Parental Engagement in Middle and High School

Ed Redalen, Iowa Parent Resource Information Center, www.iowaparents.org

At the 2010 SAI Annual Conference, Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Nancy Hill provided participants with new research on how parents can help their secondary school children stay focused academically and participate in the events afforded by their school.

Dr. Hill discussed her research findings on the middle school and the adolescent, a time for many that is

    • marked by decline in achievement levels and engagement in school;

    • marked by increase in behavioral problems; and

    • at the same time, long-term implications for students’ academic and behavioral choices increase.

“To be effective,” says Hill, a leading scholar on parenting and adolescent achievement, “parents’ strategies for staying involved in their children’s education need to keep pace with the changing nature of family-school relations as the school environment gets bigger and more bureaucratic.”

Structural differences in middle school and high school that impact family involvement include

    •students having multiple teachers;

    •teachers having a larger number of students;

    •class course decisions putting students on different “tracks”;

    •schools are larger and more complex;

    •less guidance in middle school and high school on how families can be involved; and

    •academic material is increasingly complex.

Hill, et al, studied the progress students made from seventh through 11th grade, assessing the impact of parental involvement on achievement, behavior, goals to complete high school and goals to pursue education beyond high school.

During Hill’s SAI presentation, she explained an unexpected outcome. While all parents who were involved in their children’s education in seventh grade had higher goals and aspirations as 11th graders, the impact on grades and behavior was much stronger for college-educated parents. Non-college-educated parents did instill goals for future aspirations but her findings did not show student improvement in achievement and behavior. “For students whose parents had college degrees, their parents’ involvement in the seventh grade set forth a chain of reactions that improved their school behavior from teachers’ perspectives in the eighth grade, which in turn increased their grades and test scores in the ninth grade,” Hill reported. “And grades and test scores in the ninth grade mapped out beautifully to higher achievement in 11th grade and to occupational and educational goals.”

Hill explained that the most important engagement parents can have in their children’s learning in middle school/high school is academic socialization. She stated that all parents—college-educated and non-college-educated—can impact their children’s future significantly by:

    •communicating parental expectations for education and its value or utility,

    •linking schoolwork to current events,

    •fostering educational and occupational aspirations,

    •discussing learning strategies with children, and

    •making preparations and plans for the future.

Dr. Karen Mapp, author of Beyond the Bake Sale and A New Wave of Evidence, has stated: “Many parents do not know the ‘code’ in middle school and high school.” They are unsure of course selections, how to advocate for their children and how to navigate the system of the school. Hill’s research supports this conclusion.

Parents need more information about their children’s strengths, curriculum content and sequence, signing up for extra curricular events, and academic enrichment options in school and out of school.

Additionally, Dr. Hill stated that schools need to:

    •make the pathway from middle school courses to college transparent to families;

    •help families understand how and have programs available to get kids back on the pathway, if needed;

    •help teens identify goals and help families with information that will assist them in helping their teens understand the utility of education to reach their goals;

    •help parents understand how they can help their teens apply what they are learning in school to events in the real world;

    •help parents learn how to affirm and support teens as they demonstrate increasing levels of responsibility and sound decision making; and

    •help parents learn how to use their own mistakes and success as examples for their teens to learn the benefits of education.

Contrary to popular belief, teens want parental help!