Literacy At Home and Student Achievement

and Student Achievement

Sara Schwabacher
Associate, Parent and Community Engagement

Celebration of Grandparents

In the opening weeks of school in Columbus, Georgia, more than 100 children from Key Elementary School took home a photograph from the Grandparent’s Breakfast in the school cafeteria. I wish I could have followed the children home to hear them tell their families about sharing the biography they wrote of their grandmother with their classmates, about the pictures of their friends’ grandparents on the bulletin boards in the hallways, or about how much fun they had with their grandfather in school. In a hundred households, in a hundred ways, over the next few weeks, children and their families were sharing their stories together.

These happenings were the result of Cornerstone Parent Representative Terralashay Chester’s brilliant idea of connecting the annual Grandparent’s Day Breakfast and Cornerstone to promote home literacy. PTA President Juliette Freeman already had a lot of great ideas to make the event memorable. Since a literacy priority for the school this year is writing and vocabulary, the Literacy Leadership Team decided to connect a writing activity – Biographies/Celebrations of our Grandparents – to Grandparent’s Day. The approach to this event at Key Elementary School exemplifies the concept of home/school partnership, where responsibility for children’s literacy development is a collaborative enterprise among parents, school staff and community members.

A biography writing contest was open to all children in the school. Some teachers assigned the biography as part of their writing curriculum. Student essays and photographs of grandparents were displayed throughout the school. At the breakfast itself, winners were recognized, books awarded, essays read, and writers and their grandparent subjects honored on stage.

All was supported by a model learning environment set up in the cafeteria, which included displays of student writing, notes on the important role of grandparents in supporting children’s learning, and table centerpieces and placemats which encouraged child/grandparent activity with crayons and construction paper. And the day was well documented. Every child/grandparent pair was photographed with a Polaroid camera, and they went home with the photo in a card to celebrate their day together. School bulletin boards and scrapbooks and last, but not least, conversations at home kept the memory of the day alive.

Research is Clear

What happened in homes as a result of Grandparent’s Day may be as important for student achievement as anything that happened in the cafeteria. The research consensus is now clear. Family involvement around literacy at home has the biggest impact on student achievement. Schools and family involvement programs can support the at-home learning through comprehensive, well-planned partnerships between home and school.

The Key Grandparent’s Day event promoted at-home literacy in many ways. Children had to talk to their families to write a biography of their grandparent. Written tip sheets gave Grandparents ideas for supporting their children’s literacy. All of the artifacts from the day can serve as conversation starters to share the events of the day with the rest of the family at home. The school leadership team, led by principal Donna Hart and the Cornerstone coaches Karen Wetherell and Rebecca Westerman, made it all happen.

As long ago as 1994, A New Generation of Evidence: The Family is Critical to Student Achievement, a summary report on 66 research studies edited by Anne Henderson and Nancy Berla stated that:

“The evidence is now beyond dispute. When schools work together with families to support learning, children tend to succeed not just in school, but throughout life. In fact, the most accurate predictor of a student’s achievement in school is not income or social status, but the extent to which a student’s family is able to:

Create a home environment that encourages learning.
Express high (but not unrealistic) expectations for their children’s achievement and future careers.
Become involved in their children’s education at school and in the community.”

Family involvement leads to higher test scores and grades, better attendance, more completed homework, fewer referrals to special education, more positive attitudes and behavior, higher graduation rates, and greater enrollment in postsecondary education.

What home involvement makes the most difference? Parent-child communications are very high on the list. Cornerstone schools already recognize the importance of oral language development and many have set up ways to encourage conversations between adults and children at home. As Monica Forty showed us at the 2006 Summer Institute with her open arm gesture “you need this much talking for this much writing!” Talking at home is so important.

Additional characteristics of home learning environments that are repeatedly mentioned in the research include:

Establishing a daily family routine – providing a time and place to study, a set bedtime, regular chores, families having dinner together (and talking to each other over dinner);
Modeling the value of learning – having goals, expecting children to achieve standards, recognition of achievements such as telling relatives about accomplishments;
Encouraging children’s development and progress in school --- warm, supportive home, helping with homework, staying in touch with teachers;
Reading, writing and discussions among family members – reading aloud, telling stories, sharing problems, writing notes;
Using community resources for family needs – sports programs, lessons, mentors, community services.

Research also shows that teacher-initiated outreach to families, principal support for parent involvement, and programs and practices in schools can lead to families having productive home learning environments and, in turn, to increased student achievement.
And yet, a September, 2006 evaluation of the implementation of the No Child Left Behind act has found that most schools do not have the kind of comprehensive, well planned partnership with families which has been found to be most effective. This report, by Appleseed: It Takes a Parent: Transforming Education in the Wake of the No Child Left Behind Act has found that:

“Despite the abundance of research and extensive federal requirements, schools and districts do not universally embrace parental involvement as a central strategy for accomplishing academic gains. This pattern appears to result from a mix of causes:

The challenge of defining clear and meaningful benchmarks by which effective parental involvement can be evaluated;
A preoccupation with the accountability elements of NCLB, such as testing and teacher quality; and
A lack of awareness and training on how to effectively engage parents.”

In other words, “it’s hard” and as a result, the regulations of NCLB are not well implemented. However, the report did identify a number of notable practices and models with real promise. “In particular, creative, multi-faceted communication and engagement strategies can promote better parental involvement in schools.”

Home/School Connections Make a Difference

In my travels to every Cornerstone school this fall, I have found that not only Key but most of our schools are engaged in one or more “notable practices” and exploring “creative, multi-faceted communication and engagement strategies.”

