Influence of Parental Involvement on Students

INFLUENCE OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT ON STUDENTS’ SUCCESS IN TITLE I CHARTER SCHOOL IN TEXAS AS PERCEIVED BY MIDDLE SCHOOL PRINCIPALS

A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the College of Graduate Studies Lamar University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership by Salih Aykac January 2018

INFLUENCE OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT ON STUDENTS’ SUCCESS IN TITLE I CHARTER SCHOOL IN TEXAS AS PERCEIVED BY MIDDLE SCHOOL PRINCIPALS by SALIH B.AYKAC Approved:

_________________________________ Clementine Msengi Dissertation Chair _________________________________ Sandra Harris Committee Member ________________________________ Vicki Marshall Committee Member

_________________________________ Brett Welch Director, Doctoral Program; Committee Member _________________________________ Diane Mason Acting Chair, Department of Educational Leadership ________________________________ Robert J. Spina Dean, College of Education and Human Development ________________________________ William E. Harn Dean, College of Graduate Studies

© 2018 by Salih Aykac No part of this work may be reproduced without permission except as indicated by the “Fair Use” clause of the copyright law. Passages, images, or ideas taken from this work must be properly credited in any written or published materials.

ABSTRACT INFLUENCE OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT ON STUDENTS’ SUCCESS IN TITLE I CHARTER SCHOOL IN TEXAS AS PERCEIVED BY MIDDLE SCHOOL PRINCIPALS by Salih Aykac The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study was to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by middle school principals. Ten middle school principals of Title I charter schools in Texas were interviewed in this study. Each interview was analyzed carefully before combining them to develop a complete picture of the phenomenon. Coding and pseudonyms were used for each participant to maintain anonymity and confidentiality of data and records in the study. The findings suggested that most of the principals considered the parental involvement as a combination of different expectations set for both parents and school. Thus, school and the parents must work together and take joint responsibility for the students’ education in school. Other findings from this study also show that charter school principals are experiencing less parental involvement as students move from elementary to middle school. Finally, the findings from this study affirm that all principals strongly believe that parental involvement has a big influence on students’ success.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my God, The Almighty, for providing me this opportunity and for letting me complete it successfully. “My God! Enrich me with knowledge…” To my wife, Muhsine: you accepted a big challenge when I started the doctorate program. While you were working on your Master’s degree, at the same time not only did you take care of our wonderful three kids, and myself but you also encouraged me every time I felt overwhelmed. You sacrificed your days, nights and weekends for us and I have never heard a single complaint about it. Your indispensable trust allowed me to follow my dreams and to do more. Thank you, and I love you! To my beautiful, lovely kids, Husna, Nesibe and Mustafa, I know you were the ones most affected during this process and I feel a little sad that I did not have enough time to play with you as much as I wanted to. But the good news is that now we will have lots of time to do whatever you want to do together. I will be free on weekends! Thank you for your understanding. I cannot wait to go fishing, jumping on the trampoline, watching movies and playing with you. I love you a lot! To faculty of Lamar University, I am extremely grateful for the support and encouragement I have received from the entire faculty at Lamar University. Since the very first course, all our instructors made the process very easy for all of us. It has been exceptional. As Dr. Mixon always reminded us during our webinars “May the process be with you!”

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To my chair Dr. Clementine Msengi, thank you for supporting and guiding me along the way. Your support and willingness to help made me feel comfortable moving forward with my study. To Dr. Harris, Dr. Welch and Dr. Marshall, thank you very much for serving as my dissertation committee. I am very honored to know and work with you. You are all doing an OUTSTANDING job at Lamar University. I feel very thankful. To the charter school principals who participated in my study, thank you for your time and sharing your insights with me. I admire all your efforts to provide better schooling to children of our nation. Last but not least, thanks go to my mom, dad and my brothers. Even though you were not here physically, I always felt you with me through your prayers. I love you!

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Table of Contents List of Tables

xii

Chapter I

Page

Introduction to the Study

1

Background of the Problem

4

Problem Statement

5

Purpose of the Study and Research Questions

6

Rationale and Significance of the Study

7

Assumptions

7

Limitations

8

Delimitations

8

Definitions of Terms

8

Summary and Organization of the Study II

Review of the Literature

10 11

Parental Involvement and Student Success

11

History of Title I Schools

13

Title I Schools

14

No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds Act

14

Charter Schools

15

Parental Involvement in Middle School

17

Home and School Collaboration

18

Creating a Parent-friendly School Environment

20

Role of Principals

21

v

Role of Parents

III

IV

23

Principals Leadership & Parental Involvement

24

Parental Involvement and Barriers

25

Climate and Culture in School

28

Summary

30

Methodology

31

Research Questions

31

Research Design

31

The Participants and Settings

32

Data Collection Procedures

34

Treatment of the Data

35

Provisions of Trustworthiness

36

Epoché

36

Summary

37

Assisting and Partnering Are Better Words than Involved

38

Meaning of Parental Involvement among Principals

39

Influence of Parental Involvement on Student Success

41

Effective Parental Involvement Activities

42

Best Effective Parental Involvement Activities at Home

49

Effective Communication Strategies for Better Parental Involvement

50

The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them V

It’s Like Planting a Tree

53 57

vi


58


61


63


66


67

The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them VI

Communication Is as Important as Blood Is to a Body

72 77


78


81


82


84


84

The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them VII

It’s All about Two-Way Communication

86 88


88


92


93


96


96

The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them

vii

100

VIII

Get-to-Get Together. Share. Listen. …and Make them Happy

103


104


106


106


110


111

The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them IX

Be Active in Your Child’s Education

114 117


118


120


120


122


123

The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them X

Be Proactive

125 127


128


130


130


132


132

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The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them XI

We are Partners

135 137


138


139


140


141


141

The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them XII

Be Visible

142 144


144


146


147


148


149

The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them XIII

We are True Partners of our Parents

150 151


151


153


154


ix

155


156

The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them XIV

Narrative Analysis

158 159

Research Question One

159

Collaborative Efforts and Working Together

160

From Customer/Partner Point of View

162

Based on Leadership Style

165

Research Question Two

166

Research Question Three

169

Open Door Policy

169

Home Visit Program

170

Suggested Activities at Home

172

Effective Communication Practice

173

Parent-Teacher Communication Routines

174

Parent Program and Activities

176

Parents in Decision-Making Process

178

Research Question Four

180

Language Barrier

180

Parents’ Work Schedule

181

Not Having Up-to-Date Contact Information

182

Parents Get Upset with Rules and Regulations

184

Lack of Knowledge on Cultural Awareness Among Teachers

184

x

Lack of Time

185

Family Issues

186

Summary XV

187

Summary, Conclusions, Implications, and Recommendations Summary of the Study

188 188

Overview of the Problem

189

Purpose Statement and Research Questions

190

Review of the Study Design

191

Participants

191

Data Collection and Analysis

191

Summary of Major Findings

192

Conclusions

193

Implications for Practice

200

Recommendations for Future Research

202

Concluding Remarks

203

References

205

Appendices

217

Appendix A Interview Guided Protocol

218

Appendix B Letter of Invitation to Participate in Study

223

Appendix C Subject Consent to Participation in Research

226

Appendix D Institutional Review Board Approval

229

Appendix E NIH Certificate

230

Biographical Note

231

xi

List of Tables

Table

Page

Table 1 Demographics Information of Participants

xii

33

Aykac 1 Chapter I Introduction of the Study Concerns about parental involvement have been an issue at US schools. (Fishman & Nickerson, 2015; Lloyd-Smith & Baron, 2010; White, 2007). Historically, educators and public officials have raised their concerns about lack of parental involvement in schools (Watson, Sanders-Lawson, & McNeal, 2012). Englund, Egeland, and Collins (2008) argued that children’s educational success relies on the support both parents and teachers receive to develop positive interpersonal relationships with children. This is true not only for children who are at high risk of educational failure, but also those children who appear to be doing well academically and behaviorally. Researchers have shown that parental involvement increases students’ achievement (Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004; Warren, 2010). According to Batista (2009), any factors that help to increase students’ achievement should be seriously considered to meet the demand for higher achievement and improve successful school systems. LaFolette (2014) argued that quality parental involvement is one of the key factors increasing student achievement and it has become a vital and essential element in school improvement efforts. Harris and Goodall (2008) claimed that parental involvement is one of the most effective school improvement strategies and makes a big difference on students’ success at schools. Barnyak and McNelly (2009) emphasized that school leaders should create a strong partnership with parents and a promising atmosphere for students’ learning and parental involvement to improve school success. In addition, Schubert (2010) suggested that principals play a crucial role in effectiveness and continued partnership with parents

