Annotated Bibliography

Strategies to Get Parents More Involved in the

Writing Process: An Annotated Bibliography

References

Department of Education, W. C., & WestEd, S. A. (2007). Engaging parents in education: Lessons from five parental information and resource centers. US Department of Education, Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

The U.S. Department of Education conducted a study on five federally funded Parental Information and Resource Centers across the nation and successful strategies implemented in school districts to increase parental involvement as set forth through NCLB requirements to close the achievement gap between students. Their strategies include provided training for parents and parent-school liaisons to understand their rights as set forth by NCLB and what they can do to be active in their child’s education, thinking outside of the box for ways to connect with hard to reach parents, providing training for both parents and educators on how they can collaborate more for student achievement, and create a larger community base by working with other organizations that have similar goals to prevent overlapping and wider supports. The strategies conducted in this 2007 report seem more geared towards administrators and superintendents rather than school teachers to implement programs for parental involvement. It also does not include information that gauges success of student achievement due to such efforts.

Epstein, J. L. & Salinas, K.C. (2004). Partnering with families and communities. Educational Leadership, 61 (8), 12-18.

Joyce L Epstein and Karen Clark Salinas, researchers at John Hopkins University, report that school, family, and community partnerships improve schools, strengthen families, and invigorate community support, and increase student achievement and success. Their studies looked at hundreds of schools in the Network of Partnership Schools at Johns Hopkins University. The article did not provide results of their study, however provided models or strategies different schools used to get schools, parents, and community members involved with the learning process, which is specific to my research. It would be interesting to find information on student success rates at these schools that implemented such programs. This article was written in May 2004, for teachers and administrators, encouraging partnerships with parents and the community.

Hill, N. E., & Taylor, L. C. (2004). Parental school involvement and children's academic achievement. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(4), 161-164. doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00298

Nancy Hill and Lorraine Taylor, researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina, outline how parental involvement impact student achievement via increasing parent social capital and social control; how ethnic, socioeconomic status, and self perception affect parental involvement; and how school commitment to reach out effect parental involvement. Hill and Taylor also raise questions on the current research that has been conducted, citing the lack of common definitions between schools; the many types of parental involvement; how some studies show only moderate correlation between parental involvement and student achievement; teacher biases; and lack of information for secondary levels. Hill and Taylor suggest each school must create programs for parental involvement based on the type of community that they work in and might want to mimic the types of supports that are ideal in home at the school level. Hill and Taylor’s article was written in 2004 and was intended for teachers, policy makers, and other researchers in order to look at why parental involvement is important and what factors affect the extent of how involved parents become in their children’s education.

Marschall, M. (2006). Parent involvement and educational outcomes for latino students. Review of Policy Research, 23(5), 1053-1076. doi:10.1111/j.1541-1338.2006.00249

Melissa Marschall, a researcher at Rice University, reports that schools that implemented successful strategies for parental involvement had a large impact on Latino students’ successful achievement in schools. Marschall study was conducted in Chicago schools. Marchall published her study in 2006 for school administrators, teachers, parents, and policy makers to encourage schools to decentralize their board of education and have more local entities, in particular Latinos, help govern schools. Her studies found that when there was more Latino representation in local school councils, there was an increase in parental involvement at school levels that created better partnerships between parents and educators. When Latino parents became involved in school, it resulted in increases in math and reading scores and when teachers became more aware of their community through parental involvement there were even greater gains in math and reading scores.

Rosenzweig, C. (2001). A Meta-Analysis of Parenting and School Success: The Role of Parents in Promoting Students' Academic Performance. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Dr. Charlotte Rosenzweig, a researcher at Hofstra University, through her meta-analysis of available studies and literature, report that a combination of twenty different parenting practices can account for one quarter of student achievement and a combination of eight different parenting practices can account for a third of student failure. Rosenzweig’s study narrowed student success to seven parenting practices that accounted for the greatest impact on student achievement, which included an authoritative parenting style, educational aspirations and expectations, and support. Interestingly, Rosenzweig only found two types of parental involvement that was closely linked to student achievement: “attending volunteer activities and participation in school governance.” Therefore parental involvement programs should be more geared to creating positive parenting practices at home in lieu of asking parents to be punitive with unmotivated or unruly students. Rosenzweig’s research was published in 2001 and was intended for parents, teachers, and school policy makers in order to pinpoint what parental practices yield student success or failure.