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Citation:

Perry, R. L., & Thompson, K. P. (2004). Listening to families and faculty: A report on family involvement in the Alexandria City public schools. Alexandria, VA: Alexandria City Public Schools. http://www.ncpie.org/pubs/ListeningFamiliesFaculty-8-17.pdf

Annotation:
The purpose of this study is to evaluate family involvement at the Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS). In order to develop effective family involvement strategies and programs that will empower parents and support students, ACPS wanted input from families and faculty members. Focus group results indicated that participants agreed that families should be involved through listening to their children, keeping up with what is happening at school, tracking their children's progress, and communicating their expectations to their children. ACPS was praised for its cultural diversity, but findings indicated that the individual schools varied in quality, expectations for students varied across schools, advocating for children was not easy, parents sometimes felt intimidated, and there were no clear procedures for addressing the concerns of parents. Focus groups comprising parents and teachers identified poor communication, cost of living, cultural disconnect, fear, and PTA in-crowd syndrome as barriers to parental involvement. Survey results indicated that the majority of parents and teachers were very satisfied with their schools and parents were more satisfied with ACPS than were teachers. Families were more likely to indicate that they were satisfied with ACPS if they felt that they were being treated with respect, if they were happy with the quality of their children's learning, and if they felt that ACPS responded well to their concerns and problems. The report also discussed parent and teacher recommendations for getting more families involved. Approximately 100 students, parents, teachers, and community members of diverse ethnicities participated in focus group conversations. Researchers developed a survey on family involvement using findings from the focus groups. The surveys were sent to every family, teacher, and school administrator in ACPS, and data were collected from 2,126 families and 395 teachers. This study provides recommendations for the improvement of family involvement programs. One limitation to this study is that the survey response rate for both parents and teachers was approximately 20%. Future research should focus on obtaining a more representative sample as well as testing the effectiveness of specific intervention strategies through randomized controlled trials.