involve parents in reading activities more than in other subjects (see Becker and Epstein, 1982). Parents report that they receive most requests for assistance on reading-related activities at home (see Epstein, 1986). It appears that these emphases on parent involvement in reading have real consequences for improving students’ reading achievement. There is little reason to expect that these practices would have direct and immediate effects on students’ math skills. This would require teachers’ sequential and coordinated practices to involve parents in math activities.

More parents of fifth-grade students feel that they do not have enough training to help their children with reading and math skills at home (Epstein, 1984). Their feelings of inadequacy may be more serious about math. Teachers of older students have fewer parent volunteers in their classes and give less guidance to parents in how to help their children at home. Teachers may need to give more help to parents of older children so that they understand what to discuss about school and how to assist, guide, and monitor their children in reading, math, and other subjects at home.

Table 3.29 shows that there was dramatic improvement in reading and math scores for third- and fifth-grade city students in this sample from fall to spring. But our analyses suggest that the dramatic changes in reading and math scores are attributable to different factors. Gains in reading achievement are influenced sharply by several sources, including the teachers’ leadership in parent involvement, the teachers’ overall quality of instruction, the students’ need to improve, the quality of the students’ homework, the parents’ education, and the parents’ improved knowledge about the school program.

TABLE 3.29 Third- and Fifth-Grade City Students’ Reading and Math Scores

		Fall 1980	Spring 1981
Reading achievement scores
	Mean	38.60	50.69
	Standard deviation	(25.51)	(25.20)
Math achievement scores
	Mean	43.75	57.46
	Standard deviation	(25.70)	(24.74)

Gains in math achievement may have more to do with the grade level, methods of teaching math, and traditional homework assignments. Recently trained teachers may be more responsive to current pressures to increase attention to math and to ensure mastery of basic skills in the early grades. In present practice, few teachers ask parents to become involved in math activities at home, but most teachers assign math homework. When parents see that homework is pertinent and purposeful, the students make important math gains.

Previous research shows consistently that school effects are stronger for math achievement than for reading or language arts achievement. Here, we see one explanation for that finding. Some teachers help families help their children practice reading: listening to the child read, reading aloud to the child, borrowing books to use at home, and other reading-related practices (see Becker and Epstein, 1982). More formally educated parents independently influence their children’s growth in reading skills. These would be the parents who usually are involved in their children’s education. More important, after parent education is taken into account, teacher practices of parent involvement help families become informed and involved, and they influence students’ reading skills.

There are many important questions raised by the findings of this study that need to be answered in new research. For example, how do teachers implement their parent involvement programs to get all or most parents involved? What happens to students’ achievements and attitudes if their parents will not or cannot help their children even when the teacher requests and guides parent involvement? There are many real and difficult problems that must be solved for teachers to successfully use parent involvement in learning activities at home. These questions will be best answered by studies of the implementation and evaluation of well-designed and well-planned procedures, including the teachers’ goals for parent involvement, the orientation of parents, and the management and follow-up of learning activities at home.

Teachers can take new directions to make stronger connections with the family. The Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork (TIPS) process helps teachers improve their own approaches to parent involvement and to improve the parents’ skills with their children at all grade levels (Epstein, 1987; Epstein, Salinas, and Jackson, 1995 [see Chapter 6]). The TIPS process includes math and science models and prototypic activities for the elementary grades and language arts and science/health models, and prototype activities for the middle grades that may enable teachers to assist parents and students in becoming involved as knowledgeable partners in learning activities at home in other subjects, as well as in reading.

For some teachers, the “bottom line” for their decisions about whether to use parent involvement practices rests with the documentation of effects on students. This study finds significant effects on changes in reading achievement from fall to spring for children in the classrooms of teachers who are leaders in the use of parent involvement practices. Additional studies with longitudinal achievement test scores in specific subjects, with more specific measures of teacher practices of parent involvement and with data from parents on their responses to teachers’ requests, are needed to verify and support these results.

Although this study adds to an understanding of linkages between practices of parent involvement and student achievement in specific subjects, there are some serious limitations that should be addressed in new research. For example, the sample includes only urban schools and large numbers of African American families. Future studies will want to focus on other populations and various communities to check the generalizability of the findings.

Another issue is the lack of specificity of the practices of involving parents. In this study, we can identify only the overall effects of multiple practices that almost exclusively involve parents in reading activities at home. Because educators need to choose among many practices, we need a more clearly defined menu of specific reading involvement practices and their associated effects on reading achievement, as well as information on specific practices to involve parents in other subjects and their effects on student achievement in those subjects.

These data do not account for prior differences in the involvement of the families in the study and the practices of earlier teachers to involve families that may cumulatively affect student achievement. A full complement would include longitudinal measures of parents’ involvement, teachers’ practices, and student outcomes over more than one school year.

Also, teachers who use frequent practices of parent involvement may differ from other teachers in the ways in which they influence student achievement. Although this study statistically controls teacher “quality” using principals’ ratings of teachers’ classroom organization, management, and pedagogical approaches, this measure does not necessarily capture all of the important differences in teacher attitudes, classroom activities, teacher-student relations, and other factors that also may affect student achievement gains. More comprehensive measures of teacher practices would strengthen analyses and clarify the contribution to achievement gains of teachers’ practices to involve all families.

Despite its limitations, this study contributes new information on the subject-specific connections of teacher-guided parent involvement, parent responses and interaction with their children, students’ investments in the quality of their own work, and achievement gains. It supports and extends the studies of Rich and Jones (1977); Walberg, Bole, and Waxman (1980); Tizard, Schofield, and Hewison (1982); and others reviewed by Henderson (1987) that suggest that teachers’ strong implementation of parent involvement and parents’ responsive involvement with their children at home on schoolwork should increase student achievement, even in families with little formal education. The results of this study reveal the need for even more comprehensive and longitudinal inquiries on specific linkages of practices to involve parents and their effects on students. The study also emphasizes the importance of including school and family environments and their connections on the agenda of new research in reading and language arts.

Lightfoot (1978) and Scott-Jones (1987) caution against too great expectations of the effects of parent involvement on academic or social outcomes. Their concerns are important. It is not the parents’ responsibility to teach their children new skills in the school curriculum or to take over the teachers’ job. However, teachers and parents share a responsibility to their children to monitor and understand their progress in school. This includes assisting students to master the skills needed to pass each grade and to feel good about themselves as learners. Our evidence on reading achievement gains suggests that teachers can help more parents understand how to help their children when questions arise at home about schoolwork. Most parents report that they want teachers to tell them that it is all right to help their children and to explain how to use time at home productively to work toward school goals (see Epstein, 1986). Parents are one available but untapped and undirected resource that teachers can mobilize to help more children master and maintain needed skills for school, but this requires teachers’ leadership in organizing, evaluating, and continually building their parent involvement practices.

REFERENCES

Anderson, R. B., R. G. St. Pierre, E. C. Proper, and L. B. Stebbins. (1978). Pardon us but what was the question again? A response to the critique of the Follow-Through evaluation. Harvard Educational Review 48: 161-170.

Becker, H. J., and J. L. Epstein. (1982). Parent involvement: A study of teacher practices. Elementary School Journal 83: 85-102. (Reading 3.1).

Clausen, J. A. (1966). Family structure, socialization and personality. In L. W. Hoffman and M. L. Hoffman (Eds.), Review of child development research, Vol. 2 (pp. 1-53). New York: Russell Sage.

Cochran, M. (1986). Empowering families: An alternative to the deficit model. Paper presented at the First Bielefeld Conference on Social Prevention and Intervention in Bielefeld, West Germany.

Coleman, J. S., E. Q. Campbell, C. J. Hobson, J. M. McPartland, A. Mood, F. D. Weinfeld, and R. L. York. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Collins, C., O. Moles, and M. Cross. (1982). The home-school connection: Selected partnership programs in large cities. Boston: Institute for Responsive Education.

Comer, J. P. (1980). School power. New York: Free Press.

Cronbach, L. J., and L. Furby. (1970). How should we measure change—or should we? Psychological Bulletin 74: 68-80.

Epstein, J. L. (1982). Student reactions to teachers’ practices of parent involvement. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York. (Reading 3.9).

———. (1983). Longitudinal effects of person-family-school interactions on student outcomes. In A. Kerchkoff (Ed.), Research in sociology of education and socialization, Vol. 4 (pp. 101-128). Greenwich, CT: JAI.

———. (1984). School policy and parent involvement: Research results. Educational Horizons 62: 70-72.

———. (1985). A question of merit: Principals’ and parents’ evaluations of teachers. Educational Researcher 14(7): 3-10. (Reading 4.3).

———. (1986). Reactions of parents to teacher practices of parent involvement. Elementary School Journal 86: 277-294. (Reading 3.4).

———. (1987). Teachers’ manual: Teachers involve parents in schoolwork [TIPS]. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools.

———. (1990). Single parents and the schools: Effects of marital status on parent and teacher interactions. In M. T. Hallinan, D. M. Klein, and J. Glass (Eds.), Change in societal institutions (pp. 91-121). New York: Plenum. (Reading 3.5).

Epstein, J. L., K. C. Salinas, and V. E. Jackson. (1995). Manuals for teachers and prototype activities: Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork (TIPS) for the elementary and middle grades. Baltimore: Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships, Johns Hopkins University.

Gillum, R. M., D. E. Schooley, and P. D. Novak. (1977). The effects of parental involvement on student achievement in three Michigan performance contracting programs. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York.

Gordon, I. (1979). The effects of parent involvement in schooling. In R. S. Brandt (Ed.), Partners: Parents and schools (pp. 4-25). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Gotts, E. (1980). Long-term effects of a home-oriented preschool program. Childhood Education 56: 228-234.

Henderson, A. (1987). The evidence continues to grow: Parent involvement improves achievement . Columbia, MD: National Committee for Citizens in Education.

Heyns, B. (1978). Summer learning and the effects of schooling. New York: Academic Press.

Hodges, W. L. (1978). The worth of the Follow-Through experience. Harvard Educational Review 48: 186-192.

Leichter, H. J. (1974). The family as educator. New York: Teachers College Press.

Lightfoot, S. L. (1978). Worlds apart: Relationships between families and schools. New York: Basic Books.

Marjoribanks, K. (1979). Families and their learning environments: An empirical analysis. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Mayeske, G. W. (1973). A study of the achievement of our nation’s students. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

McDill, E. L., and L. Rigsby. (1973). Structure and process in secondary schools: The academic impact of educational climates. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Olmsted, P. P., M. J. Wetherby, H. Leler, and R. I. Rubin. (1982). Parent perspectives on home-school relationships in a compensatory education program. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York.

Rich, D., and C. Jones. (1977). A family affair: Education.Washington, DC: Home and School Institute.

