A longitudinal assessment of teacher perceptions of parent involvement in children's education and school performance

This study examines the ways in which parental involvement in children's ed ucation changes over rime and how it relates to children's social and acade mic functioning irt school. Teachers provided information on parent involve ment and school performance for 1,205 urban, kindergarten through third-gra de children for 3 consecutive years. They rated the following four dimensio ns of parent involvement:frequency of parent-teacher contact, quality of th e parent-teacher interactions, participation in educational activities at h ome, and participation in school activities. As predicted, the frequency of parent-teacher contacts, quality of parent-teacher interactions, and paren t participation at school declined from Years I to 3. Every parent involvem ent variable correlated moderately with school performance and parent invol vement in Years 1 and 2, and accounted for a small, but significant amount of variance in Year 3 performance after controlling for initial performance level. Participation in educational activities at home predicted the wides t range of performance variables. Results suggest that enhancing parental i nvolvement in children's schooling relates to improvements in school functi oning.