Aykac 2 in school. Cox-Petersen (2011) asserted, “Partnerships are necessary to obtain high educational achievement for all students – regardless of gender, socioeconomic status, family make-up, or ethnic group” (p. 16). Benson and Ogletree (2012) suggested that educators consider open houses and in-school activities as the primary means to welcome parents. However, it is not easy for some parents to feel comfortable when visiting their children’s school. It is important that parents, teachers, and administrators maintain a good home-school partnership. StoneJohnson (2014) suggested that the approaches of school leaders play a critical role in improving school success and creating a welcoming school culture. Principals should ensure that parents are valued and have a positive experience at the school. Principals must take time to understand parents’ perceptions in order to utilize the best parental involvement strategies in their school. Burke (1999) argued that as students move into middle and high school level, parental involvement significantly decreases. Archibald, Grabber, and Brooks-Gunn (2008) claimed that the biological and social changes young adults experience starting in their middle school years influence their academic motivation. Thus, parental involvement becomes more important during early adolescence. However, Hartas (2014) noted that when students move up to middle and high school, parental involvement drops off. Hornby and Lafaele (2011) posited that parents’ and educators’ aims differ on parental involvement, student success and roles of parents. In addition, Bower and Griffin (2011) indicated that schools had not clearly defined or understood the forms of parental involvement in middle school, resulting in low parental involvement and, therefore, low student achievement.

Aykac 3 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) gave parents more choices, including the flexibility to transfer their kids to schools that are not necessarily in their school zone, provided their school is Title I and identified by the state for school improvement (U.S. Department of Education, 2017). One of the school choices for parents is charter schools (NAPCS, 2017a). The National Alliance for Public Schools (NAPCS, 2017a) defined the charter schools as schools chosen by parents that are open enrollment, tuition-free public schools, funded by state, often independent from traditional public school districts and run privately. According to NAPCS, charter schools provide high-quality instruction and focuses on specific areas such as STEM, special education or performing arts. Charter schools are eligible to receive Title I funds (U.S. Department of Education, 2004). Walberg (2007) claimed that since the first charter school opened in early 90s, there is a growing interest in charter schools among parents. Charter schools offer more academic options to parents whose children are trapped in regular school districts. Knaak and Knaak (2013) noted that the charter school movement is an educational reform that brings innovations and flexibility into the instruction provided in public education systems. Knaak and Knaak argued that most of the parents who chose the charter schools are academic oriented concerned public school parents. In addition, Buddin and Zimmer (2005) claimed that mostly lower-class parents and minority groups benefit from charter schools. Minnesota legislated the nation’s first charter school law in 1991. California followed Minnesota and passed its first charter school law in 1992 (Chen 2007). Texas authorized the charter school law in 1995 (TEA, 2017). In a short period of time, interest among parents in charter schools increased rapidly NAPCS, 2013) and within a few years

Aykac 4 almost half the states in the U.S. had passed legislation to provide same options to their parents. According to NAPCS (2017b) as of today 44 states and Washington, D.C allow charter schools to operate. The number of charter schools has reached over 6900 nationwide, serving more than three million students in the United States during the 2016-17 school year (NAPCS, 2017b). This chapter includes the background of the problem, the purpose of the study, the rationale and significance of the research, assumptions, limitations, delimitations, and definitions. Background of the Problem NCLB Action Briefs (2004) legislated that all schools receiving Title I funds must have a written parental involvement policy and must take the steps necessary to implement this policy effectively. These schools are not allowed to receive Title I funds until this policy is written and the implementation requirements are met (NCLB Action Briefs, 2004). U.S. Department of Education (2015) announced that President Obama signed a new educational law on December 10, 2015, called Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaced NCLB. ESSA put more requirements on schools for implementing better parental involvement strategies and required all Title I schools to reserve at least 1% of Title I funds to support parent and family engagement activities and involve parents in deciding how to use these funds. The primary intent of this law is to increase low-income and disadvantaged students’ success in schools by increasing parental involvement and engagement in Title I schools.

Aykac 5 Boykin and Noguera (2011) pointed out that the efficiency and effectiveness of the education system in the US is not currently sufficient when compared to other countries’ education systems. Moreover, US students’ performance in math, reading and science falls in the middle when ranked in comparison to their non-US counterparts. One of the major factors of other countries’ high performance (especially in Asia and Europe) in education systems are those of parent values, supports and school participation. As Epstein (2010) suggested, all educational reform should be done to increase student success and student achievement in schools. Riost-Harrist (2011) indicated that parental involvement and school events had positive effects on student achievement. Parental involvement becomes more important in Title I schools since they generally are lower performing and of lower socio-economic status with low parental involvement. Problem Statement Schubert (2010) argued that principals are the leaders of the school who, in a variety of ways, set the tone of both the school culture and daily interactions with parents and the community. Their perspectives on parental involvement set expectations and provide an important model for the staff and teachers. Barnyak and McNelly (2009) conducted a study in a school district to find out administrators’ and teachers’ beliefs on parental involvement in their school after implementing an action plan to increase parental involvement. They found that even though most of the educators were responsive to parental involvement, some teachers had no idea about the opportunities available to parents that were offered by their school.

Aykac 6 There are intensive studies done on parental involvement and students’ achievement (Powell, Son, File, & San Juan, 2010). Smith (2008) indicated that most of the studies focused on the impact of parental involvement on students’ achievement and discussed the types of parental involvement, the quality and quantity of parental involvement and impact on students’ achievement. Some other studies compared the perception of teachers and parents on parental involvement, but only a few researchers looked at perceptions of principals on family engagement (Haack, 2007; McGhee, 2007). Judith (2011) argued that a principal’s perception or his/her leadership style could affect the environment of the school. Thus, to build a school where not only students but also parents are engaged and feel welcomed, there is need for a clear understanding of middle school principals’ perceptions of parental involvement. The Purpose of the Study and Research Questions The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study was to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by middle school principals. The following questions guided the study: 1. How do principals define parental involvement? 2. What do principals observe regarding the influence of parental involvement on student success? 3. What are the most effective practices principals implement regarding parental involvement? 4. What challenges do principals encounter regarding parental involvement and how can these be overcome?

Aykac 7 Rationale/Significance of the Study Research showed evidence that there is a positive correlation between parental involvement and students’ achievement (Martin, 2015). Since state and federal governments want to improve schools’ and the nation’s report card, principals have a crucial responsibility to make sure all of their students become successful (Schubert, 2010). The school culture and the expectations set by principals are an important factor in impacting students’ achievement after teachers (Leithwood et.al, 2004). Additionally, the level of parental involvement mostly depends on principals’ encouragement; thus, knowing the perceptions of principals is essential to the success of the school (Judith, 2011). This study will provide an understanding of the relation between middle school principals’ beliefs and practices and parental involvement in Title I schools. Assumptions According to Simon (2011), assumptions make the study relevant but they are out of the researcher’s control. Leedy and Ormrod (2010) posited, “Assumptions are so basic that, without them, the research problem itself could not exist” (p. 62). Therefore, the following assumptions were made in this study: 1. Participants are representative of Title I charter middle school from urban districts in Texas. 2. Participants answered the questions honestly and openly. 3. The research questions were developed to understand the principals’ perception of parental involvement regardless of participants experience, age, or gender.