Rich, D., J. Van Dien, and B. Mattox. (1979). Families as educators of their own children. In R. Brandt (Ed.), Partners: Parents and schools (pp. 26-40). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervisors and Curriculum Development.

Richards, J. M., Jr. (1975). A simulation study of the use of change measures to compare educational programs. American Educational Research Journal 12: 299-311.

———. (1976). A simulation study comparing procedures for assessing individual educational growth. Journal of Educational Psychology 68: 603-612.

Rivlin, A. M., and P. M. Timpane. (1975). Planned variation in education: Should we give up or try harder? Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

Scott-Jones, D. (1987). Mother-as-teacher in the families of high- and low-achieving black first graders. Journal of Negro Education 56: 21-34.

Sinclair, R. L., ed. (1980). A two-way street: Home-school cooperation in curriculum decision making. Boston: Institute for Responsive Education.

Tidwell, R. (1980). Evaluation of the accelerating home education and development (AHEAD) program, 1979-1980. Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles. Mimeographed.

Tizard, J., W. N. Schofield, and J. Hewison. (1982). Collaboration between teachers and parents in assisting children’s reading. British Journal of Educational Psychology 52: 1-15.

Walberg, H. J., R. E. Bole, and H. C. Waxman. (1980). School-based family socialization and reading achievement in the inner city. Psychology in the Schools 17: 509-514.

Wisler, C. E., B. P. Burnes, and D. Iwamoto. (1978). Follow-Through redux: A response to the critique by House, Glass, McLean, and Walker. Harvard Educational Review 48: 171-185.

READING 3.8

Homework Practices, Achievements, and Behaviors of Elementary School Students¹³

ABSTRACT

Data from 82 teachers and 1,021 students and their parents are used to explore the correlates of homework activities and elementary school students’ achievements and behaviors in school. Six groups of variables that concern homework are examined: homework time, homework appropriateness, student attitudes, teacher practices of parent involvement in learning activities at home, parent abilities and resources, and other student and family background variables.

Results suggest that at the elementary school level, students with low achievement in reading and math spend more time doing homework, have more minutes of parent help, and have parents who receive more frequent requests from teachers to help at home. Questions are raised about the design of homework, the involvement of families, and the need for research that builds on the reported correlates.

INTRODUCTION

Homework is considered one of the most important practices for establishing a successful academic environment in high school. Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore (1982) concluded that homework and discipline were two features of private schools that made them more successful learning environments than public schools. The implication is that if public schools assigned more homework, their students would learn more, and the schools would be more effective.

This prescription may be too simple. The notion that more is better may not be true for all students, in all subjects, at all skill levels, and at all grade levels. Indeed, if more homework is assigned than can be completed, or if inappropriate homework is assigned, then home assignments may be counterproductive for student achievement.

Most research on the effects of homework has been conducted at the secondary school level. Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, and Ouston (1979) included three items about homework in their report on secondary school effects. They reported that the assignment of homework by teachers and the completion of homework by students were positively associated with student academic performance and school behavior. They found that schools in which teachers gave frequent, substantial homework assignments had better student outcomes than did schools in which teachers assigned little homework. It is important to note, however, that their cross-sectional data were reported only as zero-order correlations, and could mean that schools with good, hardworking students had diligent teachers who assigned more homework more often.

Similarly, a National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) study of students’ mathematics skills showed that among 10,000 17-year-olds, good students did about 10 hours of homework and watched about 5 hours of TV per week. Poor students often received no homework and varied in the amount of TV they watched (Yeary, 1978).

Keith (1982) conducted an important study of the effects of homework on the achievement of secondary school students. Using data collected in the High School and Beyond (HSB) survey, he found a significant, positive effect of homework on high school grades (path coefficient = .192). Race, family background, ability, and school program (i.e., track) were statistically controlled, providing a rigorous analysis of cross-sectional data. He also showed an interesting linear relationship between hours of homework per week and school grades for students at three ability levels. The grades of low-ability students who did 10 hours of homework or more per week were as good as the grades of high-ability students who did no homework. Keith’s findings suggest that students’ personal commitments to school and homework may have positive consequences for students at all levels of ability.

The extant studies of homework, based on limited data, leave many questions unanswered. They yield mixed results, with some showing positive results from homework and others showing no results or negative correlations (Austin, 1978; Gray and Allison, 1971). Little is known about why or how homework is associated with student achievement, behavior, attendance, or attitudes. We need to understand why homework is assigned, whether it is appropriate in quantity and quality, and how it is structured to fit into teaching and reteaching skills in the classroom. It is important to determine if there are measurable effects on students of homework time, habits, completion, and assistance or support from parents and peers.

We also need to examine homework policies and practices at the elementary school level, because the achievements of young students largely determine the ability group or curriculum track they enter in middle and high schools. Homework could be important if it were shown to help more elementary students attain skills that are needed for success in the middle grades. Also, we need to understand parental involvement as a feature of homework, including whether parental assistance helps students who need the most help and whether and how these interactions affect parent-child relationships.

PURPOSES OF HOMEWORK

From the literature, I have identified 10 reasons that homework is assigned to students. Some are more defensible than others. The 10 Ps, or purposes, of homework are:

Practice: Increase speed, mastery, and maintenance of skills.

Preparation: Ensure readiness for the next class; complete activities and assignments started in class.

Participation: Increase the involvement of each student with learning tasks to increase the immediacy and enjoyment of learning.

Personal Development: Build student responsibility, perseverance, time management, self-confidence, and feelings of accomplishment; also develop and recognize students’ talents in skills that may not be taught in class; extension and enrichment activities.

Parent-Child Relations: Establish communications between parent and child on the importance of schoolwork, homework, and learning; demonstrate applications of schoolwork to real-life situations and experiences; promote parental awareness of and support for students’ work and progress.

Parent-Teacher Communication: Enable teachers to inform and involve families in children’s curricular activities and enable parents to know what topics are being taught and how their children are progressing.

Peer Interactions: Encourage students to work together on assignments or projects, to motivate and learn from each other.

Policy: Fulfill directives from administrators at the district or school level for prescribed amounts of homework per day or week.

Public Relations: Demonstrate to the public that the school has rigorous standards for serious work, including homework. Also, productive interactions with the public may be designed as student-community homework assignments.

Punishment: Correct problems in conduct or productivity (not a defensible purpose).

All but the last purpose for homework are valid and important, although most teachers say that the main reason they assign homework is to give students time to practice skills learned in class (see Becker and Epstein, 1982 [Reading 3.1], and see Chapter 6 for more on the purposes and on improving the homework process).

Homework for Practice and Preparation

Homework enables students to practice skills, increase the ease with which skills can be used, and increase understanding of how and when to use the skills. Garner (1978) studied 400 fifth-, eighth-, and tenth-grade students. He measured both class time and homework time for specific subjects to establish exposure or total time in and out of school allocated to specific subjects. He found greater variation in homework than in class time for math and language arts. For example, almost one-third of the fifth-grade students in his sample had approximately eight hours’ more total exposure to language arts skills and activities than the rest of the students, or more than one extra day per week for learning and using language arts. Older students received more homework than did younger students. At the tenth-grade level, one-half hour of homework in math extended class time by 75 percent for more math learning. Even at the fifth-grade level, 25 minutes of math homework added half again the time of a typical math class period for learning, reviewing, or practicing math. In Garner’s study, high-ability students were given more homework and class time, especially at the high school level. Garner’s findings point to the potential value of well-planned use of homework time to extend learning time and to give time to practice skills.

Homework for Participation

Homework increases individual participation in lessons. In many classrooms, only a few children participate frequently and “carry the class,” while other children passively absorb information or not. By contrast, homework requires each student to participate actively and continually by reading, thinking, and recording ideas and answers on paper and by making decisions about how to complete the work. Homework is a structured opportunity for students to take control of their learning and thinking. At home, students control the amount of time they need to learn something and the number of consultations with others (including parents and peers) to make discoveries or to receive support for academic work. Students make self-assessments on the quality of their work and may compare their self-assessments with their teachers’ marks or grades on homework completed.

Homework for Personal Development

Some teachers assign homework to help students take responsibility for schoolwork. Students must record the assignment, create a schedule to do the work, finish it, store it in their notebooks, and bring it to school when it is due. Homework may be designed to help students build “study skills”; follow directions; and increase perseverance, neatness, and completeness as they take responsibility for their own work.

Homework for Parent-Child Relations and Parent-Teacher Communications

Sometimes homework is the only form of serious communication about school and learning between parents and school-age children. Children may need help in following directions, remembering and interpreting what was learned in school, re-learning information that was misunderstood or incompletely learned, and deciding whether their approach and presentation will be acceptable to the teacher.

Homework provides a reason for parents and children to exchange information, facts, and attitudes about school. Maertens and Johnston (1972) found that students who had homework assignments and who received immediate or delayed feedback from parents had better mastery of math skills than did students who received no homework.

Homework provides a reasonable, feasible way for teachers to communicate regularly with all families about what their children are learning in school and how their children’s skills are progressing. Parents see, via homework assignments, how their children write, think, and execute an assignment. Teachers sometimes assign homework so that parents will not be surprised by their children’s report card grades that reflect the quality of classwork.

There are important questions for new studies to ask about parent involvement in learning activities at home. For example: How can teachers advise all parents on how to monitor, check, and interact with children on homework? What practices help teachers guide parents to help when students have specific learning weaknesses and needs? If parents are guided in how to help at home, how can teachers and researchers measure if students improve in homework quality and achievement?

Homework for Peer Interactions

Homework may be designed to encourage students to work with each other on assignments and projects. Students may check each other’s math, listen to and edit stories, explore their community, and engage in other exchanges and activities to learn from and with one another. Assignments may enable pairs or small groups of students to combine their talents in art, music, writing, drama, and other skills.

Homework as School Policy

Homework may be assigned to comply with district or school directives that a certain amount of homework must be given to all students on a certain number of days each week. Surveys of parents indicate that they have time to interact with and help their children on weekends (see Epstein, 1986 [Reading 3.4]), but schools often assign homework only on weekdays. Homework policies should be reviewed from year to year, with input from teachers, parents, and students to ensure that homework is designed to meet various positive purposes, including family-friendly schedules for parent-child interactions.

Homework as Public Relations

Homework is sometimes assigned to fulfill public expectations for rigorous demands for high student achievement. If parents and the public believe that a “good school” is one that gives homework, then educators may assign homework to meet this standard for school organization.

Homework as Punishment

Some teachers have assigned homework to punish students for lack of attention or for poor behavior in school. This includes the infamous assignments to write “I must not chew gum in school,” or 500 words on appropriate behavior, or other reminders of school standards for behavior. These assignments focus on improving behavior more than on building academic skills, and produce embarrassment more than mastery. It is generally believed that punishment is an inappropriate purpose for homework. There are no known studies of the effects of punishing assignments on students.

