Helping Children Succeed: The Impact of Parents' School-Related Beliefs on Parent Involvement

Background and Purpose: Parent involvement greatly increases children’s chances for academic success. This relationship is very important as academic success if a predictor of several important life outcomes for children. However, despite the importance of parent involvement, little is known about the factors influencing it. Although previous research has demonstrated that parent beliefs about being welcomed in their children’s school impacted parent beliefs about the extent to which they should be involved in their children’s school, not much research has examined the impact of parents’ school-related beliefs. Therefore, this paper examines the impact of parent beliefs about how welcoming their children’s school was on parent involvement in their children’s school. In this study, we expected that parents who viewed their children’s school as welcoming to parents will be more likely to be involved in the school. We also expected that higher parent involvement would be related to higher academic achievement in children.

Methods: Survey data was collected from 1452 seventh grade children and their parents from several schools in Prince Georges County, Maryland. Parent beliefs of a welcoming school environment were measured using a four-item scale, which asked about parent perceptions of the availability and receptiveness of school staff. Parents reported their level of involvement using a four-item scale. Here parents indicated whether, in the last year, they had been involved in their children’s school and held helped their children in any school related activities. Children’s academic achievement was measured using 7^th grade GPA from school records. Data were analyzed using hierarchical linear regression in SPSS. Analyzes controlled for family income, parent highest level of education and children’s gender.

Findings: Analyzes revealed that parents’ beliefs of a welcoming school environment predicted their involvement in their children’s school. Specifically, parents who perceived a welcoming school environment reported being more involved in their children’s schooling (t(964)= 2.3, p<.05).  In addition, parent involvement predicted children’s academic achievement (t(933)= 3.7, p<.01). These findings remained significant even after controlling for family income, parent highest level of education and children’s gender and race.

Conclusion and Implications: These findings have implications for students, parents and schools. Specifically, they highlight the fact that: 1) parent beliefs about their children’s school are important to their behavior and 2) schools need to work to not only encourage parents to be involved but also to make sure that parents feel welcomed. By providing a welcoming environment for parents, which includes staff and teachers being available to parents, schools may increase parent activity and by extension improve student achievement.