The Parent-Teacher Partnership: How to Work Together for Student Achievement

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mandel, Scott M.

The parent-teacher partnership : how to work together for student achievement / Scott Mandel.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-56976-217-2

ISBN-10: 1-56976-217-1

1. Home and school. 2. Parent-teacher relationships. 3. Academic achievement. I. Title.

LC225.M317 2007

371.19’2—dc22

2007014311

All rights reserved. The purchase of this book entitles the individual teacher to reproduce the forms for use in the classroom. The reproduction of any part for an entire school or school system or for commercial use is strictly prohibited. No form of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or recorded without written permission from the publisher.

Cover and interior design: Rattray Design

© 2007 by Scott Mandel

All rights reserved

Published by Zephyr Press

An imprint of Chicago Review Press,

Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN-13: 978-1-56976-217-2

ISBN-10: 1-56976-217-1

Printed in the United States of America

5  4  3  2  1

This book is dedicated to my children, Aliya and Asher, who grew up to be wonderful young adults without my killing them.

This book is also dedicated to my parents, Bernard and Audrey, who also allowed my siblings and me to do the same.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Communicating

2 Parenting

3 Student Learning

4 Volunteering

5 School Decision Making and Advocacy

6 Collaborating with Community

7 Respect

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

The production of any book involves the work of many people. First, I want to thank the wonderful people at Zephyr Press and its parent company, Chicago Review Press. Working with them has always been an absolute pleasure! I want to thank my editor, Michelle Schoob, for her brilliant job with my words, and Jerome Pohlen, senior editor, for his assistance in formulating the ideas for this book, and his continuous inspiration and support (along with our annual lunch every summer). I also want to thank Scott Rattray for his beautiful design work on the cover and the interior.

A number of excellent educators and parents in the Los Angeles Unified School District lent their invaluable feedback, ideas, and suggestions to these pages. These people reviewed the material from a variety of different perspectives in the attempt to make this book as valuable as possible to all teachers, administrators, and parents. They are, in alphabetical order: Kathy Anderson, Charlotte Cox, Carl Dugas, Jeanette Hernandez, Robert Krell, Kathie Marshall, and Linda Phillips.

I especially want to thank two awesome educators, Melodie Bitter and Dr. Robert Schuck, who reviewed and provided feedback for each chapter and section throughout the lengthy development and writing process.

Finally, I want to thank the hundreds of teachers and parents who took the time to share their ideas by completing my Parent-Teacher Partnership: How to Work Together for Student Achievement questionnaire. Their practical, relevant ideas were critical in writing this book, which is meant for the classroom teacher and parent.

Introduction

Implications of No Child Left Behind

One of the lesser known requirements of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001, better known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), is the section pertaining to the School-Parent Compact. This component requires schools to actively include parents in all levels of development and implementation of programs. It mandates that parents become informed and empowered decision makers in the education of their children (Gomez and Greenough 2002). Increased school-parent communication and improved parent support for student achievement are also required. Unfortunately, as with numerous aspects of NCLB, there is no blueprint or model for how to achieve this level of participation.

This new emphasis on parent participation is not a bad thing. While the media has stressed the negative aspects of NCLB, such as the provision allowing students to transfer from low-performing schools, many schools have successfully increased student achievement through positive approaches toward parent involvement, such as the creation of formal partnerships with parents and using a collaborative team model (Ferguson 2005).

The Link Between Parent Involvement and Academic Achievement

Only 15 to 20 percent of the child’s waking hours are spent in the school. Therefore, the majority of the child’s school-age life comes under the eyes and supervision of the parent, not the teacher. To not include the parent in the child’s education ignores the tremendous influence parents hold over the child.

There has been a substantial amount of research on the positive correlation between parents’ involvement in their child’s education and the subsequent academic achievement of the student (Baker and Soden 1998; Carlson 1991; Epstein 2001; Floyd 1998). The more parents are meaningfully involved in their child’s education, the greater achievement demonstrated by the student.

The key to this process is meaningful involvement. Getting parents meaningfully involved in the school’s educational program does not mean bragging to them at an open house or having Mom or Dad sit and passively listen to an assessment of the child at a parent conference. Rather, meaningful involvement includes:

Parents and school staff taking an active interest in the well-being of each child, and school staff members taking an interest in the well-being of each child’s family as an extension of the child;

Respecting and valuing families’ diverse contributions, and integrating them into the life of the school;

Encouraging parents to assume multiple roles as supporters, ambassadors, teachers, monitors, advocates, and decision makers;

Not confining meaningful family involvement to activities that take place in the school building.

(Tellin’ Stories Project Action Research Group 2000)

It’s All About Attitude

Unfortunately, you can’t force teachers and parents to cooperate with each other. Too often the other side is seen as the enemy rather than as a partner. Here are examples of the differences in perspective.

