How Does My School Rate on Parent Involvement?

report Card In her work on school-family-community partnershipes, Joyce Epstein has identified 6 areas of parental involvement (listed below) that every school should consider when reviewing and improving family engagement efforts.

Assessing these different areas of parent involvement is important because there are many different ways for parents to be involved -- ways that go "beyond the bake sale" and include every facet of life both at school and at home. Recognizing these different types of parent involvement gives the school a framework for assessing current efforts and for improving future ones. (For information on your school's NECAP testing scores, please see this NH Dept of Education page.)

1. Parenting responsibilities and education.

Parents help ready their children to learn at all ages by keeping them healthy and safe, and by supervising, disciplining and guiding them.
They help children feel good about themselves and confident with others.
They teach them a positive attitude about learning and school.
Schools offer parenting courses to support these goals.

2. Communications between home and school.

Schools provide information to parents about students' progress and school programs.
They also provide ways for parents to share with school staff information important to their chiildren's learning. (phone calls, notes, conferences, open houses, newletters, and report cards are examples.)

3. Parent volunteering at school.

Parents assist teachers, administrators, and children in the classroom and school building by volunteering.
They support their children by attending student performances, sports or other events, or attending workshops or classes for their own learning as parents.

4. Parent involvement in learning activities at home.

Families learn together by talking and listening to each other, playing games, reading, going on trips, visiting museums, telling stories, singing and monitoring homework.
Parents help children connect school learning to family learning and life skills.

5. Parent involvement in school decision-making.

Parents help make decisions in the school through parent groups, PTA's/PTO's, building leadership teams and other local school organizations.
Parents work for school improvement at the district, state, and national level.

6. Parent involvement through community collaborations.

Citizens in community agencies, businesses, service groups, cultural organizations, governmental units, faith communities, and other groups work together with schools in the best interests of children's learning.

Adapted from J. L. Epstein, et al., Partnership-2000 Schools Manual, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, 1996.

Quick Assessment Tool

If you would like to do a quick assessment of your school's efforts in the area of parental involvement, download this 1-page form and complete it, preferably with other members of your school team or parent group. use the results as a guide to further conversation about how to strengthen family engagement in your school.

NH State PIRC offers a vareity of other tools for assessing parent involvement, school climate, and other measures. Please see this page, or call (800) 947-7005.