Update - as of 9/30/2012

Since the very beginning of school I have been working towards my goal of increasing parental involvement to impact student achievement. I started with the creation of my action research plan and with the support of my site supervisor I created the first parent survey that rolled out in our beginning of the year parent packets. I have been extremely successful in the return of my parent surveys. I equate this success to many circumstances. First, our school utilizes these packets as a way of getting your students schedule for the new year. In other words, a completed packet allows the parent to pick up their student's schedule, which is really important to middle schoolers. Another reason may have been the bright orange paper that was used, making it difficult to loose or misplace. Either way, I have received about 715 responses with a class population of 825. I used this data to present to the collaborative team to use in making decisions on ways to increase parental involvement. I prepared for my first meeting of this group and presented the findings, as well as presenting a few research based strategies we could utilize to increase parental involvement. I am currently working to find a community organization that offers free Adult English language classes and would be willing to offer them on our campus to parents. This was an identified need through my survey. I am looking forward to next weeks meeting of the collaborative team as we focus on how to get parents into the school for meetings and involve them in the decision making progress. Our goal is to plan for the first parent meeting. I am motivated by the excitement of others to pursue increasing parent involvement and recognize the necessity of collaboration through the experiences of the team members, as they provide a knowledge base that I do not currently have. 

Survey Update

Good News - I have received a good amount of feedback from my survey. However, I did not consider the time it would take to disaggregate the data.  From this data I am trying to determine the % of Spanish speaking parents to English speaking parents. The top three preferred methods of contact and how parents are interested in volunteering and then lastly any services my school can provide to the community. From what I have received so far about 50% of the returned sheets I received wanted to be involved in some way or offered a suggestion on how the school could help the community. Not to my surprise a large percentage of parents show interest in a Adult English Language class offering. I am looking forward to presenting this data to the collaborative group I have been working to form that will make decisions on what direction we should go to increase parent involvement on our campus. 

Suggestions to others - If you are considering a survey as part of your research and it is going to include a large number of participants you may want to consider an online survey to save time with data disaggregation.

I have included the survey below.

 

 Middle School

Parent Communication/Involvement Survey

Student Name _______________________________ Student ID _______________________

Parent(s) Name ________________________________

(filling out application)

Parent's Primary Spoken Language _________________________________

Preferred Method of Communication

(circle all that apply)

Home Phone Email

Cell Phone U.S. Postal Mail

School Website Parent Connection

Other (please specify) ___________________________

We encourage parent's to be involved with their student's education and the school. Please tell us how you would like to be involved in your child's education.

(Please circle all that apply.)

Volunteering (ie. Chaperoning field trips, school dances, helping teachers with copies etc.)

Joining a Parent Teacher Support Group

Being a member of the Campus Improvement Team Committee

Other (please specify) ____________________________________

At White Oak Middle School, we understand the impact a school has on the community it serves. Please tell us how our family at White Oak can do more to impact your family.

For example – Providing Adult English Language Classes

To be collected by the Assistant Principal's Office