Parents' perceived effectiveness of parental involvement on their children's education at Red Cedar Vocational and Special Education Center in Rice Lake, Wisconsin

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to describe the parents' perceived effectiveness of parental involvement on their children's education. The school that participated in the study was Red Cedar Vocational and Special Education Center in the Rice Lake Area School District in the spring of 2001. Parental involvement was defined as the parent or parents' participation in an on-going parent program, school events and activities, and involvement in setting goals and objectives. An experimenter-designed survey of fourteen questions was administered to 16 parents. This study showed that there was a high correspondence between the degree of parental involvement and perceived student success. There was also, however, a low number of parents who actually became involved in all aspects of their children's education; the most frequent barriers being scheduling conflicts and lack of child care for other child(ren) in the home. It is recommended that parents and schools communicate with each other about learning objectives and children's progress through newsletters, school handbooks, parent-teacher conferences, open houses, and telephone calls in order to maximize opportunities for communications in light of scheduling conflicts which preclude parental involvement to some extent (McDonald & Frey, 1999).