Aykac 8 Limitations Simon (2011) defined limitations as potential weaknesses of the study that are out of control of researcher. The following factors are the limitations of this study. Findings cannot be generalized for other school districts. Participants’ honesty and openness are limitations to this study since participants might provide responses they think the researcher wants to hear. Researcher bias might affect the results as well. Other limitations include gender, age, and experience of the principals, population of schools and their geographical locations might affect the results. Delimitations Unlike limitations, Simon (2011) noted that researchers could control the delimitations, which limit the scope of study and define the boundaries of the research. This study focused on Title I charter middle schools only, and the data were collected from 10 principals. Six through eighth grade (6-8), six through twelve grade (6-12) or Kindergarten through eighth grade (K-8) Title I charter schools located in Texas were classified as middle school for the purpose of this study. In addition, years of employment of principals are delimitations; this study required principals to have at least one year of leadership at the same campus or at least one year of leadership experience at charter schools having six through eight grade level in previous years. Definitions 

Charter School: NAPCS (2017a) defined the charter schools as schools chosen by parents that are open enrollment, tuition-free public schools, funded by state, often independent from traditional public school districts and run privately.

Aykac 9 

ESSA: The U.S. Department of Education (2015) announced a new law signed by President Obama in December 2015 that determines the policy for United States K-12 public education. The law replaced its predecessor, NCLB. Under ESSA, states and districts that receive federal funds to support students from low-income families, known as Title I, must develop plans to strengthen the education of all students. ESSA requires states and districts to engage parents in the development of these plans.



NCLB Act: This act passed Congress in 2001 and was signed into law by President G. W. Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, is the most recent update to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. One of the programs within the ESEA that has a strong parental involvement component is Title I. NCLB requires that all schools receiving Title I dollars have a written parental involvement policy developed jointly with and agreed upon by parents and educators. It must be distributed to parents and educators of children participating in Title I programs. It must ensure that successful strategies to encourage and sustain active parental involvement are in place in every school (U.S. Department of Education, 2012).



Title I: U.S. Department of Education (2012) defined “Title I" as the federal program that provides funding to local school districts with high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families to improve student academic achievement. It is part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that was first passed in 1965 and is reauthorized by Congress from time to time, often under a new name.

Aykac 10 Summary and Organization of the Study In Chapter I, the researcher introduces the study. Chapter II is the literature review related to the study, including a history of Title I schools, NCLB and ESSA, charter schools, parental involvement in middle schools, home school connection, creating a parent-friendly environment in school, roles of principals and parents, parental involvement and barriers and school climate and culture. In Chapter III, the researcher describes the methodology of the design of the study. In Chapter IV through Chapter XIII, the researcher shares the participants’ individual insights. In Chapter XIV the researcher presents the analysis of findings. Chapter XV contains a summary of the study, conclusions, and implications for practice and recommendations for future studies.

Aykac 11 Chapter II Review of the Literature The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study was to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by middle school principals. The chapter is organized in the following way: parental involvement and student success, history of Title I schools, home and school collaboration, creating parent-friendly school environment, principals’ leadership and parental involvement, parental involvement and barriers, school climate and culture. The chapter ends with a summary. Parental Involvement and Student Success Parental involvement and its influence on children’s education has received more attention recently with the worldwide changes in politics, history, and the economy (Radisic, 2010). The concerns about parental involvement have been an issue at US schools for a long time (White, 2007). Historically, school administrators and teachers have voiced their concerns about parental involvement in their schools, especially as it pertains to the academic, psychological, and physiological welfare of children (Watson et al., 2012). Students’ school performance is heavily impacted by parents and families’ involvement in their education (Epstein, Clark, & Sanders, 1999; Henderson & Mapp, 2002). The research conducted within the past two decades suggests that parental involvement in school improved student success (Constantino, 2008). The expectations and job description of principals have evolved and changed throughout the years. The application of leadership is not as same as in the past. Gordon

Aykac 12 and Seashore-Louis (2009) argued that school leaders need to make more holistic and authentic efforts to address the issues in their community to increase the level of school success. The success of the students’ academic achievement correlates with the ability of principals to navigate the needs of the community. Fuligni and Fuligni (2007) argued that in addition to principals’ leadership ability, another factor that influences students’ success is parent involvement. Radisic (2010) argued that school principals have an important role of continued process of development of schools in implementing the improvements of educational quality and school effectiveness. Schubert (2010) argued that principals are the key factor in creating a strong partnership with parents and a promising atmosphere for student learning. Principals’ supports are very crucial for effectiveness and continued partnership with parents. Cox-Petersen (2011) asserted, “Partnerships are necessary to obtain high educational achievement for all students – regardless of gender, socioeconomic status, family make-up, or ethnic group” (p. 16). Warren (2010) noted that many research studies have revealed that parental involvement increases student success. Thus, having partnerships and effective communication with families is crucial for schools. As the school climate becomes more parent-friendly (Hornby, 2000), parents become more engaged and feel comfortable becoming involved in school events. Epstein’s (2010) framework considers involvement as the shared efforts of parents, community, and school. The concept of Epstein’s parental involvement is based on a multidimensional approach that creates a parentfriendly climate to increase student success. Epstein’s (2010) six types of parental involvement are; (a) parenting, (b) communicating, (c) volunteering, (d) learning at

Aykac 13 home, (d) decision making, and (e) collaborating with the community. Epstein suggested that the level of interaction between family, school, and community supports student success. Judith (2011) suggested that a principal’s perceptions or his/her leadership style affects the school environment. In order to build a school where not only students but also parents engage and feel welcomed, understanding principals’ perception of parental involvement is crucial. Powell (2010) noted that research, policy, and procedure have primarily centered on parent involvement in activities at schools, such as volunteering or participating in school events. NCLB brought new responsibilities and accountability measures for Title I schools across the nation to increase student achievement through parental involvement (Steward, 2008). History of Title I Schools April 9, 1965, Congress passed Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a major component in the education system, to provide the equal opportunity for all children to have high-quality education. The purpose was to distribute funds to low-achieving and high-poverty schools where the majority of students are from low-income families (U.S. Department of Education, 2012). According to United States Department of Education (1992), students from low-income families attending highpoverty school districts are more likely to be low-achievers than their peers attending low-poverty schools. In 2001, President G.W. Bush signed NCLB, which reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. NCLB required schools

Aykac 14 to have parents involved in their children’s education. When parents become more involved, children achieve higher and school success improves (NCLB Action Briefs, 2004). Title I schools. According to U.S. Department of Education (2012) Title I is the largest federal program available for elementary and secondary schools. Schools with more than 40% of children from low-income families are eligible to use Title I funds for school-wide programs. Low-income students are identified according their participation in free/reduced lunch programs. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2011) indicated that Title I schools get funding from the federal government to close the academic achievement gap that exists between minority and majority populations. According to the Institute of Education Sciences at the NCES (2011), 66,646 schools in the nation received Title I funds in the 2010-2011 academic school year. Schools receiving Title I funds are required to create parental involvement plans and provide academic support to low-income students identified as academically behind or at risk of failing to increase student achievement (U. S. Department of Education, 2011). No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Parental involvement is primarily highlighted in research, policies, and procedures in schools (Powell et al., 2010). NCLB (2004) reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), which provided a framework to parents, schools and communities to work together to improve teaching and learning in schools. NCLB clearly defined parental involvement and the requirements for it that all schools need to follow (NCLB Action Briefs, 2004). The U.S. Department of Education (2015) announced a new educational law signed by President Obama, ESSA, which replaced NCLB. ESSA

Aykac 15 put more requirements on schools for better parental involvement strategies implemented in schools and requires all Title I schools to reserve at least 1% of their Title I funds to support parent and family engagement activities as well as involve parents in deciding how to use these funds. The biggest intent of this law is to increase low-income and disadvantaged students’ success in schools by increasing parental involvement and engagement, particularly in Title I schools. Charter Schools NAPCS (2017a) defined the charter schools as schools that are chosen by parents, and are open enrollment, tuition-free public schools, funded by the state, run privately and often independently from traditional public school districts. Charter schools are a new concept to the public education system, and operate under a performance contract or charter that lets them be innovative and flexible. Chen (2007) noted that the state of Minnesota legislated the nation’s first charter school law in 1991 and California followed Minnesota as the second state to pass its first charter school law in 1992. Texas authorized charter schools in 1995 (TEA, 2017). Interest among parents in charter schools increased rapidly after 1991(NAPCS, 2013) and within a few years almost half the states in the US had passed legislation to provide the same options for their parents. According to NAPCS (2017b), as of today 44 states and Washington D.C allow charter schools to operate. The number of charter schools has reached over 6900 nationwide, serving more than three million students in the United States during the 2016-2017 school year (NAPCS, 2017b). The NAPCS noted that a big majority of the charter schools are newly created, while about 10% of them are converted from regular

