Parent Involvement and Engagement

Increasing Academic Achievement Through Involvement and Engagement.

The stats don’t lie . Both parent involvement and engagement are important to academic achievement and emotional well being of students in America’s schools. Parent involvement are the activities that parents do to support their child’s learning.This could be supervising homework, attending a parent teacher conference, or a parent reading with a child. On the other hand, parent engagement includes activities that are more proactive and collaborative with teachers and school staff. For example, if a parent volunteers for a school committee, reads to a class. or works with educators to plan curriculum.

Students who have parents that support them academically are 81% more likely to graduate from high school than those that don’t. Also, students who parents discuss class courses with them are 44% greater to attend post-secondary education. In contrast, students whose parent who don’t provide academic supervision or support have a 34% greater likelihood of dropping out of school. 95% of students with actively involved parents have better emotional and physical health. And students with involved parents on average have a 98% school attendance rate.

As evidenced by the stats above, parent support and supervision in a student’s education results in High attendance rates, Emotional and Physical Health, Higher graduation rates, and greater enrollment in post secondary education . In contrast, students whose parents don’t supervise their student’s learning or provide support have a 34 percent higher dropout rate.

Parent involvement and engagement result in positive outcomes in the areas of attendance, academic, and emotional and physical wellbeing. Parent involvement activities include parents reading with their children, supervising and helping with homework, volunteering in a classroom, and attend parent teacher conferences. Some parent engagement activities include two-way communication between the school community and parents, School Family Fun Nights. Parent Workshops on academic and emotional and physical wellbeing, and being involved in the Parent Teacher Association. Encouraging parent involvement in their child’s education and engaging them in their child’s school community will pay greater dividends for schools who successfully do so.