A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Studies of Education Reform: Parent and Community Involvement in Education - 1995

CROSS-SITE ANALYSIS

Reforming Schools,
Transforming Partnerships

Parent, Family, and Community
Involvement in the Middle Grades

We realized that not only had the school changed, but also that we had changed in the process.

- Middle School Principal

Introduction

In 1983 A Nation at Risk: The Imperative of Educational Reform focused national attention on the condition of education in the United States and called for sweeping educational reform. States, local education agencies, and schools began reform efforts that have continued throughout the past decade. Many of these reforms were successful; some were not. Some documentation of these successes existed in the research literature; many remained well-kept secrets.

In 1991 the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, United States Department of Education, issued a call for proposals for twelve studies of topics considered to be critical to education reform. Included among those topics was parent and community involvement. While there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence and data from the elementary school level to demonstrate the effect of parent and community involvement on children's academic performance, less is known about how these relationships are played out at the middle level of schooling. We focused our research on grades six through eight.

Forty-two months ago, we began our study of established and promising examples of middle grade school, family, and community partnerships in education. These partnerships are defined by the activities and strategies in which schools and families engage; they imply shared responsibilities for both schools and families. (For a detailed topology of school/family partnerships, see Epstein, 1995). Our conceptual framework included three distinct research focus areas: comprehensive districtwide programs, school restructuring, and adult/child learning experiences.

Comprehensive districtwide programs include ways that school districts, families and communities interact to improve education for all children. Both restructuring and adult/child learning experiences may be "nested" within the comprehensive districtwide program.

School restructuring focuses on fundamental school change, i.e., the ways that parents, families and community members are involved as schools transform their curriculum and instructional and organizational patterns.

Adult/child learning experiences refers to experiences at home (e.g., the completion of homework, leisure reading, family discussions, educational games, and/or enrichment activities) facilitated by the school and/or teacher through school-initiated activities, phone calls, and written materials sent to the home. Adult/child learning experiences focus on the relationship between student and parent/family member as it relates to improved student academic performance.

Through these focus areas we predicted that we would find clear-cut examples of how these partnerships impacted school reform. We were not disappointed. Not only were schools transformed, but also the relationships among all stakeholders were changed as they participated in reform efforts.

During the spring and summer of 1994, we visited nine school districts throughout the United States: Fort Worth Independent School District, Forth Worth, TX; Jefferson County Public Schools, Louisville, Kentucky; Minneapolis Public Schools, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Chittenden South School District, Shelburne, Vermont; Georgetown Public Schools, Georgetown, South Carolina; Lamoni Public Schools, Lamoni, Iowa; Community School District Number 3, New York City; Natchez-Adams County Schools, Natchez, Mississippi; and Rochester Public Schools, Rochester, New York.

The districts we selected represented large urban centers, rural communities, suburban areas, multiethnic populations and student populations considered to be economically and educationally disadvantaged. We conducted 18 site visits to these nine districts and we visited 14 schools within those districts. We collected over 50 hours of audiotape interviews with respondents that included school personnel, parents/families, students, community members, and business leaders. We reviewed volumes of written materials provided by our sites. Finally, we synthesized our findings into nine case studies (see Volume II of this Final Technical Report, Rutherford, et. al, 1995).

Each of the sites presented unique lessons for school/family partnerships, as did all sites within a focus area. However, across all nine case studies, eight primary themes emerged. In the process of distilling these eight themes, we learned a great deal about educational reform. This report details our cross-case analysis of the themes and reform as a context for school, family, and community partnerships.

Eight Themes of Middle Grade Parent, Family, and Community Involvement

The eight themes that we identify here are the result of a synthesis and analysis of our findings from site visits to nine school districts across the United States. Each site is attempting to make fundamental changes in the ways that they have done business in the past. Our research focused on three areas of middle grade school, family, and community partnerships: comprehensive districtwide programs; school restructuring; and adult/child learning experiences. Three sites were chosen for each of the focus areas. The three comprehensive district wide program sites are undergoing major changes at the district level and have involved parents, families, community members, and businesses in their reform efforts. School restructuring sites are using middle grade philosophy and concepts to move toward different organizational, and sometimes physical, structures. Sites that focus on adult/child learning experiences are providing training and materials for parents to use at home with their middle grade students.

Reform as a Context for Middle Grade Partnerships

Our study focused on the ways that parents, families, and communities are involved in middle grade education, specifically within school districts and schools that are participating in reform. While each of the sites provided valuable lessons about how parents, families, community members, and businesses are involved in middle grade reform, we cannot ignore what we learned about the process of reform. This was especially true of the school restructuring sites, since the focus of our research in these sites was on how parents, families, and communities were involved in reform initiatives.

Across the nine sites, we identified five common characteristics of school districts and schools that are in the process of reform. The first common characteristic is that the meaning for reform is constructed as stakeholders participate in the process. Middle grade school reform may take many forms: moving toward the concepts of middle schools (for example, interdisciplinary units, team teaching, the concept of "families", and multiage grouping), reorganizing grade configurations, or implementing new instructional programs and teaching methods, among others. However, we found that the schools that we visited had constructed some common meanings, most often translated into operational principles, as they participated in reform. Participants in the reform process articulated six organizational principles of school reform:

The second characteristic of reform is that successful reform initiatives are guided by a strong vision of what students and the school district or school should "look like," and are grounded in a deep understanding of the change process. Teachers, administrators, and parents and families in the schools that we visited were guided by an idea of what they wanted their students to be able to do when they left the middle grades. They frequently talked about the organizational structure of the school that would allow students to succeed. Many of our respondents talked about the necessity of "knowing what you want to do", comprehensive planning, frequent monitoring of the process to make needed changes, and the fact that change takes time and is not always easy. However, a shared vision for middle grade schools and students made it possible to overcome many of the challenges that faced them.

Third, strong policies support reform efforts. Our respondents made it clear that strong policies do not guarantee successful reform. However, reform efforts are weakened in the absence of policies. In most of our sites, policies support the efforts of school districts and schools as they participate in reform.

Fourth, in successful reform initiatives, the school is viewed as a "community." In our sites, we found that the majority of stakeholders spoke of a "teaching and learning community." Teachers feel that they are not only a part of a teaching community, but also constantly learn as they interact with students and their parents. Administrators spoke of "guiding the teaching and learning process." Families and community members felt that they were a part of "making teaching and learning" happen in new, unique ways.

Finally, school reform is often an arena for political struggle. Political and ideological agendas often cause friction between schools and their constituents. When there are differences between the agenda of the school and the agenda of parents, families, and community members, schools become the site for public confrontation over the role of the school in the community. Most often the confrontation is a result of genuine differences in educational philosophy. Although parent, family, and community partnerships strengthen reform efforts, we found that active involvement does not necessarily mean that the road to restructuring will be a smooth one.
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[Rochester City School District (Rochester, New York)] [Table of Contents] [Cross Site Analysis: Reforming Schools, Transforming Partnerships (part 2 of 2)]