action term paper

MAKING EXPLICIT MOVES IN FAMILY CONTACT

Making Explicit Moves in Family Contact to Positively Affect Student Achievement:

Questioning a Common Maxim and Its Implications

Evin Shinn

Seattle Pacific University

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First, a common scene in the hallways of Anyschool in Anytown, USA:

ADMINISTRATOR: I notice that you wrote a referral for LeShawna.

TEACHER: Well, she called me a [expletive deleted].

ADMINISTRATOR: Okay. Did you call home first?

When some teachers hear a conversation like this, it can be disheartening to them – as if the

administrator told the teacher that they don’t know what they are doing. Yet, it is a

conversation heard around schools (including my own). What’s worse is when teachers have a

conversation like this one:

TEACHER: Hi, this is Johnny’s teacher. I wanted to talk to you about how Johnny is doing

in the class. Is it a good time to speak?

PARENT: Yeah, sure.

This is on the assumption that Johnny’s parents speak English. Sometimes, educators

will make phone calls to families and the teachers find themselves frustrated that they cannot

speak the home language and they wish that communication were not such a barrier. Having

English-speaking families are often not always the case in schools with a low socioeconomic

status population. With the U.S. Census projecting that non-White Hispanics will become the

majority by 2042, schools with high English Language Learner populations are already seeing

that growth. Six hundred thousand more ELL students are enrolled in U.S. schools now as

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opposed to in the 2002-03 school year (Aud, Wilkinson-Flicker, Kristapovich, Rathbun, Wang &

Zhang, 2013).

TEACHER: Well, it seems that Johnny is currently failing my class. Unfortunately, we

have about two weeks left of the semester. I’m hoping that you could talk to him and

encourage him to come in for help.

PARENT: Isn’t that your job?

When teachers have discouraging conversations like this with parents, it discourages them from

including parents in their educational program. I have called or contacted one parent this year

because of my own biases of my particular population that they aren’t actively involved in their

child’s education. This isn’t true, I understand, but caring in a low SES population looks

particularly different when one is talking about grades, family participation, and behavior.

Teachers need to find new ways to engage with parents in particularly robust ways

without the contact being at a high-cost (emotionally, time-wise, or financially) so that it would

still engage parents and families in such a way that would raise student achievement in the

classroom and manage student behavior outside of it. I know that parent engagement is

important to student success, but how important is it to success in school? What are some

exemplars of what it could look like at a secondary level as more and more of my parents find

themselves less involved with their child’s schooling – especially when compared to how

involved they were at the beginning of the school year?

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When teachers speak of family engagement at the school building, it seems that

teachers, staff, and administration all have the same thing in mind: that the families will do this,

volunteer for that, or come to whatever – particularly done in the elementary school setting. At

the secondary level, there is a prevailing assertion that families are not involved at all in their

child’s education (Nakawaga, 2000). It is in this narrative that teachers find themselves in right

now – one that pushes parents out of the classroom.

Researchers have indicated that there is a difference between family engagement and

family involvement (Ferlazzo, 2011). If we look at the differences, a partnership requires that

one must be engaged with, not done to. When we involve families, it means “to enfold,

envelop, entangle, [or] include (“Involve”, 2013).” To involve parents creates a sense of

obligation on the part of the schools. It is in this obligation that one sees these families less like

partners and more like clients (Ferlazzo, 2011). When teachers look at parents as partners and

engage them in a dialogue about what is happening with their student, it is no longer about

trying to get them to do something but rather, it is about us achieving something great for the

children within our care.

While it is widely agreed that family engagement is positively affects student achievement

(Dervarics & O’Brien, 2010; Baquedano-Lopez, Alexander & Hernandez, 2013; as cited by

Peterson, Rubie-Davies, Elley-Brown, Widdowson, Dixon, & Irving, 2014, Wilson, 2009), it does

seem that not much work has been done when it comes to what strategies work the best with a

particular population of students. There are few peer-reviewed systems that were in place in at

the classroom level that worked well there. There are probably as many numerous publications

about different ways to involve parents as there are diet books on the shelves in January, so

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this gap obviously will have to be filled with anecdotal, qualitative evidence from schools

around the Seattle area as well as around the nation that have success with family engagement

at a school level.

