Maryland Aims to Increase Family and Community Involvement in Schools

Thirty years of research shows that family involvement has a large impact on student achievement, regardless of grade level or parents' socio-economic status or education level. The Maryland State Department of Education believes that “it all boils down to this: when parents are involved in education, their children do better in school and in life.”

Therefore, in 2003, State Superintendent of Schools Nancy Grasmick convened Maryland's Parent Advisory Council (M-PAC) and charged it with developing recommendations on how the Department could meet its family- and community-involvement goals:

school systems and schools will communicate clearly with families and communities

schools will help parents and legal guardians improve their parenting skills, and school and student performance

all schools systems will adopt a family involvement policy aligned with the state's.

In August 2005, M-PAC released its findings, A Shared Responsibility, which provide recommendations in five areas:

Frequent and clear communication is one of the most important ways for schools to increase involvement; improved communication allows schools to publicize families' rights and responsibilities and ways they can support the school, while allowing families and communities to provide feedback on policies and programs. The task is complicated, though, by Maryland 's variety of family structures and linguistic, racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds. M-PAC suggests that varied methods, media, resources, and languages should be employed to communicate information on parents' rights and responsibilities, grading and discipline policies, and the importance of parental involvement; efforts must be made especially to accommodate non-English-speaking parents.

The establishment of a strong leadership and organizational structure would help ensure the implementation of reform policies, says M-PAC. For all stakeholders – educators, parents, community members, advocates – to be involved, the necessary processes and structures must be put in place by leaders at the state, district, school, parent, and community levels to oversee leadership, training, monitoring, and support for family and community involvement. Thus, the Council recommends placing at least two parents with children currently attending public schools on the State Board of Education and establishing advisory groups to facilitate communication between local school boards and parents.

M-PAC believes that training is necessary for greater involvement, for educators in communication and involvement strategies, and for parents and other stakeholders in how to become full partners in education. The State should work with colleges and universities to offer coursework on family involvement for current educators and make it a requirement for undergraduates seeking teaching certification in Maryland. Furthermore, local school systems should provide job-embedded training on family advocacy, technology, and cultural proficiency, while training parents and the community on leadership and effective involvement in schools.

Throughout the report, M-PAC maintains that “it takes a village to raise a child.” Strong home-school-community partnerships include two-way communication, mutual respect, shared decision-making, and shared accountability. To facilitate the growth of these partnerships, the Council urges all committees and task forces at the state, local school system, and school levels offer participation to at least two public school parents. Additionally, schools should endeavor to collaborate with community agencies to provide services like wellness centers, physical and mental health care, social services, and childcare.

Accountability must be included among these efforts, for M-PAC members believe that “we treasure what we measure” and “what gets measured gets done.” Accountability measures should be shared among all stakeholders and used to improve student achievement, not to lay blame on certain parties. Towards this end, the report recommends that the Department develop benchmarks and assessment tools to measure annually the effectiveness of parent and community involvement policies and practices, and that family involvement become part of annual administrator and staff evaluations.

These recommendations come from a committee composed not of “a group of educators with a few parent representatives,” but of “a group of parents with educator representatives.” The report concludes with the Department's plan to establish a monitoring implementation committee to ensure that these recommendations are put into practice. With these policies implemented and through consistent accountability, better education and higher student achievement for all can become a reality.

Prepared by Katherine Lu, September 12, 2005