In-School and Out-of-School Factors That Build Student Achievement

Teacher-Parent Communication Actions

Parent beliefs are likely to be influenced by teacher-parent communication. In other words, parents may benefit from well-organized teacher-led communication actions, regardless of the parents' initial mindset when their children start school. When teachers take actions to cultivate instructional partnerships with parents, those parents are more likely to support their children's learning at home, and the students of these parents are more likely to be perceived by the teachers as positively involved in classroom learning activities. Evidence from the Nashville study supports this hypothesis. In that study, teachers were asked the following:

• What proportion of your students' parents did you provide with information or materials (not including homework) to help their children develop and refine skills needed in school for each subject area (reading, English/language arts, math)?



• How effective in motivating parents to help their children at home is the information you provided for the parents?

Parents were asked this question:

• How well do you think you work with your child's teacher?

The data showed that students' scores were higher on the TCAP standardized test of reading when teachers reported more communication with parents, and when those parents perceived themselves to be engaged in a healthy partnership with the teacher. These factors accounted for about 7 percent of the variance in students' reading achievement scores (see Exhibit 2).