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We previously posted about the importance of parent and community engagement in schools. When parents are actively involved in their children’s education, students are more positive about learning, graduate from high school and enroll in college at higher rates, and are less likely to use alcohol and drugs or get involved in gangs. While family engagement is not the entire answer to closing the achievement gap or boosting performance of failing schools, it is an essential part of the answer, especially in turnaround schools where community buy-in is crucial. However, the most successful parent engagement initiatives promote a sense of shared responsibility and power between families and schools. This type of family-school partnership can be a challenge to create and maintain. Family engagement should be better supported by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, commonly known as No Child Left Behind, which Congress will probably reauthorize in late 2010 or early 2011.

Because today’s accountability requires an emphasis on test scores, principals may feel inhibited from focusing energy on anything other than academic achievement, and may be too near-sighted to predict or prioritize the long-term benefits of of partnerships. It’s no secret that school resources are repeatedly being shaved down to fund little more than the bare essentials, which usually does not include childcare for parents who are unable to attend school events without it or translators to ensure that non-English speakers feel welcome at meetings. As teachers are asked to pick up some of the slack by adding more lunch duties or administrative roles to their workload, they are left with less time to reach out to parents.

For their part, parents may resist engagement out of fear that they will not be listened to or taken seriously. Parents who are not native English speakers frequently lack the confidence and language skills to initiate dialogue with the school, and may have very different cultural perceptions of the degree to which parents’ contributions are appropriate or welcome within the school. Parents who came through the American school system themselves but did not have a positive experience doing so are not often eager to get involved in their children’s school. Parents may also be unable to attend events or meetings at the school because of their work schedules or lack of childcare.

Parents of adolescents and teens are frequently unaware of the importance of their continued involvement in their students’ education. Furthermore, many parents do not know how they can most effectively help their students in upper grades, especially if they had an abbreviated formal education themselves. Teaching parents how they can get involved–empowering them to be supporters and teachers–is a crucial step to successful parental engagement.

Though No Child Left Behind, the current iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, has an entire section on parental engagement, the definition is not concrete enough to be useful and the guidelines are too vague to be enforced. Without clear guidance on what is expected or how to implement it, the default for many district and school leaders is to relegate parental involvement to traditional minor roles, such as chaperoning field trips and volunteering to make copies for teachers. While many districts and schools formally comply with the ESEA requirements for creating policies to include parents in decision-making and increase home-school communication, many of the plans never leave the paper–nor will they unless ESEA includes specific directives for meaningful parental involvement and has some teeth on the issue.

Parents need schools to take the leas in creating the structures conducive to meaningful family engagement, but many school and district leaders fail to value parents as assets and do not see the link between parental involvement and student achievement. Their lack of enthusiasm leaves a void in the leadership necessary to create and implement successful parental engagement programs. When Congress reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act later this year, it should make the standards for parental engagement more robust. Congress should add specific language making expectations of parental engagement clear to schools and districts and giving state educational agencies more power to enforce those expectations.