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Parent Involvement

One of the major parent involvement projects that the research department worked on was examining the relationship between parent involvement, motivation, and academic achievement. In this project parent involvement was tracked in several ways. One way is the staff kept track of their parent volunteers. Another way is that the parents took a parent involvement survey where they answered questions about volunteerism, home and school involvement, checking grades, checking planners, educational discussions, etc. A third way that parent involvement was monitored was that parents checked their child's grades using Easy Grade Pro. The number of times that parents log into this system was monitored. The final way that parent involvement was monitored was by examining if the parents participated in a parent class. These projects were presented at the National Association of Laboratory Schools Conference and at the National Head Start Association Training in 2004.

The Lewis Center had a required parent workshop for all the parents to learn more about the school (AAE) during the 2002-2003 school-year. The research department did an evaluation on the workshop. The Parent Workshop Evaluation paper is presented here.

The Family Survey is a questionnaire that all parents have been required to take the past three years. The questions included topics such as the number of people in the household, parent's education, employment status, political affiliation and activism, ethnicity, home schooling experience, how parents found out about the AAE, why parents choose the AAE, school involvement, etc. Several reports have been written based on this questionnaire. In 1999, there is a general document that gives demographic data based on the survey. In 2000, two reports are presented. One report is general demographic information and the other report is a more detailed analysis. There is also the 2002 demographic report presented here. During the 2003-2004 school year, the research department interviewed families who did not take the Family Survey. We were interested in why families were not taking the survey and also wanted to learn more about their parent involvement levels. The report is presented here.

Another project the research department has been working on involves examining our families that have been home-schooled. A 2004 preliminary research report is presented here.

Sheri Wilkins, a doctoral student at U.C. Riverside, conducted several studies at the Lewis Center on parent involvement. One paper was a qualitative analysis of some of the parent programs at the Lewis Center The second paper was a quantitative analysis linking parent involvement and student achievement.