School and Home Partnership: How To Improve Achievement

Many parents are frustrated with their schools believing that more could and should be done to improve achievement. School teachers and administrators are often frustrated with parents whom they think are not preparing their children as well as they could and should and the schools are therefore left to do more to control problems and educate. Both are right.

In my view, most schools have great challenges and where most teachers, for instance, are highly committed and skillful people there are some who are not. Many teachers have very large classes and once they develop teaching methods, the very hard work of teaching is made easier by repeating what has been developed and used in past years. Even if all teachers were highly competent they would still be dealing with more children less well prepared to learn and achieve. Many parents are working two jobs, both parents are working hard, many are single parents who often have neither enough time nor energy to follow up on school homework and/or teach successful skills. Many parents feel their involvement with schools is a public relations task, not worthwhile, or they are embarrassed because their children represent failure or some other problem. As a result of all these we do not have the type of system that best promotes children’s achievement. What to do?

We have tried changing the way parents are involved with their schools and we have seen remarkable success as measured by children’s achievement. Instead of seeing the partnership as a connection between home and school we have defined it as a partnership between teacher and parents who work together on behalf of the students in that very class. By giving teachers and parents a way to communicate about what each does, they can communicate about their children’s success rather than their problems. Parents appear to be more motivated because it is clear to them their effort can result in improved results for their children now, in the class they are in. We also gave parents and teachers a set of activities which we consider “participation strategies,” designed to help children succeed in both places. This idea came from the notion that often children are well intended they just don’t know what to do and if they did they would be less of a problem and more obedient and successful. Except in some rare cases we have found that to be true for most kids. I invite anyone to see a demonstration of “achievement synchrony,” by going to teachr.org to see a documentary film of this process.

You will see that parents can learn how to organize their families to ensure children have high level achievement motivation rather than assume this motivation is natural and will appear when they enter school. Teachers can learn how to help students be much more excited about learning and achieving. The best motivation for teachers are highly motivated students.

We are introducing this into schools and providing the materials for teachers at no cost to the school. If you know of someone, or a school who might be interested, please write and let me know.