EDLD 5397 Week 3 - Action Research Plan -Part 1

Title

The Impact of Increasing Parental Involvement and Parental Support on Students’ Academic Achievement

Needs Assessment

Over the course of several years the faculty and staff observed a lack of parental involvement on our campus.  Academically, the campus as a whole is still successful, but there is room for improvement.  According to the research of Epstein (2001) children learn and develop through three overlapping “spheres of influence:” family, school, and community. The campus feels that student achievement will increase in data if there were an increase in parental involvement.  If we get the parents more involved in their child’s education the campus would not only increase academically but socially as well. 

Objectives and Vision of the action research project

To create and maintain a partnership and collaboration with parents to accomplish the following goals:

·         provide every parent with opportunities to contribute to students’ educational and life- long success

·         support parents as primary educators and advocates for their children

·         ensure parents are involved in decision making on the campus.

Review of the Literature and Action Research Strategy

The lack of parental involvement has always been talk among teachers and staff on my campus.  I spoke with my site supervisor about my action research plan and we together decided that my action research project on the positive impact of increasing parental involvement on student achievement would definitely be beneficial for our campus.

Parent involvement has been shown to be an important variable that positively influences children’s education.  Epstein (2001) discusses how children learn and develop through three overlapping “spheres of influence:” family, school, and community. These three spheres must work collaborately to best meet the needs of the children.  Epstein defines six types of involvement based on the relationships between the family, school, and community: parenting skills, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and collaborating with the community. He stresses that all of the six types of involvement need to be included to obtain successful partnerships.

Articulate the Vision

I communicated the vision and goal of my action research project to teachers, parents, and community members during PTA meetings and Spring Open House with a PowerPoint and handouts. I also communicated the vision to the whole staff during one of our monthly faculty meetings. When presenting the program, I stressed the importance of the goal to increase in parental involvement and it would lead to a noticeable increase in student achievement.   I also handed out literature that supported the idea of increasing parental involvement will increase student achievement at all of the above mentioned events.

Manage the organization

I sat down with my site supervisor and discussed the action research plan and what needed to be done to implement, monitor and evaluate my action research project. The action research project will be a collaborative effort between the faculty, parents and myself.  With assistance from my site supervisor and assistant principal, I was able to develop my presentation to the staff regarding my action research project and the need for assistance.    I presented to the faculty the project and outline of the research that was being gathered.  After explaining the staff my intentions and my research plan, responsibilities were handed out and distributed to staff members.  I would be responsible for delivery of content and evaluation of the program. My responsibilities focused on gathering the initial data of score results, strategically pulling data in a timely manner, and analyzing the data results.   I also presented to parents at Open House my goal to increase parental involvement and the expected results.  My responsibilities continued as one of the persons who will continually reach out to parents to stay involved to increase student learning and safety for our students.  The shared duties distributed to staff members were included ensuring teachers, parents, students and the community was given opportunities for volunteering on campus and ways to assist their children at home. A letter outlining the purpose of the research project along with a parent questionnaire was sent home by the students to give to their parents and they had to return them back to their teachers.  Teachers and staff ensured that parents were constantly motivated to participate daily with students and welcomed to contribute in every way possible on the campus. 

Manage Operations

I have constant collaboration with my site supervisor to determine and manage the operations of my research project.  I have teachers keep logs of parental contact and use those to review progress in parental involvement.   In addition, I monitor and review monthly parent meetings sign in sheets and weekly grade level meeting sign in sheets to help monitor the progress of the research plan.  The sign in sheets for our parent volunteers in the front office helps me monitor the progress as well.  These logs and sign-in sheets help me analyze the increase in parental involvement and use the information to correlate the change in data with testing and academic results.

Respond to Community Interest and Needs

 My action research project will serve to meet the needs of all students on the campus. By increasing parental involvement student achievement will increase academically and socially.  Teachers and parents will be allowed to learn about best practice and have time to contribute to students’ academic achievement and becoming responsible and productive citizens.   When parents get involved such as going to school events, helping with homework children’s schooling is benefited by knowledge, skills, and confidence.

Epstein, J. L. & Sheldon, S.B. (2001). Improving student attendance: Effects of family and community involvement. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, DC.