From a classroom teacher’s perspective:

A passive parent is often considered one who doesn’t care about the child’s education.

An active parent is seen as an aggressive troublemaker.

From a parent’s perspective:

A teacher’s negative actions are often viewed as a result of not liking my child.

A teacher who does not excuse the child from something is giving no consideration to the child’s out-of-school life.

Both perspectives are incorrect and too often stereotypical. Both sides need to work together for a common goal—the student’s increased academic achievement.

Schools, and the individual teachers on the staff, need to enter into individual partnerships with the parents. Epstein suggests,

In a caring school community, participants work continually to improve the nature and effects of partnerships. Although the interactions of educators, parents, students, and community members will not always be smooth or successful, partnership programs establish a base of respect and trust on which to build. Good partnerships withstand questions, conflicts, debates, and disagreements; provide structures and processes to solve problems; and are maintained—even strengthened—after differences have been resolved. Without this firm base, disagreements and problems that are sure to arise about schools and students will be harder to solve.

(Epstein 1995, 703)

The central theme of this book focuses on how individual teachers can create positive partnerships with parents, and how individual parents can create positive partnerships with teachers. The majority of the material is classroom centered versus school centered: it concentrates on the day-to-day partnership that should exist between each classroom teacher and each student’s parent. More general issues of involving parents in the overall school program are handled beautifully in other books, such as the one written by the National PTA, Building Successful Partnerships (2000). These two types of involvement are essential to a successful teacher-parent-school partnership.

Partnerships are a two-way street; one will not succeed without the other. Parents and teachers must partner to improve achievement for all students.

The Model for This Book

The members of a partnership each take separate but equally important roles. The teacher-parent relationship should be viewed in the same way as a doctor-patient relationship. In the latter,

The doctor is an educated professional, specializing in maintaining the patient’s health;

The doctor provides information for the patient to maintain a normal healthy life;

The patient comes to the doctor for advice and direction when a problem arises;

A patient who does not listen to the doctor’s advice may experience a less-than-healthy life, to varying degrees;

A doctor who does not listen to the patient and does not respect the patient’s views and background loses that patient’s support, and can eventually lose that patient as a client.

Similarly, in a teacher-parent relationship:

The teacher is an educated professional, specializing in maintaining the student’s academic health;

The teacher provides information for the parent to maintain a healthy academic life for the student;

The parent comes to the teacher for advice and direction when a problem arises;

A parent who does not listen to the teacher’s advice may experience problems with the student’s academic achievement, to varying degrees;

A teacher who does not listen to the parent and does not respect the parent’s views and background loses that parent’s support, and in turn can hurt the student’s academic achievement.

The material in this book follows this analogy. The teacher is the educated professional working in partnership with the parent with the goal of increasing student academic achievement. The two partners must develop a mutual respect for each other and build on the strengths that each brings to the partnership. The teacher’s strength is the educational knowledge developed through years of university schooling and practical teaching experience. The parent’s strength is the knowledge of the student’s personality, strengths, and weaknesses, as well as the student’s home life.

By acknowledging and building on both partners’ strengths, this partnership can become truly successful.

The Content and Organization of the Book

The chapters of this book are organized based on the six standards of the National Standards for School-Family-Community Partnership developed by the National PTA in cooperation with the National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education (NCPIE):

Standard I: Communicating

Standard II: Parenting

Standard III: Student Learning

Standard IV: Volunteering

Standard V: School Decision Making and Advocacy

Standard VI: Collaborating with Community

(National PTA 1998)

Also included is a chapter on the topic of respect, which is critical to fostering a better understanding and partnership between teachers and parents.

The key to this book is its practicality and usability. The concepts center on what the individual classroom teacher and each student’s parent can do to create a working, productive partnership. The material is not meant as a basis for a town hall meeting where different parties discuss in generalities how the teacher-parent-school relationship should look. Rather, the ideas presented are meant to be implemented directly into the school, the classroom, and the student’s home life on a daily basis.

To make this book as practical and relevant as possible, opinions were gathered from many everyday practitioners—teachers, parents, and administrators—from around the country. The questionnaire distributed to these practitioners included the following open-ended questions:

Communication: Describe what you feel teacher-parent communication should be like throughout the school year. Look at it from the perspective of both the teacher and the parent.

Parenting: What types of parenting help/suggestions can the teacher offer to help parents with their parenting abilities?

Student Learning: How can teachers help parents participate more in their students’ learning?

Volunteering: What are the most helpful/beneficial ways in which parents can assist the teacher through volunteering of time and/or resources?

School Decision Making and Advocacy: How can parents best be involved in school decision making and advocacy?

Collaborating with the Community: How can teachers best collaborate with the school community?

Respect: Please answer as a teacher or parent. What advice/knowledge/insights can you share that will