Aykac 16 public schools. Even though charter schools usually serve all grade levels, there are different combinations such as K-3, K-6, K-8, K-12 and6-12 schools. Both the number of students at charter schools and the size of charter schools are increasing every year. According to NAPCS (2017), charter schools provide high-quality instruction and focus on specific areas such as college prep, STEM, special education, citizenship, character or performing arts. Charter schools are eligible to receive Title I fund (U.S. Department of Education, 2004). The NPCSA noted that even though some of the public school laws and requirements apply to charter schools, they are more flexible and are exempt from many local and state rules and regulations, giving them more autonomy. States hold charter schools accountable for academic success and financial responsibilities. The U.S. Department of Education (2012) emphasized that while charter schools are given flexibility on most of the local and state requirements, in return they must produce certain student achievement to be able to keep their contract. Typically states approve three to five year contracts with charters and, based on the schools’ accountability ratings, approve or revoke the charters. Walberg (2007) claimed that since the first charter school opened in early 90s, there has been a growing interest in charter schools among parents. Charter schools offer more academic options to parents whose children are trapped in regular school districts. Knaak and Knaak (2013) noted that the charter school movement is an educational reform that brings innovation and flexibility into the instruction provided by public education systems. Knaak and Knaak argued that most parents who choose charter schools are public school parents concerned about academics. In addition, Buddin and Zimmer (2005) claimed that even though there are some people against the charter school

Aykac 17 idea, charter schools have become an effective option for many parents, mostly for lowerclass parents and those from minority groups. Buckley (2011) noted that parents choose charter schools because of the higher level of accountability. Parental Involvement in Middle School Burke (1999) argued that as students move into middle and high school level, parental involvement significantly decreases. Archibald et al. (2008) claimed that since youth start having biological and social changes starting in their middle school years, it influences their academic motivation which causes low achievement. Thus, parental involvement becomes more important during early adolescence. However, Singh et al. (1995) noted that parents tend to be less involved when their children move up to middle school. Griffiths-Prince 2009 argued that one of the reason for less parental involvement in middle school is the influence of a similar physical and emotional transition on parents or guardians. Another reason is the lack of confidence of parents have in helping their kids with their classes in middle school. Griffiths-Prince concluded by noting that middle school is a critical year for children because it is when they start separating themselves from home and the family. Park and Holloway (2013) noted that as students move in to middle and high school, parental involvement become irrelevant and less effective. Hornby and Lafaele (2011) claimed that one of the reasons for less parental involvement in middle school was the student age, as they get older, they don’t want to have their parent around them. In addition Smetena (2011) discussed that parents’ and child’s behavior changes as children

Aykac 18 get older and their relation becomes less “hierarchical” and more “bidirectional.” As a support of Smetena, Hartas (2014) claimed that parents support become less effective as students grow up. Schnee and Bose (2010) claimed that because of the complexity of subjects in middle school, parents are not feeling comfortable to help their kids. McGill, Hughes, Alicea and Way (2012) claimed that because of the different structure in middle school, parents change their involvement way and choose to supervise their children’s homework instead providing a direct help. Wang and Shiekh-Khalil (2014) discussed that parents give more autonomy to their kids and decrease their involvement as they grow up. Home and School Collaboration Cutler (2000) noted that parent participation became more popular to determine a level of strong home-school relations after 1950s. Cutler (2000) suggested that before and after-school activities were the most popular ways to have parents involved in their children’s school before 1950. Since then, parental involvement has evolved and become an opportunity to provide input in the curriculum taught in schools. In addition, Barton and Coley (2007) shared that since students spend more time at home than school, the parent and the home environment is very important to students’ education. Shirvani (2007) argued that because students spend most of their time at home rather than at school, parents are the key component for their academic success. Shirvani claimed that being in an academically supported environment helps students to easily increase their learning.

Aykac 19 Padgett (2006) claimed that even though schools and parents understand the importance of parental involvement, the relationship between parents and school is problematic. Therefore, the first step should be to identify the reasons for this problem in order to establish a parent-school partnership. According to Flynn and Nolan (2008) insufficient training provided to teachers and parents about parental involvement and parents not feeling secure are the biggest obstacles toward building this relationship. In addition to this, Ingram, Wolfe, and Lieberman (2007) suggested that ignorance is another main reason for lack of strong parent-teacher partnerships in schools. Miller, Lines, Sullivan, and Hermanutz (2013) found that home-school partnerships and student achievement have a positive relationship, which increases teachers’ morale and job satisfaction. Martinez (2004) suggested that a better homeschool connection leads to better academic gains for students. Rapp and Duncan (2012) suggested a similar argument: that students succeed when schools have parents involved in their children’s education. McCarthy, Brennan, and Vecchiarello (2011) argued that building a strong cooperative parent-school relationship is a crucial step in education because in high school completion, parental involvement is the most important determining factor (Anderson & Minke, 2007). This is why schools should encourage parents to be involved in their children’s education at every opportunity (VanVoorhis, 2003). Altschul (2011) indicated that educators define parental involvement in many different ways. They classified parental involvement in two categories: home-based involvement and school-based involvement. Toren (2013) defined home-based involvement as parents helping with homework, talking about school, and encouraging

Aykac 20 their children. In addition to Toren’s definition, Campbell and Verna (2007) identified home-based parent involvement as encouraging children not only toward academic activities but also encouraging them to develop their personal interests and a life-long work ethic. Toren (2013) defined school-based involvement as, “A relationship with the school system that reflects parents’ judgment that they need the school to help their children” (p. 644). School-based involvement includes parent-teacher conferences, meetings, and attendance at school events during the day time or evening (Lightfoot, 2004). Pomerantz, Moorman, and Litwack (2007) defined this type of involvement as direct or traditional parental involvement. Schools can create advisory councils, advocacy groups, encourage parents to be a part of their children’s education at school, organize parent-teacher conference, PTOs, or PTAs and committees to “develop a network to link all families with parent representatives” (Epstein, 2010, p. 16). Colombo (2006) found that some schools increased not only parental involvement, but also student achievement by hiring bilingual parent coordinators to remove language barriers and help minority parents better understand the school culture and feel comfortable getting involved in activities. Creating A Parent-Friendly School Environment Students become more successful when schools solicit more parental involvement from the early age of students (U.S. Department of Education, 1996). Creating a bridge between schools and home makes learning real and relevant to students (Wolfendale & Bastiani, 2000). According to Epstein (2010), having a positive parent-friendly school environment increases parental involvement, which yields better results in student

Aykac 21 achievement than all other individual initiatives. Bauch and Goldring (2000), emphasized that parents become more involved and engaged when schools provide caring and welcoming environments. Role of principals. The principal is the key person to create a parent-friendly school environment (Epstein & Rodriguez-Jansorn, 2004) and implement a leadership style that gives parents opportunities to be heard (Stelmach & Preston, 2008). Batista (2009) claimed that principals are the main component of implementing parental involvement strategies in schools; they must be aware of their attitudes as they communicate the objective. Scanlan (2010) suggested that strong school-home communication, principals’ personal attention towards parental involvement, and the strategies they implement in their schools reduce the barriers toward parental involvement. The role of the principals has been redefined and they are expected to nurture effective relationships with parents and provide a school atmosphere where parents feel valued and important (Barnyak & McNelly, 2009). Rapp and Duncan (2012) concurred and stated that principals are the key component of students’ academic success by establishing a school culture that values parental involvement. Both Christenson (2004), and Wong (2006) argued that school leaders must create a collaborative environment where goals are created and shared by parents and teachers to increase parental involvement in students’ education. Barnyak and McNelly (2009) concluded that principals directly impact parental involvement in a school.

