Comprehensive Educational Programs with Professional Development and Training

The following educational programs contain components that are designed to teach educators how to involve parents in their child's learning:

• The School Development Program of the Yale Child Study Center has been used with educators in more than 65 school districts in 21 states. This program emphasizes cooperation among all adults concerned with the child's education, active involvement of parents in the school, and regular meetings of the school community. It helps the school promote positive interaction between parents and staff through parent participation on school governance subcommittees, parent involvement in the school building, volunteer programs, parent education classes, and social events. Outside researchers found that this program produced statistically significant improvements for students in four areas: academic performance in reading and mathematics, behavior and adjustment to school, self-concept, and positive ratings of classroom climate.
• Robert Slavin and his colleagues at the Center for Research on the Education of Disadvantaged Students have developed a comprehensive educational program called Success for All. One aspect of this program is its emphasis on family support teams to increase parental support of and involvement in their children's education. This program has produced statistically significant results in a number of communities with students from low-income and limited-English-speaking families (Slavin, Madden, Dolan, Wasik, Ross, & Smith, 1994).
• The Quality Education Program (QEP), a program designed to increase student success through parental involvement, features training in communication skills for teachers and administrators as well as effective dissemination of school information to parents. This program has been implemented in California, Indiana, and Mississippi. In 1989, it was used to train teachers in seven low-income, predominantly African-American school districts in Mississippi. Comparing the 1988-89 school year (before QEP was implemented) and the 1990-91 school year, the QEP districts averaged a 4.8 percent increase in test scores while the control districts averaged only a 0.3 percent increase (Thompson, 1993).

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