Parent engagement helps students to succeed academically and helps schools to serve students more effectively. Encouraging, assessing, and measuring parent engagement are all important elements of a successful parent engagement initiative. Parent engagement can be measured in various ways; through parent surveys and questionnaires, measurements of attendance counts at family-school events, and assessments of the number and quality of these events carried out in a school year or at each school. Just as student progress must be evaluated to plan for future learning, parent engagement programs must be evaluated in order for them to grow and improve.

The California PTA shares several ways that schools can measure parent engagement, including assessing, among other factors, “the quantity and parent-defined quality of efforts by school districts to seek input from all parent groups in decision-making,” and “the number of family engagement staff and family resource centers created to better connect families with schools.” These examples highlight the importance of parent involvement being inclusive for all parents, parents being empowered in evaluating the quality of the parent engagement efforts, and the importance of schools dedicating resources and personnel specifically to parent engagement programs.

Surveys and questionnaires are useful in finding out how and when parents are engaged. For example, Loyola University conducted research into “Exploring School Involvement in Parents of English Language Learners.” In order to engage parents, particularly ELL parents, in planning and assessing the parent involvement framework that was in place in four school districts in the Chicagoland area, they used surveys “to inquire to ELL parents about the most common and least common ways they are involved in their children’s educational experiences.” The Harvard Family Research Project reminds us that there are many subtle factors that affect parent involvement that can be explored through parent inventories, surveys, or parent-school partnerships labs, and they offer a comprehensive report on “Data Collection Instruments for Evaluating Family Involvement.” This report includes important, sometimes overlooked factors, such as how students view parent engagement and how parents view their own efficacy as educators.

These efforts for measurement and evaluation are important because they can help schools to understand and improve their parent engagement initiatives. Many parents want to be involved in their children’s education and also know that their involvement matters. The Public Agenda research site shares that eight out of ten parents said that “parents are more important than schools in determining whether children learn” in a 2010 Gallup poll of public attitude toward schools. Parent engagement measurements can help schools to more effectively empower and partner with parents in supporting their children’s learning.

The Latino Family Literacy Project are experts in working with Spanish speaking parents and can train your staff to work with parents at your school. They offer online webinar training and they can share with you their evaluation measures of their program.  Contact them!

Stay updated with the latest information about ELLs and follow our Facebook and Twitter pages. We post new information every day.