Aykac 22 Aldridge (2015) noted that once principals create a good school-home partnership, there will be more communication between parents and schools. One of the main reasons for miscommunication or misunderstanding is not having parents involved in their children’s schooling. Even though most principals are aware of the importance of parental involvement and value the influence of parental involvement in increasing student achievement (Auerbach, 2007), they need help in finding the most effective ways, resources and activities to increase parental involvement (Aldridge, 2015). Nearly 30 years ago, Cotton and Wikelund (1989) suggested that parents’ eagerness, capacity, and availability differ from one another when it comes to parental involvement; therefore, principals must find different strategies to involve parents in their children’s education. The Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA (2011) suggested that school leaders must consider all possible ways to get rid of barriers and increase the connections between parents and schools for better parental involvement. Schools must work on better scheduling to ensure all parents have opportunities to be involved in their children’s school activities (Rapp & Duncan, 2012). When schools have events, principals must make sure that there are multiple opportunities for parents to attend school functions and provide transportation, childcare, and even meals (Payne 2006). Johnson, Clarke, and Dempster (2005) reported that the language used by principals, affects parental involvement in schools; positive communication and clear language help to build home-school partnerships. Flynn and Nolan (2008) suggested that principals should connect with families early in the year to overcome barriers toward establishing healthy partnerships before parents become defensive. They concluded that establishing this healthy relationship

Aykac 23 early in the year creates a positive atmosphere that leads parents become more receptive when they receive teacher input about any concerns. Researchers have shown that there is a decline in parental involvement as students move up to the high school level (Stone, 2006). According to Herrold and O’Donnell (2008), as the grade level of students goes up, participation in parent-teacher conferences go down. Therefore, Batista (2009) argued that secondary school principals should create meaningful programs and opportunities for parental involvement beyond identifying the obstacles related to parental involvement. Batista claimed that principals are the main component in implementing parental involvement strategies in schools; therefore, they have to be aware of their attitudes as they communicate the issue. Gruenet (2008) suggested that principals should look at the consequences of their leadership styles and their influence on school culture and parental involvement. Role of parents. Epstein, Simon, and Salinas (1997) took the parental involvement activities from home level to the building level. Parents can encourage their children at home for high achievement and further learning and set educational goals with them (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2007; Patel & Stevens, 2010). Parents should communicate with teachers often (Reynolds, 2010) and ask about their children’s progress (Korkmaz, 2007). Even though most parents support their children and want them to get a good education and go to high performing schools, some students do not get the same support from their families because their parents are less informed; thus, these students do not make enough progress in schools. (Miller, 2008).

Aykac 24 Bagin, Gallagher, and Moore (2008) claimed that ensuring students learn effectively in schools must be the main purpose of school-community relations; they stated that when parents are involved students learn more effectively. In addition, De Fraja and Oliveira (2010) asserted that parents’ involvement has more impact on students’ performance than efforts made by the school or the child alone, and students became more productive when their parents support them at home. Bartel (2010) conducted a study and revealed that the majority of parents are aware of the importance of parental involvement and are involved in their children’s education, and a small percentage of parents contact their children’s teachers and participate in school events. Xu, Kushner-Benson, Mudrey-Camino, and Steiner (2010) found that student performance increases when parents are involved in their children’s school activities, help students with their homework at home and share their expectations with them. Similarly, Altschul (2011) added that parents should help their children beyond school hours, encourage participation in extracurricular activities, provide extra educational resources at home, all of which are important measurements of parental involvement to increase student success. Principal Leadership and Parental Involvement Strong educational leadership is the key factor in good schools (Auerbach, 2010). Barth (1990) stated that strong principal leadership encourages effective schools. In support of Barth’s argument, Sergiovanni (2012) argued, “The quality of schooling is greatly influenced by the principal” (p. 190). In addition, Leithwood et al., (2004) noted that leadership makes a difference in schools. In fact, school reform depends on successful leadership and it is a critical factor for students learning in school. Leithwood

Aykac 25 et al. denoted that improving the troubled schools would be impossible without an effective principal because leadership is a vehicle for a change in school. Principals should start preparing their teachers and parents immediately instead of waiting a long time to implement the changes (Zehler et al., 2008). Lebahn (1995) suggested that among many different solutions to increase parental involvement in secondary schools, the crucial step for the principals is to focus on the concept of parental involvement itself. Peiffer (2003) agreed that principals’ attitudes are key to increasing parental involvement in school programs. Gruenet (2008) suggested that principals should look at the consequences of their leadership styles and their influence on school culture and parental involvement. Likewise, Gibbs and Slate (2003) investigated leadership practices to identify leadership activities that impact parental involvement in secondary schools. Findings showed that (a) principals must be visible and accessible; (b) principals must have strategic plans to address diversity, cultural differences, and students’ needs; (c) principals must keep up with new developments to prepare students for future need; (d) principals must create effective and meaningful leadership programs, and (e) principals must practice self-reflection regarding the influence of their behaviors on particular issues in their schools. Parental Involvement and Barriers Socioeconomic status, work schedules, parents’ past school experiences are some of the important factors that influence parental involvement (LaRocque, Kleiman, & Darling, 2011). Hill and Taylor (2004) studied the relationship between parents’ income and students’ achievement and its impact on parental involvement. They claimed that

Aykac 26 working in hourly-paying job, having limited or no transportation, and not having childcare options (Smith, 2009) for their younger children are the main barriers for lowincome families that limit participation or involvement in school events. As a result, these families either do not participate or try to visit the schools rarely and engage in informal conversations at unscheduled visits to the school (Freeman, 2010). Martin (2015) noted that because of having had a positive experience in their school life, families with high socio-economic status feel more comfortable with schools and are more involved in their children’s education. Lewis (2004) suggested that until NCLB, the focus was on parental involvement in elementary schools only, and, with NCLB, parental involvement became important in secondary schools as well. DePlanty, Coulter-Kern, and Duchane (2007) noted that parents used to believe that as students got older parental involvement would not be needed as much as in early grades. However, many researchers discovered that parental involvement in all levels of education has a substantial positive impact on student achievement (Sanders & Lewis, 2004). Shirvani (2007) confirmed that not only in elementary, but also middle and high school levels, parental involvement is a crucial component of students’ success. Jacobs and Harvey (2005) cited in their study that there is significant difference in student success between students of single parents who are from low-income families and students from high socio-economic families living with both parents. Heard (2007) claimed that growing up with a single parent negatively effects student achievement. Hurly (2005) concluded that as the divorce rate among American families continues to grow, dropout rates will become higher as well.

Aykac 27 Smith (2006) added that encouraging and acknowledging parents’ every effort towards their children’s education would support student achievement in low-income schools. Hornby and Lafaele (2011) found that educators value middle class parents more than working class families. Teachers and staff consider the white middle class parents who are married and are involved in their children’s education as good parents. Another factor of children’s educational success and parental involvement is parents’ educational background (Garcia, 2014) since parent’s academic history and student’s success have a direct connection (Gandara, 1995). Garcia (2014) reported that there is a positive correlation between parents’ educational background and their expectations of student achievement. Garcia found that expectations of parents with no high school diploma are not related to student’s achievement whereas parents with a high school diploma or higher expect high student achievement. Garcia suggested that this information shows that schools must emphasize the importance of graduation and encourage parents and students to graduate from high school and support their opportunities for further education careers. Unal and Unal (2010) claimed that having mostly female teachers in schools also affects parental involvement. They stated that, for some male parents, discussing their children’s academic achievement with female teachers is not easy or comfortable and they leave these responsibilities to their wives. Unal and Unal suggested that male parents are not active when their children have female teachers but are involved if their children have male teachers.