While there are various theories of the ways that parents and schools should engage with

one another, it does seem that there are a few that particularly dominate the conversation. As

educators, we look parents in particularly roles. First, educators look at parents as the first

teachers of that child’s life (Baquedano-Lopez et al., 2013). However, with this in mind,

educators have the first opportunity to look at parents as a deficit in their child’s learning. After

all, if the parents aren’t well educated or if they don’t know grammatically correct English, how

are they supposed to teach their students to be adequately ready for the WAKids assessment?

This trend continues as teachers don’t have the means to deal with parents who don’t hold

White middle class values. “Equity Issues in Parental and Community Involvement in Schools:

What Teacher Educators Need to Know” continues to point out that this perspective comes

from education policies were created in such a way that it left educators to create a paradigm

of “parents of problems” (Baquedano-Lopez et al., pg. 5) that need to be fixed versus being

partners in the educational process.

Epstein’s (1987) theory of the home-school connection is often a gold standard when

speaking of creating a sustainable home-school connection. The theory is six-fold as the author

reveals how schools can help create care from both student’s shelters and the building in which

they reside for eight or so hours a day.

Type I – Parenting. Schools help teach parents about the growth of their child.

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Type II – Communicating. Schools create a two-way communication loop, so as to help

children succeed at home and at school.

Type III – Volunteering. By donating their time, energy, and resources to the school,

parents and families can feel more engaged with the day-to-day routines and decisions

at the site.

Type IV – Learning at Home. Teachers provide homework to provide reinforcement of

lessons learned in the classroom. Parents are asked to help strengthen this learning by

helping students engage in these activities in the home setting.

Type V – Decision Making. Families are asked to be a part of the schoolwide rituals,

rules, and routines that ensure that the site is running smoothly. This work could include

collaborating over the School Improvement Plan to helping decide schedules for

students the following year.

Type VI – Collaborating with the Community. Schools work with programs around the

neighborhood to help families and students get resources that are needed for student

success.

Although this typology is theoretically sound, often in practice, it founders, due to budget

deficits or increased demand on student test scores (Sheldon, pg. 40, 2008).

There is also an expectation that parents are expected to participate in school in a very

particular way. Often times, parental involvement is not seen by teachers because there is a

different way that these families are choosing to engage because they are not part of the

dominant culture (Baquedano-Lopez et al.). This work can be seen as formal involvement and

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informal involvement. When one thinks of formal involvement, they are the activities that

teachers can see: going to Student-Led Conferences, attending the Parent-Teacher Association

meeting, going to athletic games, et cetera. However, there is an alternative way for parents to

engage in the school culture -- which is through informal engagement. This informal

involvement includes the passing of norms, values, and beliefs of the importance of education,

particularly among Latino families (LeFerve & Shaw, 2012). If research says that almost any kind

of family engagement helps (Ferlazzo), why is it that teachers still think that “families fail to

educate [their own] children” (Baquedano-Lopez et al.)?

It is crucial that the parental involvement problem is fixed because there is so much at stake

with students. The federal government thought it was so important in a student’s academic

success that they put it in law (NCLB, 2001; ESEA, 2004). For African American students parental

monitoring, that is the student’s family is watching their behavior, strongly affects their

academic achievement (Wilson, 2009). It is a delicate balance of independence and supervision,

the researcher notes: too much monitoring and it adversely affects the student, too little and

the student doesn’t learn the skills of what it means to be independent, academically or

otherwise (Wilson, pg. 6). In a Southwest Educational Development Laboratory study in 2002,

researchers noted that a strong home-school connection can lead to “higher grade point

averages and test scores, better attendance, enrollment in more challenging courses, better

social skills, and improved behavior at home and at school (as cited by Ferlazzo, pg. 1).” What

isn’t addressed is specifically does the perfect home-classroom connection look like at the

secondary level (6-12) class.