The 10 purposes of homework require different homework designs. It is clear that not all desired outcomes for students will result from just any assignment. That is, assigning minutes or more minutes of homework will not necessarily produce greater achievement, better study habits, more positive attitudes about school, better connections of teachers and parents, more positive interactions of parent and child, or any other single desired outcome.

Thus, in research on homework, the outcome or result measured should be directly related to the purpose and design of homework. For example, if the stated purpose of homework is public relations, then the outcome measured should concern the understanding and attitudes of parents or the public. If the purpose is improved basic skills, then the homework should focus on specific skills, and studies should measure how those skills are affected by doing or not doing homework. If teachers, administrators, and parents define several purposes simultaneously, then multiple measures of results will be needed to determine whether any or all purposes are met.

For some purposes, the design of homework—how it is structured, introduced, and followed up—may be as important as its topic or content. Keshock (1976) reported that when college science homework was graded and counted as part of the course grade, homework performance improved, but test scores did not. Also, in a Los Angeles PUSH-EXCEL program, students were asked to work uninterrupted from 7:00 to 9:00 P.M. on home-learning activities. This requirement improved homework behaviors, but reports were not available on whether achievement improved (Yeary, 1978).

Using data from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), Wolf (1979) reported that homework time was important for specific academic subjects. He reported significant correlations between homework in science and literature and achievement in those subjects at the school and individual student levels. However, in regression analyses that accounted for family background and instructional program (or curriculum track), variables were entered in blocks, making it impossible to pinpoint the independent effects on achievement of homework compared to other instructional variables. The results show only that good students do more homework than do poor students in science and literature. The important point from this research, however, is that homework in one subject may affect outcomes in that subject only and may not have a general effect on achievement test scores or on other student attitudes and behaviors.

DATA AND APPROACH

In this study, the following information about homework was collected from each source involved in the homework process.

Data from Teachers

Teacher data included homework policies of the school and district, the amount of homework assigned, subjects of homework, the purpose of homework, attitudes and policies about parental help with or corrections of homework, the policy of requiring parents to sign homework, estimates of students who complete homework, nominations of students who have problems with homework or who are homework “stars,” and use of class time to check or correct homework.

Data from Principals

Principal data included district and school policies, procedures to check teachers’ homework assignments, and attitudes about whether parents should help with homework.

Data from Parents

Parent information included reports of the amount of time the child spends on homework, parents’ understanding of teachers’ policies on parental help on homework, evaluation of appropriate level of difficulty of the child’s homework, the child’s understanding and completion of homework, and communications with the teacher about homework.

Data from Students

Student information included the amount of homework assigned and completed, weekend homework, habits of doing homework, help at home on homework, parents’ knowledge of homework assignments, problems and completion of homework, the appropriate level of challenge in homework, attitudes about homework, and written comments.

Surveys of teachers, principals, parents, and students in 16 Maryland school districts were conducted in 1980 and 1981. Approximately 3,700 first-, third-, and fifth-grade teachers and their principals in 600 schools were surveyed (see Becker and Epstein, 1982 [Reading 3.2]; Epstein and Becker, 1982 [Reading 3.2]). From the original sample, 36 teachers were identified who strongly emphasized parent involvement in learning activities at home. These “case” teachers were selected at random from a stratified sample of leaders in parent involvement to represent the three grade levels; urban, suburban, and rural districts; socioeconomic conditions of the communities in the state; and teachers’ education, experience, and teaching conditions. Forty-six “comparison” teachers were then matched to the case teachers on the same selection criteria, but these teachers were not leaders in their use of parent involvement in learning activities at home.

The case and comparison teachers and their principals were interviewed at length about instructional practices in general and parent involvement practices and leadership. The parents of the children in the 82 teachers’ classrooms were surveyed about their attitudes toward and experiences with parent involvement. In all, 1,269 parents responded by mail to the survey, a response rate of 59 percent. Approximately 600 fifth-grade students were surveyed about their homework activities. This report uses data from parents and teachers to explore the correlates of homework activities and student achievements and behaviors in school.

EXPLORATORY ANALYSES

In this study, selected data from teachers, principals, students, and parents were explored to learn more about how homework assignments and home-school interactions were linked to student achievements and behaviors. Table 3.30 presents six sets of variables on homework and their zero-order correlations with reading and math achievements, homework performance, and classroom behavior. The six sets of selected variables and their scoring are described below.

 

Homework Time. Minutes spent per day is a 5-point score from no homework to one hour or more; minutes parent helps or could help per day is an 8-point score from no minutes to one hour or more.

 

Homework Quality. Appropriate amount and difficulty are 3-point scores from too easy to too difficult, and too little to too much; appropriate purpose is a 4-point score of parent disagreement that homework is just busy work (scored negatively).

 

Student Attitudes. Parent assessment of whether the child likes to talk about school and homework and whether the child is tense about homework (scored negatively) are 4-point scores from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

 

Teacher Practices. Parents reported the frequency of use of 12 practices of parent involvement, including reading, discussion, informal activities, formal contracts, signing homework, tutoring, and drill and practice. Parents’ reports that the teacher thinks parents should help, and reports that they receive many ideas from the teacher, are 4-point scores from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Parents agreed or disagreed that the teacher talked to them directly about their child’s homework, need for parental help at home, or classroom behavior. Ratings by parents or principals on the overall quality of the teacher are 6-point scores from poor to outstanding.

TABLE 3.30 Homework Variables as Correlates of Student Achievements and Behaviors^{a, b}

Parent Abilities and Resources. Parent education is a 6-point score from less than high school to graduate school; confidence in ability is a 4-point score from strongly agree to strongly disagree that they have enough training to help the child in reading and math. Educational items is a checklist of 10 items that students may use at home for homework, including a ruler, dictionary, globe, and others. Number of books at home is a 5-point score ranging from fewer than 10 to more than 100 books. Regular place for homework is a single item of agreement or disagreement.

 

Other Student and Family Factors. Sex of student is scored female = 1, male = 0; race is scored white = 1, black = 0; residence is scored 1 = city, 0 = suburb/rural; family structure is scored 1 or 2 for one or two parents home, 1 or 0 for mother works or does not work outside the home, hours of TV per day ranging from none to 5 or more hours; parent expectations for child’s education is a 4-point score from finish high school to finish graduate school; and grade level refers to the student’s grade, 1, 3, or 5.

RESULTS: HOMEWORK PRACTICES AND STUDENT SKILLS AND BEHAVIOR

Homework Time

Section 1 of Table 3.30 shows how three measures of homework time correlate with student achievements and behaviors. The three measures are the average number of minutes spent by the child on homework per day; the average number of minutes the parent helps the child in response to teacher requests; and the number of minutes the parent could help if shown how to do so.

Time spent doing homework ranged from none (13 percent) to 15 minutes (21 percent), 30 minutes (36 percent), 45 minutes (13 percent), or one hour or more (17 percent). Parents helped on the average of 25 minutes per night when asked to do so by teachers but said they could help about 45 minutes per night if the teacher showed them how to help.

The relationships between homework time and parent help on student achievements in reading and math are negative. That is, students with lower achievement in reading and math spend more time on homework and get more help from parents. The negative relationships may indicate that teachers are reaching out to parents to obtain extra help for children who need additional learning time and/or that parents who recognize their children’s weaknesses are trying to help on their own. This probability is supported by the fact that parents of children who are deemed homework and discipline “problems” spend more time helping their children than do other parents. Children who are doing well in school spend less time and need less help from parents than do weaker students.

The right side of the table in section 1 shows the associations of homework time and school-related behaviors. Teachers consider children who do more homework as homework “stars.” Parents of homework stars say they could spend more time assisting their children. The parents of students who are homework and discipline “problems” already spend more time than do other parents assisting their children.

These data should not be interpreted to mean that if more time is spent on homework and more help is given, student achievement will decline. This is a good example of the inadequacy, indeed inappropriateness, of correlations to address questions of effects on students. These cross-sectional data simply tell what associations of variables exist, not whether one variable leads to or causes the other.

The patterns reported here are, however, indicative of some well-known facts about elementary school students and their homework. First, at the elementary school level, all students are likely to be assigned the same homework. The same assignment—such as learning 20 spelling words or completing 10 math problems—may take some students longer than others to complete. Students who have problems learning in school need to spend more time on an assignment to understand what other children master in class and complete quickly at home. Also, teachers may ask parents to see that their elementary school children finish their work, even if they do not ask the parents to help the child with needed skills. Thus, slower students may spend more time on homework, and parents will spend more time monitoring or helping students who need more time to learn or complete their work.

Homework Quality

Section 2 of Table 3.30 features three measures of parents’ estimates of the appropriateness and value of the homework their children receive. There are no significant correlations of these measures with achievements or behaviors. One reason for this is the lack of variation in the parents’ ratings. Approximately 92 percent of the parents agreed that homework was not busy work, 90 percent said that the child’s homework was the appropriate level of difficulty, and 78 percent thought the child received the right amount of homework. Because parents of successful and unsuccessful students generally agreed about the value and appropriateness of homework, these variables do not explain differences in student skills, homework completion, or classroom behavior.

Student Attitudes

Section 3 explores relationships of student attitudes toward homework with student achievement and behaviors. Children who like to talk about school and homework with a parent have higher reading and math skills and are more often considered homework stars. Children who do not like to talk about school and homework are more apt to be homework and discipline problems. Also, children who are not tense about homework are higher achievers and less likely to be identified as having homework problems.

In this sample, close to 20 percent of the elementary school students do not like to talk about school with their parents, and 35 percent say they are tense when working with their parents on homework. These attitudes and behaviors may be early warning signs of more serious problems of commitment to schoolwork. Teachers may be able to help parents learn how to help their children build confidence and positive attitudes about school and homework. Positive attitudes toward school are good indicators of day-to-day success in school, commitment to school goals, and the likelihood of staying in school, even if they do not directly relate to high achievement (see Reading 3.9). Here we see, however, that a very specific behavior—talking about school and homework at home—is correlated with reading and math achievement and with successful actions and behaviors.

Teacher Practices

Section 4 includes measures of teacher practices of parent involvement concerning homework. The correlations indicate that teachers make more requests of parents whose children achieve at lower levels. These results support the information reported in section 1 that parents spend more time with children who need more help, and suggest that parent time is given in response to requests from teachers.

The data indicate that homework and discipline problems are addressed through specific communications with parents. Teachers talk directly with parents about homework activities if the students are identified as having homework problems (r = .118), and teachers talk directly with parents about school behavior if students are identified as having discipline problems (r = .275). Teacher practices of parent involvement are more highly and consistently correlated with student achievement, showing clearly that teachers reach out especially when they need parents’ help with students whose math and reading skills are low.