Aykac 28 Nearly 30 years ago Hoover-Demsey and Sandler (1997) stated that methods of communication or invitation by the school creates parents’ perception on parental involvement; they do not want to participate or be involved in school when they sense they not valued or needed by teachers or schools. More recently, Avvisati, Besbas, and Guyon (2010) claimed that parents’ background and environment shape their attitudes and create their perceptions towards school. Hornby (2011) suggested that many teachers consider parents to be weak and look at them as problems or intruders and therefore believe that parents should stay out of schools. When parents see the school’s unwelcoming environment, they feel that schools do not want them to be partners and teachers become sensitive when parents ask questions (DeHass, 2005). Hornby and Lafaele (2011) researched perceptions of parents and found that the parents who believed that their only duty was to bring their children to school and that the school must handle the rest are less likely to be active in their children’s education. In addition, they found that parents of high-achievers or parents who think their children are smart do not feel they need to be involved in their children’s education because the inborn ability of their children will not require extra attention from them; this makes them feel that they do not need to attend school meetings or events. Climate and Culture in School Culture and climate are two different terms (Williams-Boyd, 2011) and are important to study because there is a direct relationship between healthy climates and good schools (Cohen, McCabe, Michelli, & Pickeral, 2009). However, most school administrators do not understand the difference between school culture and school climate (Gruenert, 2008). While school climate is seen as a subjective experience (Cohen

Aykac 29 2006), school culture is viewed as the expectations formed through individual beliefs and practices (Richardson, 2001) and the norms, symbols, and characteristics of the school (Peterson, 2002). MacNeil, Praeter, and Busch (2009) noted, “Organizational theorists have long reported that paying attention to culture is the single most important action that a leader can perform” (p. 73). Martin (2015) suggested that one issue for parental involvement is school climate. When teachers, administrators, and all stakeholders work and share together, the school climate will be more welcoming for students. Thacker, Bell, and Schargel (2009) asserted that school experience affects not only students but also parents and the community, which is why it is crucial to examine school culture and climate. They claimed that school culture should not only support students’ learning, but also parents, families, teachers, and staff participation, especially in schools that have a majority of underserved populations. Social and cultural differences between the parents and the main culture of the school is one of the main reasons that there is less parental involvement among minority parents (Souto-Manning & Swick, 2006). Sanders and Sheldon (2009) asserted that principals are the key factor in shaping school structure, social networks, and culture in school. Sanders and Sheldon believed that principals have the responsibility to re-culture the schools by engaging low-income and minority parents to address and minimize barriers, open communication, and build relationships. Deal and Peterson (2009) argued that school culture has a direct impact on efficiency and productivity of schools.

Aykac 30 MacNeil et al. (2009) noted, “Organizational theorists have long reported that paying attention to culture is the single most important action that a leader can perform” (p. 73). Thacker et al. (2009) asserted that school experience affects not only students but also parents and all communities. Therefore, they believed that it is crucial to examine school culture, as it supports not only student learning but also parents, families, teachers and staff participation, especially in schools that have a majority of underserved populations. Summary In Chapter II, the researcher reviewed the literature on parental involvement and its relation to student achievement, the role of principals and parents in creating a parentfriendly environment, school culture, re-culturing schools, and barriers of parental involvement. The literature demonstrated need for further research related to principals’ perceptions of parental involvement. In Chapter III, the researcher describes the methodology of the design of the study. In Chapter IV through Chapter XIII, the researcher shared the participants’ individual insights. In Chapter XIV the analysis of findings was presented. Chapter XV contains a summary of the study, conclusions, and implications for practice and recommendations for future studies.

Aykac 31 Chapter III Methodology The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study was to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by middle school principals. This chapter discusses the following: the purpose of the study and research questions, research design, participants, setting, data collection, treatment of data, provisions for trustworthiness, epoché, and a summary. Purpose of the Study and Research Questions The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study was to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by principals. The following questions guided the study: 1. How do principals define parental involvement? 2. What do principals observe regarding the influence of parental involvement on student success? 3. What are the most effective practices principals implement regarding parental involvement? 4. What challenges do principals encounter regarding parental involvement and how can these be overcome? Research Design Qualitative research methods are used to explore and understand the phenomena that cannot be revealed through quantitative data about beliefs, opinions, and motivations (Creswell, 2013). According to Savitz-Romer (2012), phenomenological methodology in qualitative research is an effective way to understand a particular phenomenon through an

Aykac 32 individual’s own frame of reference and lived experiences. A phenomenological approach is a highly acceptable design to learn participants’ subjective perceptions. In support of Savitz-Romer, (2012), Creswell (2013) suggested that the phenomenological form of research is one of the best-suited forms of study to understanding several individuals’ common and shared experiences of phenomenon. Therefore, a phenomenological narrative research approach was employed to collect and analyze all participants’ perceptions on parental involvement in this study, with a focus on the investigation of the common perceptions of principals. The Participants and Setting A purposeful sampling method was used to select the participants for this study. Creswell (2009) described purposeful sampling as selecting individuals and sites to purposefully inform an understanding of research problems and central phenomenon in the study. The participant group of this study was a small purposeful sample of ten middle school principals of urban Title I charter schools in Texas who had served at least one full year as a principal in his or her current school, or who had previously served as a principal at least one full year at another charter school with grade six through eight population. Demographics information of participants is shown in Table 1, including demographics information, school locations, grade levels served and school populations. All principals were located in urban areas of Texas from 5 different charter school districts.

Aykac 33 Table 1 Demographics Information of Participants School Name

Ethnicity

Gender

Grade Location

Mrs. Shelly

White

F

Duncanville

K-8

Mr. Manfield

Asian-Indian

M

Cedar Hill

K-12

Mr. Clear

African-American M

South Dallas

5-6

Mr. Alan

Asian

M

Arlington

K-12

Mrs. Katy

White

F

Grand Prairie

K-8

Mr. Bill

White

M

Waco

6-12

Mr. Gilbert

White

M

Garland

7-12

Mr. Dan

White

M

Austin

6-12

Mr. Arthur

White

M

Austin

6-12

Mr. Mark

White

M

Austin

K-8

The researcher used convenience and snowball sampling in this study in addition to purposeful sampling. Creswell (2011) suggested that when the participants were willing to participate, the researcher could use convenience sampling. If convenience sampling is used, the researcher could use snowball sampling by asking participants to suggest new participants for the study. An invitation (Appendix B) was extended first to all Title I middle school principals in DFW, Texas. Principals who accepted the invitation were asked to suggest new principals until the expected number of participants had been reached. After reaching 10 participants, the researcher contacted them via an invitation

Aykac 34 letter (Appendix B) sent by email to set the interview times and methods. Before the interview, the researcher collected consent to participate forms (Appendix C) from each participant. Data Collection The researchers obtained permission from the Lamar University Institutional Review Board to conduct the study prior to contacting individuals for this study (Appendix B). The data collection methods for this study included semi-structured, faceto-face or online conferencing interviews using Google Hangout. Before starting the interview, the researcher informed all the participants about potential outcomes of participating in the study and informed the participants about the purpose of the study. Participation in this study was voluntary. The participants were also told that there were no right or wrong answers, and the opportunity was given to ask additional clarifying questions if they did not understand the interviewer’s questions. During the interview, four (4) open-ended interview questions took place per the interview form (see Appendix A). The duration of the interviews was between 30-50 minutes. Five of the participants were interviewed face to face at their home campuses and the other five participants were interviewed using Google Hangout. Participants were told that they could decline to answer any of the interview questions if they so wished. Participants’ answers were recorded during the interview with their approval. There was neither incentive for participation nor consequence for opting out. Participants’ responses were kept completely anonymous, and no individual names or institutions were recorded during the course of the interviews. Participants’ names were not associated with any research findings. Participants were free to decide

Aykac 35 not to participate in this study. The participants were informed that they could stop or discontinue the interview at any time they felt uncomfortable during the interview without adversely affecting their relationship with the investigator or Lamar University. The researcher audiotaped all the interviews by using two different devices and took handwritten notes during interview sessions to ensure proper transcription. Besides recording the interviews and note taking, the researcher used artifacts, documents, and field notes to enhance data collection procedures. The data were stored electronically in two different secure places. There was no compensation for participation, however, on completion of this study, findings were shared with the participants. Participants’ input was extremely valuable for understanding the perceptions of principals on parental involvement. Treatment of the Data For this qualitative phenomenological study, the researcher followed Creswell’s (2103) recommendations to structure the data, code the data, and represent the data. The researcher transferred all recordings to a password-protected laptop, which was kept in the researcher’s possession at all times. The researcher transcribed the audiotaped interviews within five days of the interview to identify emerging themes. The researcher analyzed the data by using the comparative method after reading over all transcribed interviews. Each interview was analyzed carefully before combining them to develop a complete picture of the phenomenon. Coding and pseudonyms were used for each participant to maintain anonymity and confidentiality of data and records in the study. The researcher completed all interviews, collected the data, and saved it on a passwordprotected computer.

