Getting involved in your child’s education – Part 1: Why it’s important

Bridgeway is blessed to have a wonderfully talented and creative group of staff members.  I’m going to tap into their expertise as often as I can and share their knowledge with you through our blog.  Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing some words of wisdom from Lisa Saunders, our Director of Programs.  Lisa has been with Bridgeway for ten years now, and is currently working on her Masters in Education.  Here is part one of a paper she recently wrote on why getting parents involved in their child’s education is so important.

By Lisa Saunders

Director of Programs, Bridgeway

In years past, children who have reached a magic age, usually around five years old, have left their family’s home and have gone off to school.  What a child did between the hours of arrival at school and dismissal was the responsibility of the teachers, not the parents.  Similarly, when a child left school and returned home, what happened there was of little consequence to the child’s school.  There is a shift coming within the traditional roles played by both parents and educators.  Parents and teachers both are beginning to agree that education of children should be achieved by a marriage of two communities; home and school.  Improvement of the practice of parental involvement in education through home-school communication will ultimately achieve the common goal that binds parents and educators together: student success.

Home-school communication is one of the most important practices in ensuring student success and forging successful home-school relationships.  However important the practice of “keeping in touch”, its effectiveness is difficult to measure (Bridgemohan, et al., 2005).  The measureable benefits of a close-knit relationship between home and school include increased assessment scores, decreased drop-out rate, a decline in behavior issues and higher learner achievement (Shirvani, 2007).  Bridgemohan, et al., 2005, also suggests that parental involvement in a child’s school has the ability to decrease the gap between achievement of high-income and low-income families.

Tomorrow, Lisa will share the experiences of educators and parents in the UK, where getting parents actively involved in the school system has been a priority since 2003.