The Importance Of Family Participation In Education

It has been proven by psychologists that education and learning first begins at home through the family. The author’s of this text, Hawley and Nieto, touched ground on this fact while they discussed the racial differences on education for families. They went on to express that like any other family for instance, culturally diverse families value education as well. All families share a similar positive outlook for their children, especially to break the poverty cycle. This idea brought about appeals for value that everyone is equal and deserves fair education so that professional educators may notice that all students want to prosper. However, most ethnic families feel ultimately unwelcome and out of place when it comes to their child’s education, which led to less involvement in the classroom. It is seen here that the school is supposed to be a place

As educators, we spend a great amount of time looking for different ways to implementing curriculum, meeting school and district deadlines, assessing, planning, and grading. But do we ever take time to really get to know our students and their families in a personal level? Without event knowing, we hold different biases towards students and their parents; we expect them to have certain knowledge about their community and culture depending on their demographics and socioeconomic status. We completely ignore the fact that many parents can make positive contributions to our classrooms. In the book Funds of Knowledge edited by Norma Gonzalez, Luis C. Moll, and Cathy Amanti, we can see how many families have abundant knowledge that the schools/teachers do not know about and therefore do not use in order to teach academic skills.

“Excellent education and an excellent environment are two hallmarks of our state. How we treat our environment is connected to so many other opportunities in Maine”

The growth of the ELL student population has increased in all states over the last 20 years. However, ELL parents have difficulty obtaining information from their child's school or attempting to participate in school events. These barriers, which often include poor understanding of English, unfamiliarity with the school system, and differences in cultural norms and cultural capital, may limit parental communication and school participation. However, research shows that parents' participation in school events has a positive effect on improving student achievement and school attendance rate, regardless of socioeconomic background or ethnicity. It is, therefore, important to find practical ways to improve ELL parent involvement and student achievement.

Forming connections with schools helps parents promote their students’ achievement since it allows them to access valuable resources. However, racially diverse parents from low socioeconomic backgrounds exhibit less involvement in their children’s schools because of things such as language and cultural barriers (Lee & Bowen, 2006). Since more than 80% of students attending urban public schools are Black or Hispanic, these schools tend to have less parental involvement (Lee & Bowen,

Kara Lysy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education spoke to a group of educators on behalf of the Harvard University Achievement Gap Initiative suggesting that in the past she has made visits to the home of her students twice a year (fall and spring). Lysy’s hope was to open up lines of communication between the parent and teacher, learn more about the family dynamics, and to offer suggestions to the family in helping their children achieve success. Lysy states that, “family ties are important to success and assist in literacy and writing” (AGI Conference, 2011, Lysy). As a parent this sounds fantastic, yet in the real world it is not possible. Jade Beltran, Special Education teacher at Kohlberg Elementary in El Paso, Texas states, “this sounds like an easy fix but in actuality it is not. Teachers in the El Paso Independent School District are prohibited from visiting children at their homes” (Beltran, 2015, Interview). Beltran illustrated the achievement gap in comparison to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs by saying, “there is a prevalence of Hispanic students whose parents are working multiple low paying jobs just to put food on the table, education is not a priority for them” (Beltran, 2015,

Parental Involvement has been a focus of education for decades. In the 1960’s, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) was introduced and focused on emphasizing the involvement of parents in their child’s education (Lunts 2003). Around the same time, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, advocated for the importance of family involvement in the education of children with disabilities (Lunts 2003). More recently, the Federally mandated government policy, Section 1118, Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted, which specifically requires public school districts to work collaboratively with parents living in the community to author a family involvement policy in order to receive Title I funding from the

The purpose of this Family and Community Engagement Assessment is to analyze my school’s current family and community engagement efforts as related to students with disabilities. When considering the NCLB subgroups, it is important to note that my school does not have any students that receive free lunch or would be considered economically disadvantaged. However, we have a considerably large, growing population of students that are categorized as disabled. 20% of our students have a disability, and this is a frequently discussed topic in my district, due to the number getting larger in recent years, implying that this target group of students are struggling academically at higher and higher rates (State of New Jersey Department of Education, 2014). Although the definition of a disabled student can be broad, the majority of our disabled students are those that have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) due to learning disabilities and receive related special education services of some sort. Our student learning problem involves very large class sizes in special education, including students with a wide range of ability levels.

Parents have special knowledge about their child that school personnel might be unaware of. This aspect of parental involvement is especially important when applying special education services for a child with disabilities (Smith et al., 2005). That being said, parents need to understand that while they know a lot about their child overall, the school knows a lot about their child in an academic setting. It is very important to have open lines of communication and mutual respect for each other; to be able to bring together these different aspects of the child to create a successful intervention allowing complete access to education.

It is important to close the achievement gap between the overall population of students at HHS and those with learning disabilities. Parent involvement plays an important role in filling this gap and in maintaining a successful KAH program. The importance of identifying the areas of difficulty and applying the appropriate evidence based strategies for addressing parent involvement is thoroughly demonstrated. Adopting evidence based practices for parent involvement is also required in order to maintain the success of school programs. According to the Herndon High School data the parent involvement from ESOL and other minority parents is very low.

The purpose of this survey study is to investigate parental involvement of students with disabilities. Parents with special needs children deal with many different factors when it comes to parent involvement in a school setting. The Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s (2005) Model of Parent Involvement, as well as, family structure, race/ethnicity, and family socioeconomic status (SES) were used to gather data. Parents felt that they were involved in their child’s

Parental involvement has been an issue in the United States since before the turn of the nineteenth century. Perhaps one of the most well-known organizations in support of parental involvement in schools was created in 1897. The National Congress of Mothers set up a statement of purposes that created the basis for their organization. The purposes included: “the education of parents for child development; the coöperation of home and school; the promotion of the kindergarten movement; the securing of legislation for neglected and dependent children; and the education of young people for parenthood,” (Butterworth, 7). The Congress of Mothers evolved in 1908 into the National

Learning experience 1: Given a unit from the regular classroom education curriculum, the student will select appropriate resources based on a self-selected topic.

Parental involvement in education is a vital essential for creating a cooperative environment for the student to thrive and succeed in. When a student knows that he or she is receiving support both inside and outside the school, the chances of that child becoming responsible for and active in their education are more likely. I know that there can be difficulties including parents for many reasons. Such parents may be too busy, uninterested or just feel helpless. However, as an educator, I will still have an obligation to reach out to these parents and assist them.

Parent Involvement has been an issue in the United States since before the turn of the