Making a Difference at Your Child's School
What's the best way to help out at your child's school? Here are some tips on making a contribution of time and effort that really makes a difference.
By Marian Wilde, GreatSchools.net Staff
Read this article in Spanish.

In today's world of higher expectations for school performance, achievement

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gaps and shrinking school budgets, parents may feel bewildered about how they can best help their school. Where do you start? What kind of contribution really matters? Read on to find answers to these questions and to learn tips on how to make a difference at your child's school.

Two Models of Parental Involvement

There are two models of parent involvement: the standard model and the new, according to The Case for Parent Leadership (published by KSA-Plus Communications and The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence). The standard model includes such traditional activities as volunteering in the classroom or on the playground, helping with homework, coaching sports teams, fundraising and, of course, attending PTA meetings.

The standard model is no doubt laudable, but the new model of parental involvement brings something more to the equation: a partnership to improve schools. No longer should parents assume that school officials and teachers are the experts and parents have, at best, only a supportive role in the schools. Today's parents can play a significant role by holding schools accountable, setting high expectations for school facilities and school-level achievement, and helping to create programs that drive schools to improve.

Some Advice from Parent Leaders

The ways in which a parent can become involved are much more varied than they were in the past and many parents have demonstrated that their involvement does make a difference. Many parents have challenged school lunch programs to improve, banned soda and junk food from school vending machines and exposed fraud in the school district office. Others have formed groups of pre-school parents to support their neighborhood school. Still others have created tutoring programs to close an achievement gap within a school's student population.

Crusade for Better School Nutrition

When San Francisco middle school parent Dana Woldow became aware that kids "were making a lunch out of a giant bottle of soda and a giant bag of chips," she decided something had to be done. Unfortunately, her initial efforts were met with resistance from an uncooperative district nutrition

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director. Her solution was to go directly to the superintendent to ask permission for a pilot program at her school banning junk food for half a year. Having secured this permission, she and some like-minded parents put together a committee of teachers, students and parents to move the project forward. Through their efforts they were able to prove that banning sodas and junk food from the vending machines and the à la carte food venue could be done, and that revenues from healthy food sales equal (and in this case were greater than) junk food sales.

Dana advises parent leaders to never give up. "You must be committed," she says. "Most of the obstacles that are put in your path are put there by bureaucrats. When they figure out it's easier to give you what you want rather than continue to fight you, they will give you what you want."

Bridging the Achievement Gap

Edye Deloch-Hughes of Oak Park, Illinois, was aware of an achievement gap at her school. Edye says, "The reality is pervasive not only in inner-city communities, but affluent diverse communities like Oak Park." The questions that sparked her to take action were: "Why were our children scoring poorly on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) compared to their white counterparts? What could we do to help change it?"

Edye met with her principal, Flora Green, and a plan was hatched. They decided to "create a tutoring and mentoring program to address the academic and social challenges of our children, which would help supplement the programs already being executed in the school." Her plan evolved into a resurrected chapter of African American Parents for Purposeful Leadership in Education (A.P.P.L.E.), an organization that has existed since 1987 throughout the elementary and high schools in Oak Park, but had been dormant at her school for five years. Now, she says, "We're proud to say we've tutored close to 60 children. Many have become honor students. Parent tutors now attend teacher workshops sponsored by District 97 to help strengthen their tutoring skills." Edye advises parent leaders to "talk to the principal and see what her needs are, then attract people with a strategy and a goal based on those needs."

The Benefits of Parental Involvement

Studies have connected parental involvement with improved school performance. Involved parents do many things to improve their schools from impacting student behavior through their presence to advocating for school improvement plans. In addition, parents who volunteer in their child's school visibly demonstrate that they care, that they are taking ownership of their child's education. This affects the child, the teachers and the administrators, who then feel both acknowledged and supported.

Research clearly supports the connection between a parent's involvement and their own child's achievement. A 2002 review of the research conducted on this subject (A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family and Community Connections on Student Achievement), asserts that children with parents who are involved in their education maintain higher grades, attend school more regularly, continue in school and demonstrate better behavior. Children are more likely to enjoy school if their families show commitment towards their school and enthusiasm for the learning process.