Action Plan from EDLD 5301

Action Planning Template
Goal: Increase Parental Involvement and Support on Campus
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Identify reasons for lack of parental support and involvement	Shanaya Kuykendahl; C. Stewart; Existing Parental involvement committee	1/2012 thru 2/2012	Teacher, staff and parent surveys with prepared interview questions or survey monkey	Is parental involvement supported on campus?  What are the effective ways of communication with parents?
Identify what needs to be implemented to increase level of parental support and involvement	Shanaya Kuykendahl; C. Stewart ; Parental involvement committee	2/2012 thru 3/2012	Teacher, staff and parent surveys; discussion forum at parental involvement committee; CD/Book: Love and Logic	What does the data display from teacher, staff, and parent surveys? How effective is the CD/Book: Love and Logic?
parental support and involvement meetings focusing on parent attendance	Shanaya Kuykendahl; C. Stewart ; Parental involvement committee	3/2012 thru 5/2012	Discussion and implementation of new ideas to enhance parental support	Are there sufficient ways for parents to provide feedback?  Are they effective?  Are there other resources to increase parental involvement?
Assess success of parental support and involvement	Shanaya Kuykendahl; C. Stewart ; Parental involvement committee	3/2012 thru 5/2012	Survey Results, Parental Involvement Meetings Sign-In sheets: campus activities Sign-out sheet; Teacher feedback	Do the parents have a clear understanding of the need for parental involvement on how it relates to the campus’s vision? Do they understand their role in the process and are they supportive? 4. Have the parents’opinions and ideas been validated by stakeholders at the campus level?

EDLD 5333 Week 5 Reflection

During week 5 assignment, I recorded my experience at the Site Based Decision Making meeting where I interviewed a SBDM member and the principal.  Our Site Based Decision Making committee is made up of teachers from every department, administrators, parents and other stakeholders.  The level of the SBDM committee authority and power is often limited by the amount of control that the building principal is willing to grant to the committee.  At our campus, SBDM committee recommendations are often passively-aggressively circumvented.  The campus principal often feels that all of the members of the Site Based Decision Making committee fail to understand or lack the appropriate training in education to appreciate all the needs of the school.   As the campus principal, she often finds herself in the position of needing to guide the SBDM committee in making appropriate decision for the school.  She also feels even though there is a SBDM committee she will ultimately be held accountable for the overall decisions so that is the reason for her need to have some control. 

EDLD 5333 Week 3 and 4 Reflection Part 2

During the week 4 assignment I analyzed my campus AEIS and AYP report.  I identified that our weakest area was the Hispanic subgroup and Economically Disadvantaged.  For the campus action plan I suggested that my campus use after school tutoring, Saturday school and extra professional development to enhance differential instruction.  The strategies suggested for my campus action plan had a $6000 budget.  The cost for after school calculated to $2038 for materials and $1800 total for Saturday school.  The cost for 4 days of professional development was budgeted at $2000 for the school year.   

To monitor the progress of the strategies the Campus Improvement Committee will meet each month to evaluate the progress. The stakeholders involved in this committee include the principal, associate principal, parents, community members, business representative and elected members of teaching staff from the school. THE CIP will analyze the data to provide feedback of the success of after school tutoring, professional development, and spring semester Saturday school tutorials.  We will review the data and the impacts from the strategies as well as the change they have made over the year. 

EDLD 5333 Week 3 and 4 Reflection

It is important for an administrator to make decisions to continually better their campus.  As a campus principal, it is important to lead your staff to successfully improving data by researching current methods that have been proven to work and start to implement them.  Professional developments are always essential to getting your teachers prepared and ready for any changes to assist with campus improvement.

My campus has identified the Hispanic subgroup being the area of weakness.   With my campus action plan I suggested the school provide after-school tutorials for students at risk of failure on Wednesdays and Thursdays 4:30pm -5:30pm at Saturday school 8:00am -12:00pm.  The formal evaluation to test this strategy is to improve students at risk or in danger of failing overall achievement through tests, benchmarks, STAAR or other assessments. Another strategy I suggested for my camps action plan is to include campus wide professional development in differentiated instructional strategies and skills specialists to use campus-based best practices to guide differentiated instruction, planning, training and implementation.  This is to aide teachers in instructional decision making, interpreting and responding to students’ successes or failures, adjusting any areas of weakness to promote student achievement.

EDLD 5333 Week 2 Reflection

 
AYP and AEIS data play a big role in helping schools determine areas of weakness. By looking at the data, principals can analyze trends, relationships, and barriers.  Once the data has been reviewed, campus improvement goals should be created. The goals should follow S.M.A.R.T. - specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.  Principals can analyze the data and focus on areas of weakness and guide the way to campus improvement by conducting meetings that allow staff to participate in the goal creating process and lead them to a better understanding of what needs to happen to ensure improvement.