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If the goal is to increase student success, then it is imperative to figure out why students do

the things they do - in fact, why families do the things they do and don’t do the things they

don’t do. Pink (Drive, 2009) explains how individuals are motivated: with rewards, they

motivate us do more of something, while punishments make us do less of it. If this is the case,

then why do students not turn in their homework towards the middle of the year, yet they

turned in their syllabus signed at the beginning of the year? Is this an issue of homework, or an

issue of the ailing home-school relationship? Pink also claims that rewards potentially give us

more of what we don’t want (Pink, 2009). What would Daniel Pink say about a school that gives

SOAR tickets to students who bring their parents to student-led conferences? What are the

implications of such rewarding of students and families?

For such a quick project, I hope to answer three key questions that teachers ask on a regular

basis regarding parent contact: (1) How does an increase in perceived family involvement

increase low achieving students grades (as defined by having a D or a failing grade in Language

Arts)? By using a family survey of current perceptions, it will measure how often parents are

looking at their children’s grades, how often families feel they know what happens in class, as

well as how they would rate their own involvement. I’ll also be calling, e-mailing, and texting

parents by which I collected their numbers and such on the first days of school and I will keep a

log of interactions via the various media. Finally, I hope that by comparing their Language Arts

grades from this time last semester (that is the fifth week) to the same time this semester, it

would yield insight into what students, I would continue to focus on if this project were to

continue. I also seek to understand (2) what happens to a student’s grade in my class when I

communicate more regularly with a student’s family as measured by their class grade for my

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individual courses (Language Arts and AVID) from this time last semester compared to this

semester. Finally, I want to make broader implications about (3) what family communication

could do for a student’s academic life as a whole, so I will look at their overall grades for 1st

Semester and contrast them to this semester after communicating with every family.

Table 1. Data Collection Calendar

With respect to the time constraints of this particular course, it is difficult to garner as

much research and family communication as one would like - however, all parent contact is

good parent contact, especially if it leads to student achievement in its varied forms. Therefore,

it was important to start with the students that are in the class and where they currently are as

academics. You cannot measure growth without a starting value. By compiling their reports

from the electronic school information system, I was able to create a table that would allow me

to measure family communication in its varied forms during the two weeks of intentionality.

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Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday16

PreliminaryData Entry

17

PreliminaryData Entry

(cont’d)

18

Preliminary Data Entry

(cont’d)

19

1st Parent Letter & Survey

20

FamilyE-Mails &

Verify Grades

21Family Text

Messages & Verify Grades (cont’d)

22

10 Family Phone Calls to Advisory

Students

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Students

24

Advisory Grade Checks

25

Advisory Grade Checks

Follow-Up

26

Student Journaling of Family

Involvem’t

27

Data Analysis

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Data Analysis

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Students


By creating the table (see Appendix A), it made the process of collecting the data much

easier to keep track of how and when the family was contacted and what the context of that

particular contact was. Once again, one needed know what to improve upon in the work that is

happening. I knew that I needed help in how to become better at parent contact – so I asked

parents how to improve via a letter home (see Appendix B). Knowing that my students

completion rate of homework was less than 5 percent (that is, about one student for every 20

turned homework in), I didn’t have much hope in getting back an important document for an

action research project, therefore, I offered candy for every student who brought back the

parent survey the very next day. Although receiving 18 out of eighty students is only twenty-

two percent, it is the best return on an assignment involving parental involvement yet in my

classroom.

Continuing with increasing various forms of family involvement, I got in contact with the

person who runs the district website and with their help, created a site where families can

access homework on any smart device (iPad, smart phone, tablet). The hour-long website

creation training could lead to more student access to homework, classwork, and missing

assignments. It also creates another data point from which I can assess the strength of the

home-school connection, even though it must be stated that some of the families within the

school do not have reliable access to the internet, let alone a computer. However, when I

received the parent surveys back, seventeen out of eighteen (94%) said that setting up a class

website would be at least ‘somewhat helpful.’ Thus, my website was created. The next step

would be to publicize it.

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At the beginning of the year, e-mails were sent out to families by me, which told the

parents about upcoming events, tests, and assignments happening at the school. In fact, it

began a trend within the school to send these e-mails out to parents. As the school year got on,

it became harder and harder to stay engaged in the weekly e-mail correspondence because of

time constraints upon me as a teacher. This is not an excuse. When 94% of families say that

they want something from a teacher, it’s important that the teacher delivers that particular

good or service as a public servant. The weekly e-mail started immediately and within the next

twenty-four hours, a parent had followed up with questions about their student. Two days

later, another parent sent a new cell phone number of how she could be reached as well as a

new e-mail address. This was the quick parent engagement that was wanted that I thought

would drive an increase in student achievement.