10 Tips on How to Make a Difference

No matter how you choose to get involved at your school, here are ten tips to guide you in becoming an effective parent leader striving to make a difference at your school:

  • Speak up if you are confused, need information, or see something that seems wrong to you.
  • Identify a specific need or issue that you can work on.
  • Build a relationship with the principal so that you can set goals and expectations with him or her.
  • Don't go it alone. Build consensus. Talk to other parents. Reach out to those who usually don't participate.
  • Learn how to run a meeting.
  • Build your case. Research the issue. This might mean learning the voting history of the school board members, finding out if other schools or districts have attempted something similar to your project, or gathering data from a scientific study.
  • Get to know your school's budget. Know what questions to ask of whom; know what documents you'll need.
  • Learn to use the media strategically to advance your cause.
  • To help prevent blaming and provide a common goal, emphasize that your efforts are focused on improving the school and raising student achievement.
  • Today's parent leader must think about the interests of all the children in their school, not just their own.

Related Books

Henderson, Anne, Bonnie Jacob, Adam Kernan-Schloss and Bev Raimondo. The Case for Parent Leadership. KSA-Plus Communications and The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, 2004.
This spiralbound book is a call to action for parents to get involved in their schools. Contains a scoring guide to help determine if a school is open to parent involvement.
You can order it from the Center for Parent Leadership Web site.

Dougherty, Chrys. Improving Your Child's Education: A Parent's Handbook for Working With Schools. San Antonio, Texas: Omni Publishers, 1997.
Another spiralbound book, this one is based on the premise that if parents are well informed, schools will improve. The first part explains how to evaluate a school; the second part gives specific suggestions for improving schools.

Epstein, Joyce L. et al. School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, 2002.
This research-based book gives detailed information on how parents and educators in elementary, middle and high schools can create partnerships that support student achievement.

Ouchi, William. Making Schools Work: A Revolutionary Plan to Get Your Children the Education They Need. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003.
In this book, the author presents his ideas on how to improve schools by examing and modernizing their management systems.

Henderson, Anne T., and Karen L. Mapp. A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement. Austin, Texas: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 2002.
This study summarizes 51 research studies between 1995 and 2002 on how families and communities affect student learning.
You can order it from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory Web site. It is also available as a 241-page free PDF file .

Updated July 2006

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11/26/2007:
"I have gained valuable information from your website on education. I currently am a paraprofessional in an Atlanta Public School,also a parent of a college student at Devry University and a high school freshman at South West Dekalb High in Decatur Ga. I am currently doing a speech on parents being active in their childs education. I have always been a active participant in both my children's education. This site has proved to be very helpful. keep up the great job! "
05/9/2007:
"Great site, I am newly voted in as co-pto president at my daughters school. I want to do my best in this position, and welcome any advice."
11/14/2006:
"I want to make a difference at my daughter's school and one thing would be to make the kids stop smoking. This is what I see daily when I pick my daughter up after school. These kids stand right there where she stands to wait for me. They also are driving and smoking right there in front of the school where any staff can see them. What can I do?"
11/3/2006:
"I Want to thank this wed site for given me info in the wellness program last year. I Was able to change the lunch time in my kids school, one of my kids was in kinder and since they removed the snack time for them because parents were sending junk food snacks, the principal decided to remove all snack time for them. they decided that because of the wellness program children could bring healthy snack. A Week later parents were told that we counld'nt send our children with any more snacks not even the healthy ones. So I decided to look into the wellnes program in which it is said that children need their snack specially if they are not kids that have breakfast because they are so young and can not be forced to eat so early in the morning and that to be able to do better in school they need to be feed more regularly. I Spoke to the principal and I was told that she coul'nt do anything for me that I needed to speak to the supernintendet. I Called at least 6 schools around! and found out that all of them not only had not removed the healthy snack but also all pre-k and kinder garden kids were the first to eat. Our pre-k and kinder garden kids were the last ones to eat. I Schedule and appt with the supernintendent and started speaking to parents about getting our snack time back for our kids or changing the time of lunch, by the day of my appt with the supenintendent I had collected around 80 signatures which were from all the parents from pre-k and kinder garden, and also had info for all the schools that had their snack and earlier lunch for little ones. after my meeting with him I was told that he would bring it up in the next meeting, he took copies of all the signatures and told me he would tell me their decision. Two days later parentd received a noticed that the lunch time would change for the little one, they would eat first. My daughter was so happy, because she had told me that since I got a doctors note for her to be able! to take her halthy snack to school, other kids would cry beca! use they were hungry and were not able to take theirs. I Would like parent to know that if they know that something in their school is not wright do something about it, if you don't do it for your children who will. thank you for letting me share my experience."
01/4/2005:
"Reading the suggestions given to Parents to help improve and strengthen their childs school, I find myself inspired to do so. One suggestion was to create a tutoring program. I know many students that would greatly benefit from this. Can someone please advise what first steps to take in doing so? Point me in the correct direction and I'll take it from there. Thank you."
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