Improving Children's Academic Performance through Parent Engagement: Effects of the Your Family, Your Neighborhood Intervention

Background and Purpose:  Your Family, Your Neighborhood (YFYN) is a dual generation intervention designed to support parents in low-income neighborhoods in their efforts to provide children with an effective and supportive educational environment within a supportive and engaged community. YFYN consists of 10 two-hour curriculum sessions delivered to caregivers and their children living in low-income neighborhoods with a high concentration of subsidized housing. YFYN is designed to support parents while they become increasingly engaged in their children’s education and community. The YFYN conceptual framework asserts that increased engagement in schools and the community, along with a nurtured family bond, lead to improvements in academic success. This abstract provides results from the YFYN intervention on parental involvement and academic achievement.

Methods:  Using an embedded quasi-experimental design, YFYN was administered to seven cohorts of families living in two neighborhoods in Denver, CO. A total of 38 families completed the ten-week intervention and 21 families provided comparison group data. Independent samples t-tests were conducted to compare the change scores on parent involvement and academic outcomes between treatment and comparison groups. Interviews were also conducted with treatment participants post-intervention. The data were analyzed using a phenomenological approach with both first and second cycle coding to examine the participant’s experiences, context, setting and summary of the study’s major themes.

Results:  Participating families identified primarily as Latina/o. The average age of parents was 38-years-old and the average age of the focal child was 9-years-old. On average, parents reported a high school degree or less as their highest level of education completed. Results indicated parents participating in YFYN experienced greater increases in four items representing parent involvement (p<.05). Findings also showed marginally significant improvement in parent’s report of their child’s progress in school (p<.10). Qualitative interviews were used to examine participant experiences of YFYN and the impact of parent involvement on their children. Parents reported YFYN helped build their confidence and find their voice, increase their parent/child communication, and build a new social support system. Participants also shared by participating in YFYN they supported their child’s improvement in their education by creating established homework routines, volunteering at their child’s school, and valuing their role as an important aspect of their child’s education.

Conclusions and Implications:  This study offers promising findings regarding the effects of the YFYN intervention on parent involvement and the academic success for participating children. These results support a family-based approach to engage parents in low-income and subsidized housing communities in their children’s education. Results suggest that an intervention that uses a social ecological approach to address multiple systems simultaneously shows promise in improving parent involvement and academic achievement in a space where families may feel most comfortable, their neighborhood.