Judson Hixson, senior program consultant at the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, discusses the need for parents to make a meaningful difference through school involvement. A text version is available. Each type of involvement is valuable, and each has an impact on students, teachers, and the parents themselves. Joyce L. Epstein, director of the Center on Families, Communities, Schools, and Children's Learning at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, talks about a framework of six types of parent involvement. A text version is available.
Some parents readily volunteer their time for the schools.
Other parents are reluctant or unable to participate. Although getting parents involved in their children's schools is a great challenge for educators, research shows that educators can do a great deal to promote greater parent involvement. In their national study of 2,317 inner-city elementary and middle school students, the best predictor of parent involvement was what the school did to promote it. School attitudes and actions were more important than the parents' income, educational level, race, or previous school-volunteering experience in predicting whether the parent would be involved in the school. School attitudes and actions toward parent involvement are largely influenced by administrators and teachers.