Section 1: Academic Achievement - National Center for School ...

Chapter 1
OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO PARENT PARTICIPATION
By
Kathy Gansemer, Children’s Services Coordinator
Colorado Coalition for the Homeless
Denver, Colorado
Abstract: A study of barriers that limit parents of homeless and highly mobile children from
participating in their child's education. Features research on the importance of parental
involvement and issues related to poverty. Tracks and outlines the development of an afterschool,
homework help group for parents and children. An extensive appendix includes samples
of surveys and assessments.
Keywords: Academic Achievement, Guidelines for Replication, Homework Help, Language
Translation, Parent Involvement, Parent Survey, Poverty, and Transitional Housing
Parent Participation
Now more than ever, schools, teachers and staff have been tasked with increasing the level of
parent involvement in their students’ education. Schools are being asked to re-evaluate their
current policies and approaches to parent participation as well as find new strategies to further
build on the educational relationship between parents, children and school.
For teachers already overwhelmed with the responsibilities of meeting the needs of their
students, this charge becomes a difficult challenge, especially when trying to promote
participation with families who are less likely or less capable of becoming involved for
reasons such as homelessness and mobility. These parents have different life circumstances as
well as different educational, economic, cultural and social backgrounds from those parents
that come from middle-class. With limited knowledge and understanding of the complications
that are a reality for many of these families, schools and teachers may be quick to assume or
imply that parents are unsupportive or do not value education.
If the mission is to increase parent participation, perhaps schools could elicit parents’
perspectives in order to identify and better understand the barriers that limit their
Action Research to Study Homelessness and High Mobility in School Communities 6