Parents say they receive more frequent requests, more messages that they should help, and more direct communications from teachers about how to help at home when their children are low in reading and math skills. Principals and parents, however, rate teachers higher in overall teaching quality when students are high in achievement, and parents give higher ratings to teachers if their children are homework stars.

Parent Abilities and Resources

Section 5 of the table examines five family resources that may aid student achievement and behavior. Four measures are significantly and positively correlated with reading and math skills: parent education, parental confidence about ability to help in reading and math, educational items in the home, and books in the home. When these resources are lacking at home, children are more likely to have homework problems.

Having a regular place for homework is not highly associated with achievement or behavior. Others have also reported that a regular place for homework is not as important as a regular habit of completion, regardless of where homework is done (McCutcheon, 1983). In these data, however, the lack of importance of the variable is probably due to the lack of variation in the responses, with about 91 percent of the families reporting that the children have a regular place for doing homework.

Other Student and Family Factors

Section 6 shows the association of other student and family factors that are believed to affect homework activities, achievements, and behaviors. There are strong correlations of race (white), location (non-city residence), and two parents at home with higher math skills, but not with reading skills. Female students tend to have higher reading scores and are more often viewed as homework stars, whereas males are more often labeled discipline problems.

Parental educational expectations for children are strongly associated with higher reading and math achievement, more homework stars, and fewer homework and discipline problems. Even more than socioeconomic status variables, parents’ expectations are positively associated with student achievement. Parents’ expectations are, in part, based on students’ history of high achievement, good work, and good behavior. Thus, parents’ expectations reported at one point in time reflect their children’s prior tests, report card grades, homework assignments, and other parent-child and parent-teacher interactions. Parents have higher expectations for students who are achieving and behaving well in school.

Some family variables are less important than might be expected from popular opinion. Hours of TV watched per day are not highly correlated with reading or math skills and not at all correlated with being a homework star or having school-linked problems. There is no significant association of the mother working outside the home with reading or math achievements, homework completion, or classroom behavior. Student achievement and behavior are not significantly affected by grade level. There are high- and low-achieving students, and well- and poorly behaved students, at all grade levels.

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

Several intriguing patterns emerge from the six groups of variables reviewed in Table 3.30 to guide future studies.

Reading and Math Skills

Low achievement is associated with more time spent doing homework, more minutes of parent help, and more frequent requests from teachers for parent involvement in learning activities at home. The significant negative associations indicate that in the elementary school parents are asked to assist children who need more help. At this level of schooling, not much homework is assigned per night, and students who have trouble with the work can work a little longer to complete the assignment.

By the time students are in high school, much more homework is given, and more is given to brighter students. Poor students in high school tend not to work very long on what they do not understand and typically do not expect and may not want their parents’ help. Most middle and high school teachers do not ask parents to help with or even monitor students’ homework. These patterns are particularly interesting for what they might mean for improving homework designs, assignment, and connections with families.

Homework and Classroom Behavior

Parents report spending more time helping children who teachers say are discipline and homework problems. The parents of other children say they could spend more time helping their children at home, if they were shown how to do so. There is a supply of untapped parental assistance available to teachers that may be especially useful in improving the skills of average and below-average students who could do better with additional time and well-guided attention.

One important correlate of homework and discipline problems is the lack of educational trappings at home (e.g., books, rulers, globes, dictionaries, art supplies). Teachers who seek parental help in solving student homework and discipline problems may need to find ways (perhaps including connections to business partners) to make educational resources available for use at home.

Importance of Positive Attitudes and Exchanges about Schoolwork and Homework

Children who like to talk about school and homework with their parents and are less tense about their work tend to be good students, homework stars, and well behaved in class. Children who are tense when working with their parents on homework activities are more often homework problems. Yet children with achievement and discipline problems are those whose parents are spending more minutes helping at home. It is pretty clear that parents of children who have problems in school require guidance on how to help their children at home, or ineffective teaching at home could redouble the school problems.

Homework is a manipulable variable. Teachers and administrators control whether to assign homework and how much homework to assign. They design activities that encourage or prevent parental involvement in learning activities that students bring home.

Need for Full Analyses and Longitudinal Data

This study provides a base on which to build. It also shows that a simple association of homework time (assigned or spent) and student achievement is not enough to understand if or when homework is important for effective teaching and learning. The array of correlates makes it clear that future research must include multivariate analyses that take into account the variables from sections 5 and 6 of Table 3.30 of family resources and family and student factors that affect achievements and behaviors. The correlates are an important start for understanding the independent effects of homework time, quality, attitudes, and parent involvement on achievement and behavior.

The bottom line concerning homework is whether time spent pays off for improving and maintaining school achievement, homework completion, and other school attitudes and behaviors. This question is particularly important for students who need extra time and extra help to learn basic and advanced skills. Future studies will need longitudinal data to learn whether achievement and behavior improve when students put in time on homework and when they are monitored and assisted by their families. More broadly, new measurement models will be needed to study the complexities underlying homework design, assignment, completion, follow-up, and interactions with families.

The relationships of homework time, achievements, and behaviors at the elementary school level are important because they differ markedly from relationships reported for secondary school students. Younger students and their families are more responsive to school demands for mastering basic skills, and the children and their parents spend more time working on needed skills.

Somewhere between the elementary and middle grades, the philosophies and practices of teachers, students, and parents change. In the upper grades, brighter students tend to spend more time on homework, and many slower students stop doing homework altogether. In many cases, teachers in middle and high schools assign more homework to brighter students because they expect it will be done. Many parents in middle and high schools stop monitoring homework, especially if they are not given information about homework policies or how to work with their adolescents. There are many interesting questions for future research on the differences in the amount of time slower and brighter students spend on homework in the elementary and secondary grades, and why these patterns occur.

REFERENCES

Austin, J. D. (1978). Homework research in mathematics. School Science and Mathematics 78: 115-121.

Becker, H. J., and J. L. Epstein. (1982, November). Parent involvement: A study of teacher practices. Elementary School Journal 83: 85-102. (Reading 3.1).

Coleman, J. S., T. Hoffer, and S. Kilgore. (1982). High school achievement. New York: Basic Books.

Epstein, J. L. (1986). Parents’ reactions to teacher practices of parent involvement. Elementary School Journal 86: 277-294. (Reading 3.4).

Epstein, J. L., and H. J. Becker. (1982, November). Teacher reported practices of parent involvement: Problems and possibilities. Elementary School Journal 83: 103-113. (Reading 3.2).

Garner, W. T. (1978). Linking school resources to educational outcomes: The role of homework. Teachers College Research Bulletin 19: 1-10.

Gray, R. F., and D. E. Allison. (1971). An experimental study of the relationship of homework to pupil success in computation with fractions. School Science and Mathematics 71: 339-346.

Keith, T. Z. (1982). Time spent on homework and high school grades: A large-sample path analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology 74: 248-253.

Keshock, E. G. (1976). The relative value of optional and mandatory homework. Teaching Method News 8: 3-32.

Maertens, N., and J. Johnston. (1972). Effects of arithmetic homework on the attitudes and achievements of fourth, fifth, and sixth grade pupils. School Science and Mathematics 72: 117-126.

McCutcheon, G. (1983). How does homework influence the curriculum? Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Montreal.

Rutter, M., B. Maughan, P. Mortimer, and J. Ouston. (1979). Fifteen thousand hours: Secondary schools and their effects on children. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wolf, R. M. (1979). Achievement in the United States. In H. J. Walberg (Ed.), Educational environments and effects (pp. 313-330). Berkeley: McCutchan.

Yeary, E. E. (1978). What about homework? Today’s Education (September-October): 80-82.

READING 3.9

Student Reactions to Teachers’ Practices of Parent Involvement¹⁴

Decades of studies indicate that home environments and family involvement in education are important for student success in school (Coleman et al., 1966; Epstein, 1984; Leichter, 1974; Marjoribanks, 1979; Mayeske, 1973; McDill and Rigsby, 1973). The evidence is clear that parental encouragement and involvement at school and at home boost children’s achievement, even after student ability and family socioeconomic status are taken into account.

However, not all families get involved in school-related activities or show interest in their children’s work (Lightfoot, 1978). It is important to learn what would happen if schools took steps to engage all parents, not just those who become involved on their own. Another crucial question is: What do students think about parent involvement? Ironically, although students are ultimately responsible for their own education, they are rarely consulted for ideas about how to improve their schools, or about how they, their teachers, and their families might best work together to enhance student success in school (Epstein, 1981). This study explores (1) what students know and say about home-school connections and (2) the results of students’ experiences with family involvement on their school attitudes and behaviors.

STUDY BACKGROUND

Research shows that teachers vary in the extent to which they use different practices and strategies to involve parents in learning activities at home (see Becker and Epstein, 1982 [Reading 3.1]; Epstein and Becker, 1982 [Reading 3.2]). In a survey of 3,700 first-, third-, and fifth-grade teachers, some reported a high emphasis on parent involvement (“case” teachers), and some reported average or low emphasis on parent involvement (“comparison” teachers).

A sample of 30 case and 30 comparison teachers was matched on characteristics of their teaching situation, including grade level, city or county, district, socioeconomic status of the children taught, and type of teaching assignment. Additional data were collected in extended interviews with the case and comparison teachers and with their principals, surveys were administered to parents of these teachers’ students, and surveys were obtained from fifth-grade students in case and comparison teachers’ classes. The case and comparison teachers also provided data on their students’ achievements, school behaviors, and homework completion patterns. School records were culled for third- and fifth-grade students’ achievement test scores. This study focuses on 390 fifth-grade students in the matched classrooms of nine case and nine comparison teachers.

Few previous studies of family involvement focus on upper elementary school-age children. Several researchers and program developers report evidence from several completed studies and unpublished dissertations suggesting generally positive effects of the programs on parents and students (Comer, 1980; Gordon, 1979; Henderson, 1981; Rich, Van Dien, and Mattox, 1979). However, most studies are uneven and their measures of parent involvement are incomplete.

One study of 764 sixth-grade students by Benson, Medrich, and Buckley (1980) is interesting, even though it does not focus on teachers’ practices of parent involvement on school-related activities. The researchers examined the natural variation in how parents spend time with their children at home in everyday interactions such as eating dinner together, in cultural enrichment activities, in participation at school, and in setting rules for their children. They looked at the relationship of parents’ time and student achievement for students from low, middle, and high SES families. They found that family time in cultural and other activities positively influenced the achievement of students from all socioeconomic levels, but especially students from high and middle SES families. The results illustrate, again, how the self-initiated activities of some families are advantageous to their children.

In the present study, data from fifth-grade students are explored to determine if teachers’ practices of parent involvement and reports of parents’ assistance differ among students in case and comparison teachers’ classes. The next sections give an overview of the data collected from students, principals, and teachers, and the results of analyses of the effects of multiple measures of parent involvement and support on student attitudes and school behaviors.

