From the FortWayne.com site comes an article entitled, "Parents influence student success: Schools’ ISTEP scores tend to rise with close family support," to which I can only say: Duh.
...in the end, what happens in the classroom is only part of what will determine a student’s success. Much of how successful a child’s academic career is is determined by how involved their parents are in their education, educators say.
“A family’s attitude about school is directly related to a child’s success in school,” said Barbara Roberts, who works with the preschool programs at Fort Wayne Community Schools’ Title I schools. Title I schools receive federal money to help support students living in poverty.
“All the studies have shown that children whose parents are involved in their education in some way, they do better in school,” Roberts said.
Please tell me this is not actually news to any parents, or teachers, out there.
...being involved in the PTA isn’t all there is to being involved in a child’s education, said Joyce Epstein, director of the Center on School, Family and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She founded the National Network of Partnership Schools to support schools in strengthening parent involvement.
“In the old days if you just did a study of youngsters in school, you analyzed were the parents involved; lo and behold, the students who were most successful had the parents who were involved in school,” Epstein said.
Schools thought if they could get their PTA groups larger, it would boost their students’ success, but there is more to helping their children than volunteering, Epstein said. Parents also need to know how to help their children learn at home.
Again: duh. Perhaps this is only being reported as "news" because we've reached the point where parents figure the teachers will do ALL the work, and the parent needs only attend a PTA conference or two. If that much.
I don't mean to discredit Epstein's work - she sounds like she's doing a bang-up job. It's just rather sad that it needs to be done.
...Schools with high poverty rates face the challenges of less educated parents who may not feel comfortable in a school building or may not have the time to volunteer because they are working long hours.
Epstein said those schools can use social activities to make the parents feel comfortable as a stepping stone to bringing parents into the school for academic support programs.
“We don’t want people to stop having a good newsletter or picnics,” she said. “(Further) activities may focus on families linking with children at home or on homework. Some things may be that families are gaining information through seminars or workshops or a session on how to support your children in testing. It becomes a much more comprehensive part of school work in general.”
If she's successfully explaining to parents the importance of helping their kids prepare for testing, she's doing the work of the angels.
Posted by kswygert at September 20, 2004 12:47 PM