Aykac 36 Provisions of Trustworthiness Creswell (2013) suggested that at least two validation strategies be used to demonstrate credibility of the study. The researcher used: (a) triangulation, (b) member checking, (c) an external auditor, and epoché. The researcher verified the accuracy of what the participant said in the study and identified possible discrepancies by taking the following steps: (a) final transcripts of interviews and the findings were sent to participants to get their feedback on the accuracy of the data and their confirmation was recorded in a process called member checking, (b) the researcher analyzed the data directly without making any comments before performing further interpretation, (c) initial themes for descriptive analysis were created, (d) and clarified researcher bias in the epoché. Epoché Creswell (2013) suggested that in qualitative studies researchers should suspend their existing personal biases, beliefs, or assumptions to understand the pure vision of the phenomenon. This is called bracketing, or an epoché, in qualitative studies. Creating an epoché allows readers to better understand how the study might be affected by the researcher’s personal experiences. The researcher in this study has worked in private and charter schools in different capacities since 2001. The researcher has experiences in elementary, middle school and high school settings as a principal, an assistant principal, and as a math teacher. The researcher worked as a math teacher and assistant principal for eight years before becoming a principal at a Title I public charter school in San Antonio, TX where he worked for three years. He has been serving as a principal for nine years and all the

Aykac 37 schools that he has served were Title I charter schools. He conducted home visits as teacher, as an assistant principal, and as a principal to increase the parental involvement in his school. He is also a parent of three children who are attending Title I schools. Even though the researcher is a principal at a Title I school and a Title I school parent, he set aside his personal bias during the study to get the pure perceptions of other principals. As Hamill and Sinclair (2010) stated in their study, participants’ descriptions always bring the precision rather than the sole interpretations of the researchers if an epoché is used in a study. The researcher had a desire to further his research to provide a better picture of principals’ perceptions on parental involvement. Summary This chapter presented the methodology of the study, purpose of the study, and research questions. In this chapter, the research design, participants, and setting were also described. The data collection and treatment of the data were clarified with all details of process and their validities. The provisions of trustworthiness were clarified along with the epoché. In Chapter IV through Chapter XIII, the researcher shared the participants’ individual insights. In Chapter XIV the analysis of findings was presented. Chapter XV contains a summary of the study, conclusions, and implications for practice and recommendations for future studies.

Aykac 38 Chapter IV Assisting and Partnering Are Better Words than Involved Mrs. Shelly is a very talented educator who earned a Bachelor’s degree in music and has an all level (K-12) Lifetime teaching certification. She also has a Master of Music in Worship Arts. She started teaching in public schools as a music teacher in 1998 and since then she has moved up quite often and worked at in capacities in different settings; she has taught every age group from prekindergarten up to high school in different subjects such as music, elementary science and middle school Latin. She served as Department Chair of Fine Arts for three years and led a high school choir to state competitions for several years. She also taught adult classes in several formats. She explained her educational journey as: I am a music teacher by trade; however, I have taught from prekindergarten to adult level; science in elementary level, Latin in middle school level, adult classes in different format. I have been a public school teacher, I have been a private school teacher, a homeschool mom and now I am a charter school leader. Mrs. Shelly has been working as a principal for almost two years now and has been attending the principal certification program at Lamar University. Before she became a principal, she had worked at her current charter school district as the Attendance Clerk and PEIMS coordinator before then being promoted to the executive assistant of superintendent position. She said that working under the superintendent for several years helped her to understand how to run a school. When I became the executive assistant to the superintendent, at that point I began having a line of authority and learning the functions of the school structure.

Aykac 39 Mrs. Shelly’s charter school is located in Duncanville, TX. The population served by the school was Kindergarten through sixth grade with an enrollment of 220 students. She mentioned that 47% of her students received free and reduced lunch, qualifying her school to be designated a Title I school. The student population was 57% Hispanic, 23% of students were African-American, 18% were white and 1% were other. Meaning of Parental Involvement among Principals When we talked about being a principal in a charter school, Mrs. Shelly mentioned that she liked being a principal, especially in a Title I charter school as it gave her more flexibility in daily operations. She said she liked getting involved in classrooms, and with teachers, parents and the community. Mrs. Shelly acknowledged that the meaning of parental involvement might differ from principal to principal. She believed that parental involvement is the expectation that parents must be partners with teachers in class. She said that when she talked to parents, every parent wanted to get involved in their children’s education. She prepared a list of bullet points regarding parental involvement expectations that must be done by parents and by the school on daily, weekly, monthly, semester and yearly bases. Parent involvement means I have the expectation that you will keep abreast weekly or bi-weekly of your child's progress academically. We have that expectation, we communicate that expectation and we empower them to learn how to use it. Mrs. Shelly emphasized that parents are the first and primary teachers of their children and this continues to be the case during the all the years their child is in school.

Aykac 40 She added that this responsibility never ends; parents must be their children’s lifelong teacher. I think parents are the child's primary teachers, they're the child's first teacher, [the ones who] taught them how to talk, how to walk, how to feed themselves and dress them[selves]. They are a teacher of their child, so the extent continues that they are their teacher even during the school years of that child. They'll continue to be a life teacher after the child is no longer in education. You're the parent of that child and you don't ever release the responsibilities of being a parent to that child even if the child is grown. Mrs. Shelly believed that it is schools’ responsibility to equip parents to successfully assist with their children’s education. She preferred using “assisting and partnering” rather than “involved” as she explained: I guess assisting and partnering are better words than involved because involved to a parent can mean that I come up and run copies for the teachers or I show up at holiday parties for my kid. That is the involvement for them but what I mean when I say involvement is so much more participative than most parents would think. Even though Mrs. Shelly considered parents as partners, she believed that most of the parents see themselves as customers. She thought that there were still parents who see schools or teachers as the keepers of knowledge or as experts and never want to get involved in school business. She said that most of the school systems took over this idea and left parent ownership out of the equation. Thus, a consequence of lack of parental involvement, public school systems were miserably failing. She added that schools must

Aykac 41 give this responsibility back to parents at some point by having them involved in their child’s education. She shared: Ultimately, you're the parent and your child is your responsibility including their education and that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Traditional methods of education tend to see the school or the teacher as the keeper of the knowledge, we are the experts, you send your child to us, we don't touch your world, you don't touch our world and it doesn't work. Our ISDs are failing miserably and the piece that we're missing is the parent ownership of their child's education at some point. We gave over that to the school system and I feel like parents need to take that back because they're still the parent and ultimately the authority over their child. Influence of Parental Involvement on Student Success I then asked Mrs. Shelly to share her beliefs regarding the influence of parental involvement on student success. She gladly shared the following: Well again, I don't know what other principals observe, but I can tell you that without a parental involvement it makes student success that much harder. Is it possible? Absolutely! If I can't get their parents involved, even if I can't change their home life situation, I can empower the student to impose their own order on their own chaos. You can do this all by yourself if you have to and you got to be willing to claw every day for ground that you gained yesterday but it can be done and I feel like when people say that it's only through relationships that happens that you're invalidating all of those of us who didn't have them and still succeeded. And so

Aykac 42 when you say that to a child and they don't feel like they're getting that relationship with the people that they care about, you're invalidating the possibility of their success. I think we unintentionally give that message to students that, you know what, you got a bad home life, nobody cares about you, you're not going to succeed anyway because you don't have that relationship so don't even try and I thought that's wrong, that's an error. So it is hugely impactful for parents to be involved in student success, but I don't think it's an absolute, [I think] that student can do it in spite of that. Effective Parental Involvement Activities Mrs. Shelly’s school does not have a traditional parent teacher organization (PTO or PTA). She called it PAC, parents achieving community and made every single parent in school a part of it. Like other PTO or PTA organizations, PAC has a leadership team. She said that the purpose of this professional learning community is to make sure everyone understands that they have a responsibility not only to the school and to their children but also to each other and other students. She explained: Our parent group, it's not PTO or PTA, we call it PAC, parents achieving community and every parent in the school is part of PAC. Parents are their own best resources in the same way that teachers perform. They are each other's both own best resource and sharpening stones. The parents are the same way, they are each other's own best resources and if we can get them to meet together to discuss common things. Mrs. Shelly utilized social media to enable parents to be more involved in the school. The school has a closed Facebook page dedicated to parents and it is run by one