DATA

Surveys were collected from 390 fifth-grade students in case and comparison teachers’ classrooms. The surveys asked students about their homework assignments, homework completion, parents’ help at home, attitudes about school and homework, success in school, behavior, college plans, and open-ended comments about homework activities. In most classes the teachers administered the short, anonymous surveys and collected them in mailing envelopes that were returned directly to the researchers.

In one district, local regulations required students to obtain individual, signed parental permission slips to take surveys in class. The timing of the study in the spring of 1981 made it risky to wait for signed permission slips. Teachers did not have time to distribute and collect permission slips, then administer the surveys, when they were concluding tests and other end-of-year activities. In this set of classrooms, student surveys were included with the parents’ surveys and were completed by the students at home and mailed back to the researchers.

In the school-administered settings, the response rate of students was from 90 to 100 percent, depending on number of children present the day of the survey. In the home-administered settings, the response rate averaged about 50 percent. The lower response rate of home-administered surveys reflects the parents’ responses to the survey, parents’ decisions to give the student survey to their children, and children’s willingness to complete the survey at home. These obstacles highlight the benefits of conducting no-risk surveys of students as part of standard school and district evaluations of their own programs.

Independent Variables

Multiple Measures of Parent Involvement. Multiple measures of teachers’ practices of parental involvement were collected from teachers, principals, and students. These included teachers’ reports of their parental involvement practices; teachers’ ratings of parents who are “helpful” to their children on school activities at home; principals’ ratings of teachers’ leadership in involving parents; students’ estimates of the frequency of assignments from teachers that request parent involvement at home; and students’ estimates of the extent of parental awareness and support of homework activities.

Because no single measure is perfect, multiple indicators of the construct of parent involvement were used to try to correct for measurement problems and check for consistent patterns of effects of parent involvement on students’ achievements and behaviors. For example, teachers’ reports of their parental involvement practices were collected one year before the survey of students was conducted. Principals may not be fully aware of how much and how well their teachers involved parents with students at home. Students’ estimates of teachers’ practices and parental support were obtained from a limited number of questions in a short survey. Teachers’ estimates of parents who were helpful at home were based on different degrees of contact with the parents of the students in their classes.

Each of these measures, used alone, would raise doubts about the effects of parent involvement. By contrast, patterns of results from more than one measure should provide more credible and convincing information about positive, negative, or no effects of involvement on student achievements and behaviors.

 

Other Explanatory Variables. Student gender, race, location of school in city or suburb, student ability (i.e., ratings of low, average, and high ability provided by teachers), and the general quality of teachers’ skills (i.e., quality of lessons, knowledge, creativity, and discipline) are used as statistical controls in regression analysis. These variables have been found to affect student outcomes and teaching effectiveness, and, therefore, must be taken into account in estimates of effects on students of teachers’ practices of parent involvement.

Dependent Variables

Just as multiple measures of parent involvement were used to identify patterns of effects, this study incorporates a variety of dependent variables from the student surveys and teachers’ reports to identify patterns of effects of involvement on indicators of student success or problems in school. The dependent variables include:

• Two measures of student attitudes: Two items on attitudes toward homework (i.e., Homework is a waste of time; I learn a lot from homework) and five items of student satisfaction with school (Epstein, 1981).

• One measure of home-school similarity: Three items (i.e., My parent is a teacher; I learn important things at home; School teaches what my family wants me to learn).

• One measure of extra schoolwork done at home: Two items (i.e., I do weekend projects assigned by my teacher; I complete work on weekends on my own).

• One measure of teacher-family exchanges: Two items (i.e., My teacher knows my family; If I am in trouble, my teacher lets my family know).

• One measure of student homework habits: Two items (i.e., I do my homework at the same time; I do my homework in the same place).

• One measure of parent support: Four items (i.e., My parent reminds me to do my homework; My parent knows when I need help with homework; My parent knows when my homework is finished; My parent knows when I have done a good job with homework).

• Teacher estimates of student behavior, including the identification of students who are homework stars, homework problems, and discipline problems.

RESULTS

Table 3.31 shows the background characteristics of students in the case and comparison teachers’ classrooms, along with teachers’ ratings of student and parent qualities and principals’ ratings of teachers. In case teachers’ classrooms, there were fewer males and more females, fewer white and more black students, and more students with average reading and math abilities. These characteristics are statistically controlled in all analyses of effects of teacher practices of parent involvement on the dependent variables.

Teachers were asked to nominate as many of their children as fit a set of descriptors: “homework star,” “homework problem,” and “discipline problem.” The teachers also nominated families who were “helpful” or who typically provided “no follow-through” on homework and home-learning activities. More students in case teachers’ classrooms were nominated as homework stars, and fewer were considered discipline problems, than in comparison teachers’ classrooms. About equal numbers were homework problems. More students in case teachers’ classrooms had parents whom teachers considered “helpful,” and fewer parents showed “no follow-through,” than in comparison teachers’ classrooms. Overall, the raw data suggest that case teachers had more positive estimates of more of their students and families on homework and home-school connections than did the comparison teachers, reflecting and confirming the case teachers’ emphasis on family involvement.

TABLE 3.31 Summary of Student Characteristics, Teacher Characteristics, and Student Opinions in Nine Case and Nine Control (Matched) Fifth-Grade Teachers’ Classrooms

Student Background Characteristics		% Students in Case Teachers’ Classrooms N = 199	% Students in Comparison Teachers’ Classrooms N = 191
	Male	41	56
	Female	59	44
	White	46	55
	Black	54	45
	Urban	53	52
	Other	47	48
Reading ability
	Low	11	9
	Middle	54	49
	High	35	40
Math ability
	Low	14	26
	Middle	48	34
	High	35	40
Teachers’ evaluations of
	student behaviors and family
	support for parent involvement
Homework star		30	20
Homework problem		19	19
Discipline problem		11	18
Helpful parents		56	20
No follow-through by parent		12	17
Principals’ estimates of
	teachers’ qualities and
	excellent teaching skills (i.e., quality of
	lessons, knowledge, creativity, discipline)	51	45

Student Attitudes and Behaviors

Table 3.32 summarizes the effects of the indicators of parent involvement and support on students’ attitudes about school, homework, and home-school connections. Five measures of parent involvement and support derived from data from teachers, principals, and students are featured. The columns are labeled Case/Comparison Teachers (an indicator based on teachers’ reports of the extent of practices of parental involvement); Helpful Parents (from a checklist from teachers of parents’ helpfulness and follow-through); Teacher Practices to Involve Parents at Home (from principals’ ratings); Homework That Involves Parents; and Parent Awareness and Support (two reports from students on the kinds of homework they receive and their interactions with parents on homework).

Each dependent variable is regressed, separately, on each of the parent involvement measures along with student background characteristics (gender, race, reading and math abilities), school location (urban/suburban), and teacher quality. With these potentially important influences statistically controlled, we can look at the effects of parent involvement practices on student outcomes. Table 3.32 reports the standardized regression coefficient (ß) and, for significant associations, the test statistic (F). The last column of the table lists other explanatory variables that significantly affect students’ attitudes and behaviors.

 

Student Attitudes. The first row shows that student attitudes toward school are positively and significantly influenced by four of the five parent involvement measures provided by teachers, principals, and students. Students have more positive attitudes about school if they report that their parents are aware of and are involved in helping with homework, if their teachers rate the parents as helpful, and if principals report that the teacher works to involve families at home. Student attitudes toward homework, in the second row of the table, also are significantly more positive when students say their teachers assign interactive homework and their parents are aware of and involved with them on homework.

Gender and race also influence attitudes toward school and homework. Female students and African American students have more positive attitudes than do other students, with all other background and ability measures statistically controlled. Interestingly, student reading and math abilities do not significantly influence student attitudes, echoing earlier evidence that achievement and attitudes about school are not necessarily highly related measures (Epstein, 1981).

 

Student Reports of Home-School Connections. The middle three rows of Table 3.32 indicate that student interactions with parents at home about homework affect their beliefs that their home and school are similar and that their teacher knows their family. Student beliefs about strong home-school connections are explained by all five indicators of parent involvement from teachers, principals, and the students themselves.

Student ability and teacher quality also affect beliefs about home-school connections. Students with high reading and math abilities, and those with excellent teachers as rated by principals, also are more likely to see their home and school as more similar and their teachers and parents in closer communication.

Parent involvement indicators are less powerfully linked to student reports that their teacher would inform their family if they were in trouble in school, in part because there is less variation on this measure. Most students believe that their teachers would, indeed, contact their parents about trouble in school.

 

Homework Habits. The last four rows of Table 3.32 reveal that students’ knowledge and reports about their own experiences at home are the best predictors of their homework habits. Students are more likely to do their homework at the same time and in the same place if they frequently interact with parents and if parents are aware of their work. These homework habits are not explained by any of the other variables used in the equations, such as student gender, race, ability, and teacher quality.

TABLE 3.32 Summary of Analyses of Effects of Multiple Measures of Parent Involvement on Multiple Measures of Student Attitudes and Behavior*

Teachers’ practices of parent involvement are, however, significantly linked to student reports that they are assigned homework on weekends. Teachers who frequently involve parents in learning activities at home are more likely to take advantage of available weekend time to encourage these interactions. Students say they do more homework on the weekend when their parents support their work.

Suburban students and those with high reading and math abilities are more likely than other students to see similarities between home and school, think the teacher knows their family, and have teachers who assign weekend homework, net of all other student and school characteristics. These analyses indicate, however, that if parent involvement is activated by teachers and experienced at home, students in any neighborhood and with low or high academic skills report strong family and school connections and do their homework whenever assigned, including weekends.

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

Overall, more than half (25) of the 45 tests of effects of the five measures of parental involvement on nine student behaviors and attitudes were significant. Many were not only significant, but also were strong and educationally important, even after other highly influential student ability, family background, and school and teacher characteristics were taken into account. Although gender, race, location, teacher quality, and student ability were sometimes important, these explanatory variables did not extinguish the positive effects of teachers’ efforts to involve families and parent support at home on student attitudes and behaviors.

Two cross-cutting patterns in Table 3.32 are worthy of note. First, the most consistent positive effects on all nine measures of student attitudes and behaviors are linked to students’ reports of having assignments that encourage interactions at home, and their recognition of parental awareness, support, and involvement. Second, the most consistent effect across the five measures of parent involvement from students, teachers, and principals is on student reports that the “teacher knows my family.” Students are significantly more likely to say their teacher knows the family when their teachers report that they frequently involve parents; the teachers see parents as helpful; the principals recognize that teachers are working to involve families; and the students themselves say that their parents are aware of and engaged in homework activities.