Planning a comprehensive partnership to ensure student achievement is what Cornerstone schools are about. For example, this fall I shared an approach to planning home/school connections tied to instructional goals from the Literacy Action Plan. At Key, principal Donna Hart convened a group that included the Cornerstone Parent Rep and PTA president, coaches and the Pre-K resource family literacy teacher for a planning meeting. They shared recent successes, and we discussed additional ways to involve parents in supporting the goal of developing vocabulary to improve the quality of student writing.

We used a three column chart to brainstorm the questions:

If we are successful with this goal, what will be happening at home?
How will what happens at home be reflected and used in the classroom?
What home/school connection activities will help make the things in the other two columns happen?.

Once the brainstorming was completed, we prioritized and devised a plan to introduce the idea of Family Journals through a family workshop that would distribute writing journals to parent and children participants, have families experience something together that could be written about, send home cameras to document home experiences, and collect photographs and writing in a Key School Family Experience Book.

Other schools planned linkages between home and school using a wide range of goals:

At Worthington-Hooker in New Haven, Connecticut we discussed ways to link parent involvement to the L.A.P. priority of establishing classroom libraries.
At Springdale in Stamford, Connecticut we planned ways to link at-home activities to the Writers Workshop.
At Hart School in Stamford the discussion was around the goal that “Children will name and use the comprehension strategies.”
At Rigdon Road in Muscogee County, Georgia we discussed ways for families to support students gaining expertise in Persuasive Writing.

Role of the Principal
When principals value parental involvement, it is more likely to happen. Grandparents Day at Key was the success it was because principal Donna Hart encouraged both parents and teachers to share their ideas and expected them to participate. At Rigdon Road, parents and community members know they will be welcomed by principal Phyllis Jones anytime they are in the school and that she and her staff will create constant “excuses” to lure them in. When I was in Georgia, I participated in a well attended Rigdon Road Parent evening meeting linked to an Awards Ceremony to honor children for good attendance and achievement early in the year. The meeting included a demonstration by coach (and parent) Berderia Fuller of how to follow up the monthly comprehension strategy at home. Principal Gloria Williams at Freedman Elementary School, a new Foundation School in Springfield, Massachusetts, has supported her Cornerstone Parent Representatives in the spreading the word to Partner Schools. Parents Deb Hardye and Liz McNeff are not only invited to attend meetings, but their principal invites them to be presenters.

Coaches, Classroom Teachers and Parents

Coaches and classroom teachers lead family events, Family Literacy Nights, grade level open houses and workshops for parents in almost all Cornerstone schools. Coach Karen Wetherell had the idea for the Family Journal workshop at Key. Family Homework Projects are assigned by many classroom teachers; newsletters are sent home with tips for parents; books and toys, such as stuffed animals, travel to children’s homes to be written about; cameras are sent home to document at-home literacy; and parent/child writing is encouraged through two-way communications with teachers. A music teacher at Worthington-Hooker told about an opera she directed which was based on stories children had written after “collecting” them from their parents.

Key Elementary School’s Terralashay Chester is not the only Parent Representative who has initiated literacy connections. Parent Representatives at other Cornerstone schools are leading Parent/Child activities (Book Clubs and Lunch Bunch); initiating school-wide writing homework (“We Love Reading” essay and display which began the school year at Stillmeadow in Stamford); and struggling to think up ways to connect to families which are not currently involved in school (a Haitian parent at Stark in Stamford shared her outreach strategy of visiting Haitian families in their homes to have conversations about school and learning). As the national research has shown, finding creative ways to reach families is the crux of success with school-based parent engagement programs.

If every child is going to be successful at achieving literacy at a high level, schools will need collaborative relationships with their families and communities. Yes, creating comprehensive, well-planned, long lasting partnerships among school faculties, administrators, parents and community members to promote student learning is hard work. But it is possible. And Cornerstone schools are leading the way.

References

Appleseed. (2006). It Takes a Parent: Transforming Education in the Wake of the No Child Left Behind Act. (http://www.appleseeds.net/servlet/GetArticleFile?articleFileId=253)

Dearing, E., Kreider, H., Simpkkins, S. and Weiss, H. (2006). Family Involvement in School and Low-Income Children’s Literacy: Longitudinal Associations Between and Within Families. AERA presentation

Eagle, E. (1989). “Socioeconomic Status, Family Structure, and Parental Involvement: The Correlates of Achievement” in Henderson and Berla A New Generation of Evidence.

Fan, X.& Chen, M. (1999). “Parental Involvement and Students’ Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis” in Henderson and Mapp A New Wave of Evidence

Harvard Family Research Project. (2006). Family Involvement in Early Childhood Education.

Henderson, A. and Berla, N. (Eds). (1994). A New Generation of Evidence: The Family is Critical to Student Achievement. National Committee for Citizens in Education. (Summary of 66 research studies, reviews, reports and books.)

Henderson, A and Mapps, K. (Eds). (2002). A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family and Community Connections on Student Achievement. National Center for Family & Community Connections with Schools. (This summary of 51 studies published between 1993-2002 can be found online at: www.sedl.org)

Kellaghan, T., Sloane, K., Alvarez, B. & Bloom, B. (1993). The Home Environment and School Learning: Promoting Parental Involvement in the Education of Children.” In Henderson and Berla A New Generation of Evidence

Peterson, L and Kreider, H. (2005). Making the Case for Parent Involvement and Engagement. Presentation to Massachusetts Title I Conference

Swap, S. (1993). “Developing Home-School Partnerships: From Concepts to Practice.” In Henderson and Berla, A New Generation of Evidence.

Weiss, H. (Ed). (2004). Evaluating Family Involvement Programs. The Evaluation Exchange Volume X number 10.