In this week’s assignment, I reviewed my campus’s AEIS report.  My campus achieved an Academically Acceptable rating for 2011.  My campus is mostly Hispanics and Economically Disadvantaged and these are the two categories that we scored the lowest in as compared to the other subgroups.  As a campus we took at decrease in every category and sub category from 2010 to 2011 causing our rating to drop from Recognized to Academically Acceptable.  On a positive note, my campus received Gold Performance Acknowledgements for Attendance.   

EDLD 5333 Week 1 Reflection

A vision is an image of what a school can and should become. It is deeply embedded in values, hopes and dreams. It should include input and discussion from all of the major stakeholders in the school community (Peterson, 1995). My personal vision of leadership states that to become a leader that motivates and empowers the staff and students to accomplish their goals and focus on student achievement.  Schools should teach all students critical thinking and problem solving.  A good school is one that where the principal, staff, and students work collectively to promote achievement, focus on learning and communicates with the community.  The principal has the responsibility in the development and communication of the shared vision (Jones & Crochet, 2007).  A good principal is one who is an effective leader by promoting a positive learning environment for students and staff, and is sensitive towards the need of faculty, students and community. 

My campus is clear on what is the vision.  Overall the stakeholders all work together to stay focused on the vision regardless of personal feelings.  Obtaining the vision is an ongoing process that our campus has to continually strive to meet. 

 

 Jones, L. & Crochet, F. (2007). The importance of visions for schools and school improvement. Connexions. Retrieved June 8, 2012 from http://cnx.org/content/m15634/1.1/

Peterson, K. (1995). Critical issue: Building a collective vision. Retrieved on June 8, 2012 from http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/leadrshp/le100.htm

EDLD 5326 Week 5 Reflection

From a teacher’s perspective, I would like my students to have parental involvement at home with encouragement, homework, and enrichment activities.  I would like my students to be encouraged at home by their parents to succeed academically as well as to spend time with their children listening to them read and/or experiencing enriching activities together.  I want to involve my students’ parents in their child’s education by keeping them informed with open communication and how they can help their child be successful.  Epstein (1997) addresses the importance of meaningful communication between parents and the school in her Framework of Six Types of Parental Involvement.  Epstein defines communication as connecting schools, families, students, and the community through two-, three-, and multi-way means of communicating about school programs and student progress (Epstein 1997).  I would communicate with parents thru progress reports, report cards, phone calls home, emails and parent connect (grades).  When parents feel they are informed parents are more effective parents in helping their child be successful. 

I do not have any resistance working with parents as partners. In fact, parental involvement is important to each of my student’s success academically and the more that parents are involved the more impact they will have on the academic achievement of the child.  At the beginning of next year I plan to involve parents at the beginning of the year in order to gain support.  More training is needed to teach teachers how to effectively reach out to parents and get them involved in their classrooms as well as helping their children at home to support what is being learned at school.  I plan to have open communications with parents about student achievement and ways that we can continually improve.  It is important to keep the lines of communication open to ensure that every stakeholder is reaching for the same goal of student success. 

Epstein, J.L., Coates, L., Salinas, K.C., Sanders, M.G., & Simon, B.S. (1997).  Epstein’s six types of involvement. In School, family, and community partnerships:  Your handbook for action.  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Corwin Press.

EDLD 5326 - Week 3 and 4 Reflection

I did not have the opportunity to particpate in the conference but I did have a chance to read the details of the conference and reflect.

Parental involvement has been deemed important to students’ academic achievement. Multiple researchers and institutions have proved this concept repeatedly. Almost any type of parental involvement will result in increased student achievement.

The parental involvement committee creates activities and events that will motivate and encourage students to stay in school. It was also to get parents to be involved in their students’ education. According to Davenport (2010), students who have parents that are involved in their students’ education are more likely to: 

·         Earn higher grades and test scores, and enroll in higher-level program

·         Be prompted, pass their classes and earn credits

·         Attend school regularly

·         Have better social skills, show improved behavior and adapt well to school

·         Graduate and go to post-secondary education (p.3).

Research also suggests that when parents are involved in their children’ education, students have higher grades and test scores which leads to higher graduation rates. It also shows that students are more motivated to attend school; thus increasing school attendance rate (Michigan Department of Education, 2001, p.1).

EDLD 5326: Week 3 Assignment, Part 2: Establishing an Evaluation Process

Establishing positive school-parent relationships and an improved school culture is very difficult to measure quantitatively.  Success of the parental involvement committee assistance with discipline will be determined by the results of parent surveys, the results of a faculty surveys, analyzing discipline reports, and examination of assessment data results.