The use of multiple measures of involvement, multiple reporters, and multiple measures of student attitudes and behaviors strengthens any single result reported in Table 3.32. Principals’ views of teachers’ skills in involving parents, teachers’ reports of their practices of involvement, and their views of parents are important indicators of home-school connections. In this study, students’ reports add significantly to an understanding of parent involvement. The data suggest that when their families are involved with them on school matters, students are significantly more likely to develop attitudes and conduct activities that will keep them in the students’ role and on a successful path through school. At the same time, had only student reports been included, the self-reports might be considered distorted or inflated by self-interests. By including confirmatory reports from teachers and principals, the effects of parent involvement on student attitudes and homework habits are more clear and more credible than in the past.

Where do these results lead? Positive attitudes about school and homework and good homework habits are likely to help students stay in school, even if they are not the top or most academically successful students. Students are more likely to be successful in school if they see their parents as teachers, hear that their families want them to learn what their teachers teach at school, and say that the things they learn at home are important.

There is a growing consensus among educators that parents must play a more active role in their children’s education. It is believed that parent involvement assists educators’ efforts to help individual students attain basic skills and reach high academic standards. It is expected that if schools systematically and equitably informed and involved all parents, many more students would see that their families and teachers have similar goals for high achievement and good behavior in school and expectations for completing homework at home. This study suggests that parents’ influence may be most powerful when they communicate directly with their children, so that students experience interactions, conversations, and activities at home that clearly translate parental interest in their work into students’ positive attitudes and commitment to their work.

Studies of students at all grade levels are needed to check and confirm the results reported here. In particular, studies should explore the long-term results of family involvement and positive student attitudes, behaviors, and investments on student achievement and graduation from high school. Data on direct links among teacher practices, parent responses, student experiences, and ultimately, student grades and achievement test scores are needed to extend understanding of the benefits for students of well-organized and equitable home-school connections.

REFERENCES

Becker, H. J., and J. L. Epstein. (1982). Parent involvement: A study of teacher practices. Elementary School Journal 83: 85-102. (Reading 3.1).

Benson, C., E. Medrich, and S. Buckley. (1980). A new view of school efficiency: Household time contributions to school achievement. In J. Guthrie (Ed.), School finance policies and practices—the 1980s: A decade of conflict (pp. 169-204). Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

Coleman, J. S., et al. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Comer, J. P. (1980). School power. New York: Free Press.

Epstein, J. L. (Ed.). (1981). The quality of school life. Lexington, MA.: Lexington Books.

———. (1984). A longitudinal study of school and family effects on student development. In S. A. Mednick, M. Harway, and K. Finello (Eds.), Handbook of longitudinal research, Vol. 1 (pp. 381-397). New York: Praeger.

Epstein, J. L., and H. J. Becker. (1982). Teacher practices of parent involvement: Problem and possibilities. Elementary School Journal 83: 103-113. (Reading 3.2).

Gordon, I. (1979). The effects of parent involvement in schooling. In R. S. Brandt (Ed.), Partners: Parents and schools (pp. 4-25). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Henderson, A. (Ed.). (1981). Parent participation—student achievement: The evidence grows. Columbia, MD: National Committee for Citizens in Education.

Leichter, H. J. (1974). The family as educator. New York: Teachers College Press.

Lightfoot, S. L. (1978). Worlds apart: Relationships between families and schools. New York: Basic Books.

Marjoribanks, K. (1979). Families and their learning environments: An empirical analysis. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Mayeske, G. W. (1973). A study of the achievement of our nation’s students. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

McDill, E. L., and L. Rigsby. (1973). Structure and process in secondary schools: The academic impact of educational climates. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Rich, D., J. Van Dien, and B. Mattox. (1979). Families as educators of their own children. In R. Brandt (Ed.), Partners: Parents and schools (pp. 26-40). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervisors and Curriculum Development.

DISCUSSION AND ACTIVITIES

The comments in this section extend and update the content of the readings in this chapter. Main concepts and results are summarized and used to promote discussions and debates. Questions and activities are provided for class discussion and homework assignments. They may suggest other exercises, field activities, or research projects.

 

 

MAIN CONCEPTS

Key Results

 

 

The results and issues reported in the readings in this chapter provide a base on which to build new research on school, family, and community partnerships and useful approaches in practice. Three important results, introduced in Chapter 2 and featured in this chapter, deserve particular attention because they changed the way we study and develop programs of partnership.

1. School and teacher programs and practices of partnership influence whether and which families become involved in their children’s education and schools.

2. School programs and practices of partnership increase teachers’ awareness and appreciation of family assistance and reduce teachers’ stereotypes of nontraditional families as uncaring and uninvolved.

3. Subject-specific activities that involve families with their children in learning activities at home help to increase student achievement in specific subjects.

COMMENT

School Practices Influence Family Involvement (Featured Result Number 1)

 

 

In an early study, Baker and Stevenson (1986) reported interesting results about the connections of parents’ knowledge or beliefs about involvement and their actions. Their data indicated that almost all parents (including those with more and less formal education) have similar knowledge about the importance of involvement in their children’s education and about ways they might become involved. However, parents with more formal education were more likely to translate their knowledge into actions for and with their children.

This result looks, at first, like a simple story of social class differences. Parents with more formal education are better able to translate knowledge into action. However, the readings in this chapter cast Baker and Stevenson’s results and other studies in a different light. Data from parents, teachers, and students show that schools’ programs and practices help parents with less formal education to more successfully put their knowledge to work. Good information and guidance from school principals, teachers, counselors, and other parents help all parents translate their knowledge about the importance of involvement into actions in working with the schools and with their children.

Although family background variables are important, they are not the only explanation for which parents influence their children’s learning and development. The nature and quality of teachers’ and administrators’ practices to involve families are as important as or more important than family background variables such as race or ethnicity, social class, marital status, parental education, and mother’s work status for determining whether and how parents become involved in their children’s education. Family practices of involvement are also as important as or more important than family background variables for determining whether and how students progress and succeed in school.

Surveys of parents reveal that their activities and conversations about school with children at home are directly influenced by the types of practices that schools conduct to involve parents. That is, if schools invest in practices to involve families, most or all parents respond by taking part in those practices, including parents who might not have otherwise become involved on their own.

Surveys of teachers reveal a related result. Teachers’ classroom practices to involve their students’ families are strengthened when their schools’ programs for involving families are strong. When teachers know that other teachers and administrators in their schools and districts place high importance on involving families, they conduct more activities to involve their own students’ families. Thus:

• Families do more when schools guide their involvement.

• Teachers do more when others in their schools and districts share a commitment to practices of involvement.

• Family behavior (what families do) is as powerful as or more powerful than family characteristics (what families are) in influencing their children’s schoolwork and success.

These results should encourage educators to develop comprehensive, schoolwide programs to reach out to inform and involve all families, including those who might not otherwise become involved on their own.

 

 

ACTIVITY

Classroom Debate and Discussion

a. Create a panel to debate the following resolution: Resolved: What families do is more important than what families are.

1. Explain the distinction between family characteristics and family behaviors.

2. Take one side of this debate. Prepare your main argument in a paragraph or two.

3. Imagine your adversary in the debate. Prepare a paragraph or two taking that position.

4. Discuss or debate this issue in class.

b. Why is it important for schools to develop programs and implement practices to involve families in different ways, rather than simply to expect or demand that families get more involved? Give at least one idea of why such programs and practices are important:

1. for the school as a whole

2. for an individual teacher, student, family, and for the community

c. Why is it important for all families to know every year that their schools and all teachers will:

1. provide useful information about school programs and children’s progress?

2. ask for and use information from them about their children?

3. create a climate of partnership as children progress through the grades?

d. Give one idea why C1, C2, and C3 are particularly important to one of the following:

1. a family with an excellent student

2. a family with a failing student

3. a family of a student with special needs

COMMENT

Teachers Who Involve Parents Rate Them More Positively and Are Less Likely to Stereotype Nontraditional Families (Featured Result Number 2)

 

 

Practices of partnership assist teachers as well as parents. For example, when they work to involve all parents, teachers gain a greater understanding of parents’ interests in and potential for assisting their children. Teachers who frequently involve families in their children’s education rate single and married parents, low-income and middle-income parents, and more and less formally educated parents more positively and more equally in helpfulness and follow-through with their children at home. By contrast, teachers who do not frequently involve families give more stereotypic ratings to single parents, poor parents, and those with less formal education, marking them lower in helpfulness and follow-through than other parents.

QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS

1.

a. Why do you think teachers who involve families more frequently give more positive ratings to all families?

b. Why do you think teachers who do not involve families frequently are more likely to stereotype single parents, poor parents, or those with less formal education?

2. What other group(s) of families or students might these two types of teachers treat or rate differently? Explain your ideas.

3. Labels create stereotypes because they ignore important variations in family practices. That is, not all families in any category behave the same way. As stated in Reading 3.5, “Single parents are not a single group.”

a. How do labels such as single parent, working mom, welfare family, and less-educated parents affect school, family, and community partnerships?

b. How do labels such as illegitimate child, latchkey child, and poor student affect students in school and the roles the students play in school, family, and community partnerships?

c. How would you revise the labels listed in (A) and (B) to improve the wording of the descriptors and correct any distortions that they create?

4.

a. How are the following phrases defined statistically and colloquially?

1. nontraditional family

2. traditionally uninvolved family

3. traditionally underserved family

b. Justify or refute each of the above three terms as they relate to employed mothers, single parents, and parents with less formal education. Should these families be included in one or more of the categories listed above?

c. How do you think the three phrases affect school, family, and community partnerships?

5. Reading 3.6 reports data from a sample of parents who, some educators and researchers believe, are not involved in their children’s education. Reexamine the data reported in Reading 3.6.

a. Select and identify two results that indicate whether parents in inner-city schools are involved or wish to be involved in their children’s education.

b. Explain why each of the two results you selected is important for understanding parents of elementary- and middle-grade students in inner-city schools.

COMMENT

There Are Subject-Specific Links between Family Involvement and Student Achievement (Featured Result Number 3)

 

 

Practices to involve families at home in interactions with their children about a specific subject are likely to affect student achievement in that subject. In the study reported in Reading 3.7, data connected teacher practices, parent responses, and student achievement over one year. We learned that:

• Teachers’ practices to involve parents in learning activities at home were mainly limited to reading, English, or related activities. Also, principals encouraged teachers to involve parents in reading and related skills.

• Parents reported more involvement in reading activities.

• Students improved reading scores more from fall to spring if their teachers frequently involved parents in reading-related learning activities at home, but the students’ math scores were not affected.

The data indicate that when parents are involved in reading, students respond by focusing on and completing more reading activities at home. This may lead to greater attention, motivation, and success in reading in school.

