Creating and Sustaining Family Friendly Schools
I. Introduction
This Guidebook is intended to help charter school developers and operators in their efforts to promote family and community involvement in charter schools. We begin with a discussion of involving families and community in the development and start-up phase. Next there is a section, the longest in the Guidebook, on involving families in schools. Third, we consider strategies for communicating with parents and community about the school. Fourth is a discussion of improving responsiveness to stakeholders, including means of soliciting input. We conclude with a list of further resources, many available online. It is the authors' hope that charter school developers and operators will use this book to increase student achievement, improve student behaviors, increase the richness of the curriculum and create solid parent support for the schools.
There is clear and compelling evidence of the importance of parental actions on children's achievement in school. In their New Generation of Evidence study, education researchers Anne Henderson and Nancy Berla found that:
- First, the family makes critical contributions to student achievement, from earliest childhood through high school.
- Second, when parents are involved at school, not just at home, children do better in school and they stay in school longer.
- Third, when parents are involved at school, their children go to better schools (when parents are involved in different roles throughout the school, the performance of all children in the school tends to improve).
- Fourth, children do best when their parents are enabled to play four key roles in their children's learning: teachers, supporters, advocates, and decision-makers.
- Fifth, the more the relationship between family and school approaches a comprehensive, well-planned partnership, the higher the student achievement.
- Sixth, families, schools, and community organizations all contribute to student achievement; the best results come when all three work together (Henderson and Berla, 1995, pp. 14-16).
Family involvement expert Joyce Epstein has noted that one of the best indicators of parent involvement is what a school does to promote it. Furthermore, charter schools that are in the development phase have the opportunity to consult with parents and local groups in designing and creating their programs.
A recent publication of the National Parent Teacher Association states that "the most accurate predictors of student achievement in school are not family income or social status, but the extent to which a student's family is able to 1) create a home environment that encourages learning; 2) communicate high, yet reasonable expectations for the child's achievement and future career; and 3) become involved in the child's education at school and in the community." Student behavior also tends to improve when a student's family is actively involved in school (National PTA, 2000, pp. 11-12).
This same book also reports that more needs to be done to promote parent involvement. A 1998 PTA survey of parents found: "only 29% of parents...felt teachers and principals had a lot of good ideas about how to involve parents, and only 38% felt that they actually had a lot of input in their children's education." A 1999 Public Agenda poll found that 98% of teachers and 87% parents agree that "it is always the same group of parents who are involved in school activities" (Public Agenda, 1999, p. 38, available online at
http://www.publicagenda.org/specials/parent/parent.htm).
The authors believe charter schools hold great promise for reforming the American system of public education, and that part of their promise rests on their ability to involve parents and the community in constructive ways. Some charter schools are started by parents, and many involve parents extensively in their everyday operations. As schools of choice, charter schools have to win and maintain families' approval in order to keep students enrolled. This Guidebook will help charter developers and operators develop family-friendly charter schools.
To produce this report, the authors reviewed recent literature on parent involvement in education, reviewed materials produced by charter school assistance organizations, and contacted staff at various charter schools around the country. Most of the examples come from Minnesota because these are the schools with which the authors are most familiar, but we believe similar things are happening elsewhere. The schools we contacted outside Minnesota were identified by those states' charter assistance organization staff as schools that were notably successful in involving parents and/or community. For specific schools, we include contact information (addresses and Internet sites when available) the first time a school is mentioned.