by Mary Sue Laing, M. Ed., New Skill, Inc. Academic Tutor

As the academic tutor at St. Ambrose my chief goal is to increase the achievement levels of all the students here. Part of that effort will be this weekly "Aim for Success" column.

For about thirty years educational research has been pointing to the importance of parent involvement. My own experience indicates that parent participation in their students' education is more crucial than ever in today's confusing, demanding world. To find out more about the subject I did an Internet search using the keywords "parent involvement". I found two relevant summary articles that I wish to share with you:

One from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory at: http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/3/cu6.html.

The other one from North Central Regional Educational Laboratory at: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/pidata/pi01trev.htm

The article from the Northwest Regional Education Laboratory was Close-Up #6 of the School Improvement Research Series (SIRS) by Kathleen Cotton and Karen Reed Wikelund. In this article the authors summarized the results of forty-one studies of parent involvement and then provided reference information and a brief summary of each of the studies.

The authors stated categorically that: "The research overwhelmingly demonstrates that parent involvement in children's learning is positively related to achievement." (p.3) They specified further on that: "Programs which involve parents in reading with their children, supporting their work on homework assignments, or tutoring them using materials and instructions provided by teachers, show particularly impressive results." (p.3) The authors pointed to gains in students' attitudes and behavior in addition to achievement as a result of the active participation of parents in the educational process. (p.4) The authors mentioned one caveat in providing training activities for parents: "That is, programs with extensive parent training components do not produce higher student achievement than those with only basic training, and they sometimes experience considerable attrition-presumably because their time and effort requirements overtax the willingness of parents to stay involved." (p.3) The authors reviewed a study in which it was found that just providing parents with teaching materials yielded good results and was the most feasible parent involvement plan.

The article from the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory was entitled "Literature Review of School-Family Partnerships" by Judith Caplan, Greg Hall, Stephanie Lubin, and Robin Fleming. (1997) This review stated the advantages of parent involvement at school. The authors summarized an article that pointed to the frequency of teacher-parent contact as an important factor in promoting parent involvement (p.1) These authors also considered the nature of parent involvement with younger children as contrasted with involvement with older students. Parents can serve as effective tutors of young children, but with older students they can help by limiting recreational TV viewing and emphasizing the completion of homework assignments. (pp.2,3)

To make the "Aim for Success" column as interactive as possible I invite both parents and teachers to send questions and comments to: newskill7@msn.com. If I use your ideas in a future column, no identifying information will be included. Thank you in advance for joining me in making a high level of achievement possible for all students.