Examining a Brief Measure of Parent Involvement in Children’s Education

Identifying Meaningful Indicators of Parent Engagement in Early Learning for Low-Income, Urban Families

“…Indicators of the quality of communication and relationships between parents and teachers/schools are reflected in many parent engagement frameworks (e.g., Calabrese Barton et al, 2004; Epstein, 1995) and measures (e.g., Fantuzzo et al, 2000; Lau, 2013; National Parent Teacher Association, n.d.) and are a type of capital likely to be influenced by parent’s own educational histories. For many low-income parents and parents of color, their own history of being failed by the school system may negatively impact their trust of teachers and schools and their motivation to engage in their children’s education (Ishimaru & Takahashi, 2017; Luet, 2017; Weiss et al, 2018).…”

“…These definitions and codes were used to generate a list of 106 potential parent engagement indicators that could be used in a survey for City Schools. Indicators were then compared against 24 existing parent engagement measures with published items (e.g., Fantuzzo et al, 2000; Hoover-Dempsey et al, 2005; Lau, 2013; McWayne et al, 2013) to ensure the 106 items represented common parent engagement concepts. The final indicator list reflected 8 content areas: Home-based activities ( n = 29); Parent–school/teacher relationship ( n = 12); Parent–school/teacher communication ( n = 19); Parent trust of school/teacher ( n = 8); Parent knowledge about their child’s education ( n = 9); Parent expectations of/for their child’s education ( n = 14); School-based activities ( n = 12); and Other ( n = 3; see Table 2).…”