December 2003 — Features
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Engaging Families With Technology
South Florida's FamilyTech Program Increases Parental Involvement, Student Success
How to involve families in the formal education of their children is a question researchers and educators have been trying to answer since the first bricks were laid for the nation's public education system. White middle-class parents still occupy the most visible forms of parental involvement (i.e., school board and PTA membership), but participation rates even by these mainstream families are alarmingly low. The question of how to engage parents is even more pressing today since connections between individuals, groups and institutions are being threatened. For example, latchkey children are the norm, and the gap between the poor and middle class continues to widen. How can families who are struggling to put food on the table be asked to take time to sit down and help their children with schoolwork.
A solution must be found, for family involvement has been proven to be associated with a myriad of stellar outcomes, including greater standardized test scores, higher grades, better attendance, improved social skills and a greater likelihood of admission to postsecondary institutions (Henderson and Mapp 2002). The extant knowledge base delineates several core themes deemed necessary for engaging families in their children's education, particularly when applied to non-mainstream populations. Mutual respect between parties and acceptance of each family's unique circumstances are central among these themes. While such recommendations do much to broaden the perspective of those in the field of education, they do little in terms of providing specific practices for application.
This article bridges the divide by providing hands-on strategies for researchers and educators alike to implement with families from diverse cultural backgrounds, including the culture of poverty, to increase parental involvement in children's formal schooling. The practices described herein also apply to families of students with special needs who, likewise, may feel marginalized by the school system. This work is the culmination of a multiyear investigation into the use of technology to elevate parental involvement, thereby improving student achievement with elementary students and their families. It proved technology to be a flexible and useful medium for attracting and engaging family participation.
Background
FamilyTech, the technology program this article is based on, was initiated by the South Florida Annenberg Challenge. The SFAC is one branch of The Annenberg Foundation, a private organization with $500 million earmarked for school-reform initiatives. The mission of the SFAC is to mobilize private and public resources in order to make comprehensive changes in public schools, thereby increasing students' achievement gains in the South Florida region. Thus, the SFAC brought together the school, the community and business partners whose financial contributions for reform initiatives were matched by the SFAC organization.
The FamilyTech partnership consisted of business representatives from the Citicorp Foundation, as well as community representatives from The Education Fund and P.L. Dodge Foundation Inc. FamilyTech was implemented across the three school districts of Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. Within these districts, 10 public elementary schools were selected for participation based on criteria delineating that the majority of the school population be composed of minority students, and that a majority of the student body be eligible for free or reduced lunches.
