Parental Involvement And Student Achievement

I have been working in the Legacy Foundation for over ten years and during that time we have had the remarkable opportunity to test a variety of educational programs designed to develop character and improve student achievement. We have worked with some progressive school principals and wonderful, committed teachers. As a result of tests in actual educational settings we added things here and there, made a few changes in what we presented, and improved bits and pieces as we went along. We also had to worry about ease of implementing whatever we developed so it would not be a hardship on any school or group. I am very grateful for the opportunity.

We have developed what we believe will be a truly remarkable asset. It is a system we call “achievement synchrony,” which combines a teaching approach for teachers with parental involvement. Both teacher and parents use a simple structure to organize family and classroom for achievement. The idea behind this is that high achieving children typically come from homes where there is a match between home and school and because of this match they better understand how to participate more successfully at school. When this match does not take place children leave home and have more difficulty participating successfully in school. Often their lack of achievement is not due to a lack of ability but the result of “distance,” between home and school. When we create this synchrony, children work harder, get their homework done more often, and at higher standards. In addition, students feel accountable, the teacher has fewer conduct problems to deal with, and parents have better relationships with their children, have an easier time motivating children to do their family chores, and with less conflict. We have tested this with dozens of schools and hundreds of families.

Now we are prepared to make an unusual offer to schools. With the great need to improve educational opportunities for our children we have thought to do so with added money and greater technological involvement. Both these may help and may even be necessary. But, we have demonstrated that it is the people to people relationships that appear to be fundamental and when achievement synchrony exists between teacher, students, parents, and peers we see a remarkable rise in achievement of a variety of kinds. We also see better behaved children in school and at home.

We are now prepared to make this offer. The Legacy Foundation will pay for the expenses for one class if the school will pay expenses for one additional class. If at least two teachers use this approach in the same school, each has an ally who can provide support and be used to bounce ideas off of. In this way the school can actually see the program work over time and will eventually see how useful it will become for the entire school. Finally a school has a way to raise the level of preparation children have when they come to school. This appears to significantly impact a school’s ability to teach and educate. Schools who use “achievement synchrony,” see a 5% to 7% percent improvement after the first year and often more improvement in subsequent years. If you wish to see how this will work in your school please contact me via the comments for this blog. You can see a documentary of this program titled, “Closing the Distance,” on teachr.org free website we use to help parents and teachers communicate. It is also available for view on this website, leadingfamilies.com by clicking on the button titled, “close the distance.” Our goal is to improve education on behalf of children and to do that I believe we need to reduce the distance between people who work with children. I am very enthusiastic about this because it has shown that it will improve conditions for minority children and children whose backgrounds do not prepare them well to take advantage of education which can set a more positive foundation for their lives.

We can do better for our children and we can make it possible to give many greater opportunities than we have in the past. It is worth our time and attention.