The data from this study suggest that practices of partnership may be purposely designed to help boost student achievement in specific subjects. There also were some important related findings. Family involvement in one subject will not necessarily benefit the child in another subject. Family involvement in activities at home may not benefit students at all unless the activities are well designed, well implemented, and accompanied by excellent teaching every day in school.

 

 

Updated Resource: Surveys of Teachers, Parents, and Students

 

The early surveys of teachers, parents, and students about patterns of parental involvement and schools’ partnership programs have been updated. The questionnaires and information on the internal reliability of scales used in various studies are available for researchers, graduate students, and others conducting studies on related topics. Options include:

Epstein, J. L., L. Connors-Tadros, and K. C. Salinas. (1993). High School and Family Partnerships: Surveys for Teachers, Parents, and Students in High School. Baltimore: Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships, Johns Hopkins University.

Epstein, J. L., and K. C. Salinas. (1993). Surveys and Summaries: Questionnaires for Teachers and Parents in the Elementary and Middle Grades. Baltimore: Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships, Johns Hopkins University.

Sheldon, S. B., and J. L. Epstein. (2007). Parent Survey on Family and Community Involvement in the Elementary and Middle Grades. Baltimore: Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships, Johns Hopkins University.

———. (2007). Student Survey on Family and Community Involvement in the Elementary and Middle Grades. Baltimore: Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships, Johns Hopkins University.

 

The measures and materials are described on the website http://www.partnershipschools.org in the section “Publications and Products.”

 

 

FIELD EXPERIENCE

Interview a Parent/Quick Survey

 

 

When the study in Reading 3.7 was conducted, most teachers in the elementary grades asked parents to become involved in reading more than other subjects. Find out whether this is still true.

a. Interview one parent of an elementary school student. Identify whether you are interviewing a mother, father, or other family member and the grade level of the child. Note any other factors about the family or community that you think may influence responses. Ask:

1. Does your child’s teacher ask you to become involved with your child on homework?

2. If YES, ask:

a. In which subjects?

b. If more than one subject is mentioned, check: In which subject are you most often asked to be involved?

3. If NO, ask:

a. Do you and your child work together on any subject or skills at home?

b. If so, in which subject most of all?

b. Document your questions and the responses. Write a paragraph summarizing what you learned from the parent you interviewed.

c. Optional class activity: Discuss the responses to these interviews in class. Do the results of your classmates’ interviews suggest that there is more parent involvement in reading/English, as we found in the original study, or is there evidence of other patterns of subject-specific involvement?

COMMENT

What Is and What Might Be

 

 

Research helps identify “what is” and “what might be” in school practices to involve families. An average score on a scale or measure tells what usually is, whereas the variance of a scale or measure helps point to what might be. Of course, variations in scores are higher and lower, better and worse than the average score. For example, studies indicate that some teachers go far beyond average in conducting many activities to involve all students’ families. Other teachers conduct far fewer involvement activities than the average.

The variation in practices of partnership is often more interesting than the average. Within a state, a district, and even a school, teachers’ and administrators’ approaches to families vary. Some educators conduct many activities to inform and involve all families; others have not yet thought about how to integrate partnerships into their work as professional educators. The teachers and administrators who have already developed effective partnerships help researchers and other educators identify and study what might be possible in all schools. Those who avoid communicating with families help inform the field about problems that must be solved. Reading 3.2 presents ideas from both groups of teachers.

 

 

QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS

 

Select two challenges that teachers in Reading 3.2 described as “barriers” to parent involvement.

Example: One challenge discussed in Reading 3.2 is that telephoning parents takes time. To meet this challenge, you might think about organizing a schedule to guide teachers about whom to call, how often to call, how to mix positive messages with calls about problems, how to get help from volunteers in making certain kinds of calls, how to supplement phone calls with other communications, and other solutions. You may use this challenge as one of your answers, or select two different challenges from Reading 3.2.

1. State the two challenges that you selected.

2. Outline at least two important issues that need to be resolved to meet each challenge.

3. List at least one activity that might be implemented to address the issues you outlined to meet each challenge.

4. Share the challenges, issues, and solutions in class. Examine the activities suggested for their feasibility, sensitivity to families’ situations, and likely success.

5. Optional class activity: Collect the most promising ideas for a resource notebook or an electronic idea file on school, family, and community partnerships for use in schools or for researchable topics.

COMMENT

Discrepancy Scores

 

 

Data in Reading 3.3 indicate that, on average, teachers are more likely to support the involvement of families if they think that other teachers and administrators in their schools have similar beliefs and goals about the importance of parent and community involvement. They also are more likely to conduct activities to involve their students’ families if their school has a well-organized program of school, family, and community partnerships. By contrast, if they think that their colleagues do not support parent involvement, teachers are less likely to implement many practices themselves. In some schools, however, you will find outliers: teachers who are leaders in involving families, even if no other teachers do so.

 

 

FIELD EXPERIENCE

Interview on Patterns of Collegial Support

a. Interview one school-based educator about his or her practices and school experiences to involve families and communities to see which model—the group-support process or the individual-leader phenomenon—seems to be working in the school. The educator may be a teacher, principal, counselor, or other specialist at a preschool or elementary, middle, or high school. Identify the school level and position of the person you interview. Ask:

1. At your school, does the power of the group influence practices to involve or avoid parents, or does each individual teacher decide whether and how to involve parents? Explain.

2. Do most teachers conduct the same kinds of activities, or do individual leaders do more and better activities with parents than most other teachers? Explain.

3. What is one example of a practice that all teachers in the school conduct with all or most families?

4. What is one example of a particularly good practice that only one or two teachers conduct with the families of their students?

5. Are formal plans written each year outlining all of the activities to involve parents and communities in the school at each grade level? If so, who writes these plans? If not, how are activities scheduled?

b. Add at least one question of your own about group or individual approaches to involve parents or communities.

c. Document your questions and the responses.

d. Write a paragraph summarizing what you learned or questions raised in this interview.

COMMENT

Diverse and Changing Families

 

 

For the past several decades, families have been changing structures and diversifying functions. There are more single parents, blended families, gay and lesbian parents, and other family forms than in the past. There are more families with two parents employed and single parents working outside the home. Some fathers are at home while mothers work outside the home. Some parents are unemployed. Some families are homeless or in temporary shelters. Some families are highly mobile, moving frequently to new homes, schools, and communities.

Families will continue to vary in structure, composition, and situation. Nevertheless, just about all families send their children to school with high hopes for their success and happiness.

The results of the studies in Readings 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6 suggest that some parents (e.g., single parents and parents with less formal education) are less involved in their children’s education unless they receive good information and guidance from the schools.

 

 

QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS

 

Many parents—single and married—work full-time or part-time during the day, evening, or night. Employed mothers and fathers have limited time for meetings and events at the school building. These realities should affect the variety and schedule of activities to involve families at school or at home across the grades.

1. Describe two activities that would permit parents who are employed during the school day to participate at the school building.

2. Describe two activities that would permit parents who are employed at night to participate at the school building.

FIELD EXPERIENCE

Parent Interviews about Work and Family

a. Interview two single mothers (i.e., separated, divorced, widowed, or never married) or two married mothers who are employed full-time outside the home about the ways in which they are involved in the education of their school-aged children.

b. Before your interviews, write three questions that you will ask both interviewees about involvement in their children’s education at home and at school and whether or how their children’s schools welcome and guide their involvement.

c. Identify whether you are interviewing single or married mothers. Note the school and grade level of one child in the family and other factors that you think may influence responses to questions about parent involvement (e.g., parents’ education; occupation; race/ethnicity; total number of children at home; urban, suburban, or rural community; or other factors).

d. List the questions you ask and the responses of each interviewee.

e. Summarize the results of the two interviews. Respond to the following questions:

1. How are the two individuals you interviewed alike and different in their patterns of involvement at home and at school?

2. What do you think are some reasons for the similar or different patterns of involvement?

f. Is the information that you obtained representative or not representative of the views that would be obtained from a random sample of 100 single mothers or married and employed mothers? Explain.

g. Optional class activity: See how increasing the sample affects the results and conclusions of individual interviews. In class, combine and summarize the data from all interviews with single mothers. Then, combine and summarize the data from all interviews with married mothers. Discuss the full set of results:

1. In what ways are the combined data more useful than the individual reports? Which results might be important in school practice?

2. Which results raise questions that should be studied further?

COMMENT

Partnerships with Diverse and Changing Families

 

 

Families not only differ in form and function (see Reading 3.5), but they change from one year to the next. Single parents marry, married parents divorce, employed parents become unemployed, unemployed mothers start to work outside the home, and so forth. However they change, families still are responsible for their children and share responsibilities with schools for their children’s education and development. Families that face stressful changes are more likely to remain partners with schools if administrators and teachers understand how to involve families who are in transition.

 

 

QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS

1. List two school, family, and community partnership activities that you believe are appropriate and important for all families to conduct, regardless of how families differ or how they change.

a. Explain why these activities are important for all families to conduct.

b. Explain one way in which schools could help families with each of the activities that you listed.

2. List one school, family, and community partnership activity that needs to be tailored for (a) single parents, (b) employed parents, and (c) parents who separate, divorce, or remarry to feel comfortable about participating. Describe how and why you would tailor or adapt the activity you listed for these three groups.

COMMENT

One-Parent Homes but Two-Parent Families

 

 

Some students live with one parent, and the other parent lives nearby. Many nonresident parents (usually fathers) would like to be more active in their children’s education. Some nonresident parents have joint custody of their children and expect to be fully involved in their education, but the school may officially record the address of only one parent. Many nonresident parents would appreciate information and invitations from the school to become more involved. Studies suggest that children whose nonresident fathers are involved in their schooling are more likely to like school, do well in school, and participate in extracurricular activities than are children in one-parent homes whose nonresident fathers are uninvolved.

Some children have no contact with their nonresident parent. These students may be particularly sensitive to questions or school activities that refer to “your parents.”

Depending on their situations, students may appreciate options to communicate with one or both parents or other relatives to involve important adults in their lives and in their school activities and experiences. These complex topics of how schools understand and interact with families that are differently structured require systematic study and innovative school and classroom practices.

 

 

ACTIVITY

Review or Interview

a. Identify a level of schooling that interests you. Use your experience or interview a teacher or school administrator to address these questions:

1. What is your school’s policy about providing information or invitations to nonresident parents?

2. What is your school’s policy about vocabulary referring to a parent or parents:

• in memos or other communications to the home?

• in activities in class?

b. Write a short critique of the policies that are described. Is each one a good policy? Why or why not? If no policy exists, draft a short, workable policy statement on whether and how to provide information and invitations to nonresident parents.

c. Optional follow-up activity: Interview one nonresident parent of a school-age child to learn if and how he or she is presently involved in a child’s school and education. Identify whether this parent has joint custody of the youngster.

1. Write at least five questions for your interview. Include one on the changes in school policies or practices concerning nonresident parents this individual would recommend.

