Dissertation on "Parental Involvement in Urban School Settings"

Dissertation 30 pages (11020 words) Sources: 20 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Parental Involvement in Urban School Settings

Context of the Problem

This designed research project is to examine the effects of why there is a lack of Parental Involvement in urban schools is low. Not many parents particularly minorities are able to work together with the school activities due to lack of immovability. Most parents of the minority ethnic groups can not afford to take off work to become involved with school activities. Most of the students that go to urban schools are dominantly minorities which make the percentage for Parental Involvement in urban schools tremendously low. Most of the students come from a single parent home. The concept of Parental Involvement is to allow parents to become involved with the teachers and the school. In order to show participation, parents have to show interest for the child. "Although it has been well established that parental involvement in school is linked to positive outcomes for children, there are a myriad of issues that make it challenging for some African-American families to engage school personnel in collaborative problem solving" (Koonce & Harper, Jr., 2005, p.55).

Some of the obstruction that reduces participation contains parents' poor school understanding, pressure by school staff, and hard meeting times (Koonce & Harper, Jr., 2005). If teachers were given a logical justification from the parents due to the lack of school involvement teachers would become more accepting to the circumstances which would be helpful to the child. When some minority parents are faced with defy of negative experiences with schools and commonly have to release the false intuition that the parent do not care about the education of the child, the parents are left with few resources to receive correspondence in educational opportunities.

For parents to be positively engaged, we propose that they need training to learn to navigate the school systems. The training modules we devised involved the following: (a) understanding how the school system operates, (b) learning how to voice concerns about the children to teachers and administrators to gain support, (c) understanding the educational guidelines for parental involvement, and (d) understanding the mandates of special education. The model incorporates a training component with the goal of helping the parents understand the mutually beneficial outcomes of their involvement in their children's educational career and its impact on teachers' expectations and instructional practices. (Koonce & Harper, Jr., 2005, p.61).

Training would become helpful to minority parents concerning the parental involvement for the learning of the child. Students tend to endure from the lack of parental involvement because the student needs that supervision from the parents and support.

The Problem Statement

Parental Involvement has a strong effect on students in both early and secondary childhood education. The topic of this study is examining the effects of why there is a lack of Parental Involvement in urban school settings. The topic addressed in this research will detail the analysis for the lack of parental involvement due to the lack of relationship, extremely poor communication, and very poor attendance for schools in the urban areas which consist of a large number of minorities.

Research Questions

The purpose of this project is to identify the reasons why there is a lack of Parental Involvement in the urban school settings that are dominant African-Americans. The following questions symbolize what causes the lack of Parental Involvement in the urban schools:

1. How can schools eliminate the lack of relationships between the parents and the staff? This is a vital question to the study and topic because the researcher cannot propose new ideas due to the lack of connection between the parents and the staff unless the problem in recognized.

2. How can communication become more effective between the parents and the educators? It is important for the readers to understand how the lack of communication can affect both the parent and child.

3. How can poor parental attendance have an effect on the child and the teacher? It is very important for the reader to understand the problems that evolve poor parental attendance.

Significance of the Study

Parents should really be conscious of the tribulations that are happening with the lack of Parental Involvement. Students are extremely affected by the lack of Parental Involvement because it is allowing them to follow other student footsteps. Students particularly at the adolescence stage require the parent's supervision because teenagers are too young to understand right from wrong during that stage. If more parents were involve with their child, less crimes would occur, less pregnancy, less drugs, and less alcohol involved in the schools. The economy has worsened due to the lack of Parental Involvement because parents are so occupied with other things beyond the child's education. Parents need to get together and try to come up with a resolution in becoming more involved with the students.

Lack of relationships within the schools are becoming a problem for the parents. Staff should find ways of welcoming parents in to the school and making them feel comfortable getting involved. The lack of relationship among the school and the community is the first step in the disconnection of parents.

When some African-American parents are faced with the challenge of their own negative experiences with schools and often have to dispel the misconception that they do not care about the education of their children, they are left with few resources to receive parity in educational opportunities. Even African-American parents who are able to successfully resolve negative school experiences remain reluctant to exercise their legal rights when advocating for their children. (Koonce & Harper, 2005, p.57)

The lack of relationship is happening more often with secondary schools than in elementary schools. "Most secondary schools are much larger than elementary schools and can be more intimidating to parents, especially those who are disenfranchised, speak little or no English, or who themselves had negative experiences while attending school" (Constantino, 2007, p. 58).

Poor communication is another reason for lack of Parental Involvement. Teacher and parents do not have a good communication particularly in secondary schools. "Because of their size and their complexity, secondary schools suffer from poor or inconsistent communication with all families" (Constantino, 2007, p.59). Parents do not feel communication is necessary at the adolescence stage. Communication is more challenging during the adolescence stage because children are faced with more peer pressure. Many children dominant African America drop-out of high school due to the lack of Parental Involvement. Parents should become more involved with the child during this stage to possibly prevent the child from failure. More children are less concern about graduating because they are too involved in other activities. For example, skipping school, drug usage, fighting, weapons, and disrespecting teachers. Teachers are just passing kids due to the "No Child Left Behind" law.

At the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is a promise to strengthen America's education system and raise the academic achievement of all students. Well-trained teachers can provide effective instruction so that students perform at their highest academic potential and that "no child is left on their behind." The law recognizes that parents are their children's first and most important teachers, and for students to succeed in school, parents must participate actively in their children's academic lives. Parents need to become involved early and stay involved throughout the school years. That is especially true during the adolescent years. (DePlanty, Coulter-Kern & Duchane, 2007, p.361)

Adolescence is the most difficult stage in the life of a person. Adolescences tend to be affected optimistically when a relationship is continued between the home and school. Parents provide the social, cultural, and emotional supports that teenagers need to function well in school. (DePlanty, Coulter-Kern & Duchane, 2007)

One final area of significance of the study involves poor parental attendance. As students get older, parents are less likely to become involve with the child's school. Parents are a very important aspect in the child's life at this stage due to only maybe 55% of students graduated on the expected graduation date and maybe 75% graduate on-time. Parents should want to become involve with the students due to peer pressure and students become very destructive. "Adolescents' involvement with their peers can limit the ability of their parents and their families to be actively engaged" (Constantino, 2007, p. 60). Behavior problems will only continue to occur if the parents do not become involved with the students. So many students are left behind despite the "no child left behind" law because teenagers grow up not learning anything from high school and doing poorly on ACT and SAT test scores. A lot of students are not getting accepting into higher education universities due to the student's low scores. Most urban setting parents do not feel a need to participate with the child's learning because the parents feel the learning should come from the teacher. Teachers are 50% responsible for helping the child get an education but the other 50% is the parent responsibility. Children are not being watched at night because… READ MORE

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