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Evaluating Parent
Involvement
Sharing the Dream Parent Questionnaire
The Metropolitan Nashville Public Education Foundation
(MNPEF) worked with the Family-School Partnership Lab
at Vanderbilt University to evaluate the work of the
local standards initiative, called Sharing the Dream:
Involving Parents in Standards-Based Reform. MNPEF is
promoting high academic achievement and readiness for
college by training parent leaders to lead monthly programs
for parents of high school students who are a part of
Project GRAD, a national college preparation program.
To learn how to improve the training model for parents
of middle school and high school students, MNPEF adapted
a parent involvement questionnaire developed by researchers
at the Family-School Partnership Lab. The parent questionnaire
was used with parents of the students who are mostly
African-American, many of whom have not attended college,
and some of whom did not complete high school.
The Sharing
the Dream Parent Questionnaire is based on Hoover-Dempsey
Sandler model of parent involvement in education. The
model outlines three basic types of questions parents
consider about their involvement:
- Do I believe I should be responsible for my child's
success? (What parents believe about their role, the
school's role, and the role of a school/parent partnership
in their child's education)
- Does my involvement make a difference? (Whether parents
believe they will have an effect on their children's
school success)
- Is my involvement needed and welcome? (How parents
perceive the ways schools invite and/or demand their
involvement)
For instance when the survey is used with a specific
group of parents, the results might show that the parents
who do not perceive that teachers are inviting their
involvement are also the ones that are generally uninvolved
in their children's education. To improve involvement,
then, the schools would need to become better about genuinely
inviting parents in. If the results show that parents
are not feeling as if they are supposed to be involved,
then those parents may need to be coached so that they
see why their involvement is critical for their child's
success.
The Sharing the Dream Parent Questionnaire is a modification
of a similar questionnaire for parents of elementary
and middle school children, which was developed for the
Teachers Involving Parents (TIP) in-service teacher education
program. (Download the PDF version of the TIP
questionnaire and the paper by
Hoover-Dempsey, K.V., Walker, J.M., Jones, K.P., & Reed,
R.P., upon which the questionnaire is based.)
For more information about the survey or the Hoover-Dempsey
Sandler model of parent involvement, contact Kathleen
Jones at Vanderbilt University. |