All stakeholders will be invited to participate and join the parental involvement committee.  The goals of the partnership will include a 50 % Increase in parental involvement, a 50 % decrease in discipline referrals, and an increase will be seen in student achievement in the classroom and on assessments. 

The data will be used to determine the need of the parental involvement committee and its purpose to help control discipline.  The data reports such as the discipline reports will give details on what specific discipline issues are repetitious and still need to be address.  The results of the surveys will provide the level of effectiveness of the implementations brought about by parental involvement committee.  The assessment data with be compared to the discipline reports to assess provide feedback on whether the implementations of the committee are helpful.  The effectiveness displayed in the results will help determine the future direction of the parental involvement committee on addressing discipline concerns.   

EDLD 5326: Project Timeline

Task	Who?	What?	When?
Present proposal to create parental involvement committee to building principal	Administration, Team Leaders and Department Heads	Gather data and research as to projected results and benefits of committee;	May 2012
Creation of subcommittee (Ad -hoc) involving teachers and community members (i.e. core parents and business partners)	Administration, Team Leaders and Department Heads	Brainstorm ideas of how to get parents involved and address disciple;  Preview discipline programs (i.e. PBIS and Love and Logic)	August 2012
Invitations to join the parental involvement committee will be sent home with every student in a flyer	Subcommittee (Ad-hoc)	Create and send flyers home inviting parents to join parental involvement committee	August 2012
Call parents to invite them to the meetings and explain the goal of the parental involvement committee to decrease discipline issues.	Subcommittee (Ad-hoc)	Call parents to invite to join parental involvement committee that did not respond to flyers	September 2012
Needs assessment to operationalize Discipline concerns from each stakeholders per	Subcommittee (Ad-hoc)	Develop needs assessment instrument and distribute it to stakeholders	November 2012
Establish positive Parent, student, school relationships	Administration, Teachers, Subcommittee (Ad-hoc), and Parental Involvement Committee	Develop parent, student, teacher activities and protocol such as parent teacher communications, Open House, NCLB Parent Consultations, PTO meetings, Literacy Night, Math Night, Fall Festival, etc…	August 2012-May 2013

EDLD 5326: SWOT Analysis of Parental Involvement Committee

Aspect	Parent Program	Community Program
Strengths: Positive features of the partnership. What are its resources and capabilities on which to potentially build?	The Reed Academy Parental Involvement Committee meet to plan fundraisers, involve parents, discuss concerns, plan upcoming events, and solicit community involvement.	Brings businesses and community leaders into schools to develop awareness and understanding about the challenges facing public schools. It also gives the schools an opportunity to spotlight achievements and create ongoing partnerships.
Weaknesses: Sometimes a weakness is the absence of a strength, such as high cost. Other times, a weakness could be the flip side of a strength. Huge involvement can be a strength, but it might be a weakness if you are trying to gain consensus around a change.	One weakness is that a small number of parents are members of the committee with little to no teacher representation.  Another weakness is the lack of communication to get more people involved.	Reed Academy being a school that is mostly Hispanic has limited resources in providing students with bilingual communication, cultural understanding and career exploration locally.
Opportunities: Potential opportunities for growth or becoming stronger. Examples include the involvement of new people, unexpected funding, and new possibilities within an existing partnership.	Potential growth is found in continuing outreach efforts to parents through personal invitations.  Invitations to participate in activities such as Open House and Parent/Teacher/Student conferences scheduled at least once a year are opportunities for growth in parent involvement and to communicate needs for help with school events and projects.	Reaching out to more parents and stakeholders that are not involved.
Threats: People or factors that threaten the program. Examples include anticipated downsizing in a partner and the “graduation” of a strong, informal community leader.	Lack of funding due to the budget cuts in education that all school districts are facing can be considered a threat.  In addition, the lack of parents involved causes some concern because the lack of parental support has proven to hurt student achievement.  So therefore, more parents need to get involved to keep the parent involvement committee active and effective.	The biggest threats to the Parental Involvement Committee are the follow through of those community members, businesses, parents, and teachers who sign up to participate and the possibility of low attendance at planned events.  All of the planned events depend on the participation as well as the dependability of others.  This is always a concern when dealing with people.  Also, if community businesses and members invest their time in planned events and programs that have little turnout they are less likely to participate again.  So, measures should be taken to ensure adequate advertisement of events and the attendance of families.