At the beginning of my project, I created a scenario about why a teacher may not want

to call home and talk to a family about concerns that they have about their student. Upon

further introspection and beginning to call homes, it was an intense fear of mine that had never

come to fruition and yet, I was still afraid of Johnny’s parent. A deep seeded fear spread from

stories like the one at the beginning of this narrative moved this action research in a new

direction. It’s important to talk to families about their child’s progress, but why is it that families

aren’t being called? A new research question was created.

Using SurveyMonkey, teachers were polled about how often they contact families –

both by using the phone and using other media. It was in this polling that something else was

discovered: time. It was not the fear of getting into an argument with a parent, as previously

thought. It was the fact that teachers simply do not have enough time to do the parent

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engagement work that was needed. Of the teachers polled, more than one-third of teachers

call parents less than once a month and yet those same teachers feel that they should be calling

more than once a month or once a week. Teachers feel that they cannot complete the services

that they want give to families.

35%

15%20%

20%

10%

Question 2: How often do you call families?Less than once a month Once a month More than once a monthOnce a week More than once a week Daily

Figure 2. Survey Results Regarding Self-Reported Actual Parent Contact

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15%

30%

30%

20%

5%

Question 3: How often do you feel you should call families?

Less than once a month Once a month More than once a monthOnce a week More than once a week Daily

Figure 3. Survey Results Regarding Self-Expectations Around Parent Contact

This juxtaposition of what teachers want and what actually happens became my own

experience. Of the forty parents that were to be called, I actually was able to call seven. It was

simply a time issue. Student achievement with various students did go up, however. The

advisory students who raised their grades for Language Arts were not the same families that I

had called. Instead, the students that I personally had contact with were the students who

turned in the late homework. These were also the same students who asked when they could

come in retake their standards-based assessment. It was not the fact that I had called their

parents – because I didn’t. It was because I had passed out progress reports and made personal

contact with each student in order to encourage them to get their grades higher.

None of the students who were called at home came in for extra help or retook a test. It

simply was not a priority for them. The students that I made personal contact with, took

initiative and made a specific appointment with (e.g. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at lunch, so we can

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raise your grade’) were the students that came in, got help, and were able to raise their grade

or at the very least, continue to improve their understanding, so as they could improve their

Language Arts grade later in the quarter.

Of the teachers polled during the study, over half of the respondents (Table 4) stated

something about the lack of time that they had in order to contact families about a student’s

progress in a class. This inability for teachers to find time stops them from doing the parent

engagement that School Improvement Plans, Indistar, or Title I schools are mandated to do in

order to receive funding.

Question 5: If you do not feel you call families enough, what stops you?

ReasonNumber of Times Mentioned From

Respondents

Other Commitments, Busy, Lack of Time 12

Parents Unavailable, Voicemails Often 3

Wrong Numbers Often 2

Language Barriers 2

No Results, Lack of Parental Response 2

E-Mail More Effective 1

Lack of Teacher Organization 1

Table 4. Self-Reported Survey Results Regarding Why Teachers Don’t Call

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Although it is beneficial to talk to parents about classroom instruction, research (Tucker

& Stronge, 2005; Education Week, 2011; Mortimore & Sammons, 1987) and this study reminds

educators that it is the teacher and classroom instruction that raises student achievement. It

was not the fact that I called parents and that in and of itself compelled students to move

forward in their learning. It was the ‘personal touch’ of talking to them individually that

encouraged them to try again. Students who raised their grades were some of the same

students with whom I had personal contact. It is important to clear up the fact that all students

who received personal contact from the teacher did not raise their grade. However, about

twenty-five percent of the advisory students who had me as their advisor made an effort to

raise their grade in my Language Arts class.

The research shift has compelled me to personally reach every student with some sense

of their overall standing in the class more often. Even anecdotally, when students look over the

shoulder of a teacher and see what grade they have, they have the immediate feedback that

they could use to change their current academic standing. Teachers sometimes grade while in

class, so it is not a stretch to tell students what they received on a test after it was just

assessed. Students need numerous reminders. Although students want to do well, it does take

reminders (at least at the middle school level within the domain of this study) in order to get

them to come in and retake the standards-based assessment or complete the homework

required in order to raise their grade.