2. Record your questions and document the responses you obtain.

COMMENT

Students Who Live with One Parent

 

 

In Reading 3.5, teachers’ practices made a difference in whether single and married parents were productive partners with the schools in their children’s education. This result reinforces the importance of measuring school and family practices simultaneously to understand what parents do and whether they are assisted to become involved by the programs and practices at their children’s schools. Without attention to the schools’ efforts, many studies distort the desires and abilities of all families to be productively involved in their children’s education.

A study of Midwestern youth in one- and two-parent homes concluded that, on average, kids do better in two-parent homes, but some students in single-parent families thrive, and some in two-parent homes do not. Family structure does not fully determine or explain children’s and adolescents’ well-being.

What matters most, regardless of family structure, is what happens within the family (Benson, 1993). For example, adolescents in single-parent homes are much less at risk of failing or getting in trouble in school if they report that their families are involved in their schooling, provide social support, and monitor other aspects of their lives. Examine the chart on the next page (Benson, 1993).

 

 

What Percent of Successful and Unsuccessful Students in One-Parent Homes Are Supported by Their Families in Different Ways?

 

As shown in the chart, higher percentages of adolescents in single-parent homes who “thrive” in school (i.e., achieve well, have high aspirations, do homework, stay out of trouble) report that they receive support and guidance from an involved parent at home, compared with students who do not thrive in school (i.e., have academic or behavior problems). Another way to say this is that more students from single-parent families who are successful in school report having strong parental support, standards, discipline, and involvement.

Saying that some single parents are involved in their children’s education while others are not is important, but not surprising. Many studies conducted in the United States and other nations show that in all kinds of families, some parents are involved, and others are not. Regardless of family structure, children of involved parents are more likely to succeed in school in many different ways. Reading 3.5 adds evidence that when teachers implement activities to involve all families, more single parents become involved in their children’s education across the grades. Then, their children have a better chance of succeeding in school.

 

 

QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS

1. In the chart, which variable—family support, involvement, standards, or discipline—do you think presents the most important contrasting percentages for students in one-parent homes who thrive compared with those who do not thrive?

a. Identify the variable and percentages you will discuss.

b. Explain why you think the percentages reported for that variable are important.

2. Write two questions that you would like to ask the students who were in Benson’s study to better understand the family and school circumstances that contributed to the results in the chart. State your two questions, and explain why each is important for understanding the variables in the chart.

3. Use at least two examples from Reading 3.5 to discuss this statement: Family involvement and support in one-parent and two-parent homes is partly determined by school practices.

COMMENT

Who Is Hard to Reach?

 

Who are the hard-to-reach parents? In some ways, some of the time, every family is hard to reach. Parents who work outside the home may be hard to reach. Parents who are at a distance from the school may be hard to reach. Fathers may be hard to reach. Young parents, teen parents, older parents, parents of older children, parents with less formal education, those who do not speak English, single parents, stepparents, noncustodial parents, and foster parents may be hard to reach. In some cases parents with advanced education or great wealth also may be hard to reach. Some families fit more than one of these descriptors and may be particularly hard to reach.

Not all schools have the same hard-to-reach families. Some schools have figured out how to contact and involve families who seem unreachable at other schools.

 

 

FIELD EXPERIENCE

Reaching Hard-to-Reach Parents

a. Interview one teacher or administrator from two different schools. Identify the positions of your interviewees, their school or grade levels, and important characteristics of their students, families, or communities. Ask:

1. Who are the hard-to-reach parents in your school?

2. Why are they hard to reach?

3. What strategies have been used at your school to try to reach one or more of the groups of families that you listed?

b. Add at least one question of your own.

c. List the questions you ask and the responses.

d. Write a paragraph on the similarities or differences in the responses of educators from the two schools—and possible reasons.

e. Optional class activity: Share and compare ideas with others in the class. Identify useful strategies for reaching hard-to-reach parents.

COMMENT

Paired Data from Teachers and Parents

 

 

Readings 3.1 and 3.4 are “paired” with data from teachers and parents from the same schools, respectively, in a statewide sample of urban, suburban, and rural schools. Data in Readings 3.3 and 3.6 also are “paired” with data from teachers and parents from the same schools in a sample of urban elementary and middle schools. The data from these studies reveal common themes and important contrasts among teachers and parents. For example, most teachers think parents are not involved in their children’s education, whereas most parents report they are involved—or try to be—often without guidance or assistance from the school or from their children’s teachers.

As another example, almost all teachers (more than 90 percent) say they held conferences with parents, but 36 percent of the parents say they never had a conference with their child’s teacher. These discrepancies must be discussed, explained, and addressed for parents and teachers to understand each other’s work and their common interests in children.

 

 

QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS

1. How can the reports from 90 percent of teachers and 36 percent of parents about parent-teacher conferences both be true?

2. What are the implications of these contrasting results for improving the way in which parent-teacher conferences are organized, scheduled, and counted?

3. Read one pair of readings (3.1 and 3.4 or 3.3 and 3.6).

a. Identify one set of results (not those discussed above) that indicate that parents and teachers, on average, view things similarly or differently.

b. Explain how the similar or different results that you identified might affect school, family, and community partnerships.

COMMENT

Teachers as Parents

 

 

Despite the fact that most teachers are parents, data from many surveys show that teachers misunderstand what most parents try to do at home. Many teachers blame parents for their lack of involvement, despite the teachers’ knowledge of how hard it is to stay informed and involved in their own children’s education from year to year. It may be that teachers characterize all parents according to their worst experiences with families, rather than according to their best experiences. Determine if this is true through the following field experience.

 

 

FIELD EXPERIENCE

Interview Teachers Who Are and Are Not Parents

a. Interview one teacher who is a parent of a school-age child and one teacher who is not a parent. Write their responses to the following questions:

1. As a teacher, what is your best experience with a parent?

2. As a teacher, what is your worst experience with a parent?

3. How would you describe the involvement of most parents of the students you teach?

b. Add a question of your own for these teachers.

c. Ask the teacher who is a parent:

1. In what grade level is your oldest school-age child?

2. How easy or difficult is it for you to be involved at this child’s school?

3. How easy or difficult is it for you to be involved with this child at home?

4. How much information or guidance do you get from this child’s school and teacher to help you be productively involved?

d. Add a question of your own for this teacher.

e. Summarize what you learned from the two teachers you interviewed. Include the following reflections as well as other ideas:

1. From the first set of questions, how were the teachers’ assessments of most parents influenced by their best and worst experiences?

2. From the second set of questions, how did the teacher’s role as an educator affect interactions with his or her own child’s teacher(s)? How did the teacher’s role as an educator affect interactions with the child at home?

COMMENT

Student Achievement and Family Involvement

 

 

Reading 3.7 uses gain scores to measure achievement (i.e., how much a student grows over one year), after accounting for initial skills. There are some typical or expected patterns in these data. For example, students who start with lower scores make greater gains over one year.

There are statistical reasons for this result. One technical explanation is a general “regression to the mean,” which suggests that, by chance and human nature, poor students will, on occasion, score higher than they did before. Similarly, good students will, on occasion, score lower than they did before. It may be more than chance or naturally occurring corrections, however, when measures are made after one year’s time. For example, students who start out lower in skills have more “room to grow,” whereas students who start with high scores near the ceiling or top of a range of scores will not be able to show as much positive growth or change. They may be working hard simply to maintain their high scores.

There also are substantive reasons why students with low scores may gain more in one year than students with high scores. For example, schoolwork may be easier at the lower levels, making it possible for students to jump ahead more quickly from low starting points, once they are motivated to work. Or schools may promote student learning with innovative and responsive curricula and instructional methods that enable slower students to make progress and brighter students to maintain their skills. These alternative, complex, statistical, and substantive issues need to be sorted out in research on the effects of family involvement on student achievement.

The data in Reading 3.7 suggest that gains in reading and math by students in urban elementary schools are influenced by different characteristics of parents, students, and teachers. Examine the following summary chart of results from that study.

SUMMARY CHART

Factors Influencing Gains in Reading and Math in the Elementary Grades

QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS

1. Select one result in the summary chart that surprised you, and explain why.

2. Explain how the result you selected might affect school, family, and community partnerships.

3. If you were studying student progress in reading or math, what is one additional variable that you would measure to clarify the results in the summary chart? Explain why you think the variable you selected might be important.

Factors that affect gains in reading	Factors that affect gains in math
• Initial reading scores—low scoring reading students gain more	• Initial math scores—low scoring math students gain more
• Parent education	—
—	• Younger grade levels
• High quality rating of teacher	—
—	• Recency of teacher training
• Teacher use of learning activities at home (in reading)	(Family involvement in reading does not affect gains in math test scores)
—	• Parent reports of high quality homework

COMMENT

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

 

 

One intriguing result of the analyses of data from the study reported in Reading 3.8 is that teachers tend to evaluate parents based on their children’s achievement. Parents of students who were homework “stars” were viewed more positively by teachers than were parents of students who had homework or discipline problems. Parents of homework stars were rated significantly more helpful than other parents. By contrast, parents of children who had trouble with homework or who behaved badly in school were rated significantly lower in helpfulness and follow-through than were other parents.

FIGURE 3.5 Teachers’ Ratings of Parents’ Helpfulness and Follow-Through

 

 

Parents make similar assessments of teachers. Table 3.30 shows that parents rate teachers higher in quality if their children are homework stars and if their children are doing well in math. Use these results and your experiences to answer the following questions.

QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS

1. Are students high achievers because their parents help them, or are parents helpful because their students are high achievers? Give one example of how each of these causal patterns could be true.

2. Do students have trouble in school because their parents are not involved, or do parents disengage because their children have trouble in school? Give one example of how each of these causal patterns could be true.

3. Are teachers more effective because their students are high achievers, or are children high achievers because they have better teachers? Give one example of how each of these causal patterns could be true.

4. Optional: Discuss these issues in class. What are the implications of the examples for research on the effects of family involvement on student achievement?

COMMENT

Studying and Improving Homework

 

 

Homework is a strategy that can be designed to motivate students, increase learning, involve families, and improve teaching (Cooper and Valentine, 2001; see also Reading 6.1). For too long, however, homework has been studied as an either/or, more/ less variable. Many studies still focus only on the number of minutes or hours of homework that are assigned or spent. The debates about minutes of homework miss important distinctions between assigning more homework and designing better homework. There is a difference between focusing on time spent on homework and the complex issues of the purpose, content, and form of homework.

After reviewing more than two dozen U.S. and international studies of homework and its effects on students, I developed a model for studying, understanding, discussing, and improving homework. This model (see Figure 3.6) shows an extensive set of variables that could be measured to more fully study and understand the design and effects of homework on student learning, teacher effectiveness, and family understanding and involvement in children’s education.