Recently, a large suburban district revisited their mission statement to include that they

would know every student by name, strength, and need. In order to do this work effectively,

teachers must know what a student’s name and academic strengths and needs are at that very

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moment. To know this, an educator must have a way to keep track of a student’s progress with

relative certainty. This tracking allows teachers a way to talk with their students and make the

personal touch that is required in order to enable students to raise their grades – at least for

the secondary level.

Teaching at the middle school level, particularly eighth grade, is a delicate balance of

student independence and parental involvement. During this study, some of the parents

seemed concerned and yet, there was no change in the student’s grade or overall concern

about her or his academic progress and yet, some families were not contacted at all and that

student suddenly became concerned when the student was confronted with their current

standings in the class. Therefore, it is difficult to say whether or not parental input was actually

influential in the student’s inquiry in their achievement within the classroom. However, if one

follows current research, it makes sense that immediate feedback helps students succeed.

According to Marzano (2011), teachers need to “provide feedback appropriately in time to

meet students’ needs (pg. 11).” What is the appropriate balance of independent student

awareness of grades and the need for parental involvement? This is a research area that would

benefit numerous teachers particularly as at the public secondary school level as the number of

students per teacher increases two to four times what it was in elementary school and teachers

time per student decreases dramatically.

The conclusions drawn from this action research also encourage teachers to become

more intentional about what they know about their students in real time. The creation of

classroom websites allows students to turn work in digitally and can give the immediate

feedback that students need in order to improve their own achievement. There is a variety of

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way that these technologies would enable teachers to reach parents more effectively and more

quickly.

Parent interaction will continue to be a critical and growing component of how schools

develop, in addition to being a requirement in the various grants and funds that the federal

government supplies every year. As educational technology becomes an added resource for

buildings to use, there will be increasing demand for every stakeholder within the educational

community to know and learn what it means to be include families in a multimedia sense. This

work means that we must be aware of the resources that are available for use. Based on this

research, it is clear that there are numerous resources of which teachers are not making use.

Looking ahead, it is important to understand that even with a very quick timeline and

yet, the data still provided valuable conclusions from which educators and systems can

implement to the school to family communications systems. For example, a vast majority of

teachers (including myself) polled said that time was an issue when it came to calling families

and letting parents know what was going on with their child academically and holistically. There

are a number of ways that some schools have solved this difficulty. Some schools do ‘phone

blasters,’ instead of an actual staff meeting. During this time, teachers are expected to call

certain number of households and provide certain information about the child’s educational

progress. Of course, this requires accountability on the part of the teachers. To who will the call

logs go? When administrators are already occupied with new teacher evaluations and analyzing

the new Common Core State Standards, it may not possible that building leadership can

withstand another demand on their job. RIGHT HERE YOU COULD RE-STATE THE CATEGORY OF

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CHANGE THAT THIS INDICATES. IF YOU COULD DESCRIBE ALL OF THESE CHANGES AS HAVING

SOMETHING INC OMMON, WHAT WOULD THEY BE?

Teachers also must be trained on the various technologies available when discussing

about communication with families (including those don’t speak English as their primary

language at home). In the study, teachers indicated that e-mail was easier and that they often

get voicemails when parents are called. While in a perfect world without the monetary

constraints on a school system, it would make sense that every building would have translation

on site which would make it easier to bridge the communication gap which exists when districts

only send e-mails or family letters in two languages: English and Spanish. It is imperative that in

order to close the communication gap, educators at every level must invest resources (both

time and money) to interact with parents with more than just a automated call at home telling

families that their child was absent from school. From using Google Translate to investing in site

translators, e-mail and multimedia can be fully used to touch base and give our most needy

families the kind of support that our English-speaking families receive on a regular basis.

The various demands on educators workload continue to increase as state and federal

accountability increases as well. While important that teachers and the system works to

increase family engagement, there is no substitute for the personal touch. Home visits, hugs,

and humorous conversations over coffee or tea beat e-mails, robocalls, and report card every

time.

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References

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