Aykac 43 of her parents. Parents have been using the Facebook page as a communication tool to ask questions, provide feedback, suggestions or to share their happy times with others. She explained: We have a Facebook page that is closed and it's only for parents. The Dallas campus has one for each grade level because they are so much bigger than we are and parents get on there: “Hey! My dog ate the homework can somebody take a picture of it so that we can complete the assignment on paper on our own. That's parent involvement and responsibility. That's recognizing “I have a circumstance that's hindering me but I am empowered to reach out and get help from other people” or “Can somebody explain to me how to read the periodic table because I have to help my kid do this assignment?” or “Hey! We're going to Six Flags today anybody that wants to come? Y'all come join us! It's a community-building program, a community building process and that's the point. Mrs. Shelly implemented a new parent program called “Snack N’ Chat”. She came up with specific topics to discuss with parents each week and invited parents to stay for a little while after dropping off their children in the morning to have coffee and donuts and talk about the topic she chose. She said: We provide coffee and donuts and we talk about Internet safety, or we talk about how to help your child get their homework done, or anything, all kinds of parent academic topics we will discuss during those little meetings. Mrs. Shelly started a “Family University” which was held on the second Saturday of February. She explained the “Family University”:

Aykac 44 We're having a family university in February that will be a Saturday session where there will be different sessions like any other conference, a professional conference. Parents and the whole family join this university. There are sessions for the children. Last year, we invited Home Depot to come out and do a craft. We invited one of our families that have a karate studio to come in and do a selfdefense session with them. There was a play outside session. There were structured activities; all kinds of things for kids to do while their parents were attending. The older kids, junior high and high school, are invited to attend the sessions with their parents or alongside their parents. There were sessions from creating a family budget, to how to fill out college scholarship applications for your student, to vision casting for the school. There were fish bowl discussions about parent concerns, there were all kinds of things going on during that day and it's three or four hours in the morning. Following the event, we have a picnic lunch and then everybody goes home but it's intended to impact every level of the family. Mrs. Shelly mentioned that they have a site-based decision making committee consisting of parents in their school and they met on an as-needed basis other than having regular meetings throughout the year. She said that this was a very effective way to involve parents and create ownership. She believed that having representatives of parents in this committee enabled her to represent her school’s voice appropriately in district meetings. She said: I've recently gathered together a site based decision-making committee. We had one last year and everybody has moved on so we've started fresh but I have

Aykac 45 specifically asked for two parents that are not in my PAC leadership team. One of them represents one of my smaller demographic subgroups, and one of them represents a student with special needs, but they have students at different levels within K to six and one of them has multiple students in the family. We’ve asked them to be part of our decision-making committee, not just for the campus needs assessment but also [because] I need to be able to have a representative group of my stakeholders that I can bring issues to [on a] district level. Hey! This came up this week, what do you think about that? Do we need to revise the dress code? Should I allow girls to wear black leggings because we say that black or khaki pants are acceptable? What do you think about that? How should I bring this as an issue to the administration on the district level? I need them to be able to speak into issues on our campus so that when I do go to the district level, I feel like I'm representing appropriately the voice of our school, the climate and the culture that is our school. Mrs. Shelly mentioned that as a school they did not have a home visit program. She believed that schools should give enough family time to students and parents to build relationships, especially during holidays. Instead giving them homework from textbooks or assignment sheets, she wanted parents to do math facts while they are driving or read a book together. I have not conducted home visits for my students and we do not have the program. One of the things that make our charter school unique is a reduced time footprint. We're only here five hours and 20 minutes out of the day. We talk about getting time back to the family because if we feel like we're going to ask you to

Aykac 46 partner with your child and, you are your child's first and primary teacher, we feel like character begins in the home and it is impactful in learning. We need to not encroach on family time, there is no homework allowed over any break so Thanksgiving week, Spring Break week, Christmas break any of those. There's no homework, no encroaching on family time outside of the school which makes that parent involvement piece more important because we have to build the relationship with the parent that will allow them to maintain over that break. You know, do math facts on the way to school every morning and while you're out over Christmas, read to your child over summer vacation. You know these are things that it's your responsibility as a parent to keep it going. [It’s] not my responsibility as the teacher to keep it going over break. That's family time. Mrs. Shelly believed that it is very important to have a recognition program throughout the year to be able to increase parental involvement. She said that one easy way to bring parents to school is recognizing their children’s success by organizing some celebration parties and award ceremonies. She thought that, instead of waiting until the end of the year to recognize students and parents, it would be better to have it more often as much as possible. Mrs. Shelly believed that recognition of their child’s progress, even a little progress, is a recognition of their parents’ efforts and shows the school’s appreciation for parents and their support and involvement in their children’s education. She shared: We have lots of recognition programs to celebrate progress for their student. In fact, on Friday this last week we had an award ceremony that I call commendation

Aykac 47 and I feel like, if we wait till the end of a semester or the end of the year to do academic awards, we've lost the momentum. Our mascot is [the] Eagle and our tagline this year is flying higher, whereas the Eagles’ [tagline] last year was “fly high,” so this year we're “flying higher” and it's about progress. I'm not talking about 50,000 feet higher. I'm talking about an inch higher, five inches higher, a foot higher because they need to see that every little bit adds up and the parents need to see that what I'm recognizing that your child's composite average came up four points from the first nine weeks to the second nine weeks. That's big and it's little thing, it doesn't even cost me anything. Mrs. Shelly liked giving awards to students for their progress and she even made herself available to have special recess or lunch with students throughout the year. She believed that when parents come to see their children receiving an award for their progress or having special time with the principal, parents see that the school is recognizing their children’s baby steps and every little baby step is valuable. She said: I gave four awards. One is attendance priority; if you had no tardy and no absences in that six-week period, you got a sticker. Then I call this one “Aviators”, because anybody that's got all A's in their coursework in the second nine-weeks gets a pencil from me, because it's hard for an A student to make progress. It's hard to go from 97 to 98 you know that there are very little progress points to be made there. So, having all A's is an accomplishment. I give another award called “All-in”. All-in means I don't have any zeros in the grade book. I turned in all of my homework assignments. That's rare so those kids get a special recess with me so next week. I will go into the classroom

Aykac 48 and pull out those kids while everybody else is going to keep working they will come play with me for a little while. The fourth award I give is the “Flying higher award” and that's given to an entire homeroom class. I go through and add up all of the progress points for each homeroom and the homeroom that makes the most progress in that nine weeks gets a special party with me at lunch. It's usually their lunch but they get to do it outside with me at the picnic tables. We have a special activity that we'll do a little game or I let them runaround on the field and then maybe a little treat, so it's very cost effective but it's helpful. It's impactful to the kids to see I made this kind of progress every little bit that I'm trying is going to be seen and recognized and considered as valuable. Now that translates to the parent because I'm recognizing that your child is taking baby steps and every little baby step is valuable. Mrs. Shelly made sure every single parent is thanked and greeted when they come to school. She personally tried to talk them, invited parents for upcoming events and asked them to volunteer every time she saw the parents in building. I want to make sure that parents are thanked when they come to the building. Hey! I'm so glad you were able to be here today. We invited parents to come and be a part of that process and are encouraged to volunteer. When we need something, we blast it out. Different people will come each time. Mrs. Shelly organized appreciation lunches for volunteer parents at the end of the school year. She kept a list of everybody who came to volunteer for any little thing, even if parent came just for one time to volunteer at school. She thanked them by providing a special lunch.

Aykac 49 Best effective parental involvement activities at home. Mrs. Shelly described her best parental involvement activities with parents that can be done at home as following: Two things: one, ask parents to make it a priority in their head, make it a discussion in their home every day of learning, look at their child's assignment sheet every day, asking them if they've done their homework, checking to see if they've done their homework and two, admit you don't know everything as a parent. I do that with my teachers too. I did an interview last year. She was a first year teacher and I asked her a question that I knew was going to cause her to doubt her knowledge. I said a fourth grader comes in and says “were the pilgrims at Jamestown or Plymouth?” Now, we know the answer that question, but when you ask it in that way it causes you to go wait! Do I really know? So, she launched into this answer with something. I finally just stopped her and I went [for] what I really was looking for her to say: “I'm not certain but I know where to go find out that.” Kid needs to know that you don't know everything. You have to be willing to be vulnerable and admit that you're still learning too, and you have to model that learning. They need to see you explore, they need to see you learn, they need to see you go find an answer and that's so valuable in the life of a child. It's so lost in our society; we don't want our kids to know that I really don't know a basic multiplication table. I don't know it but it's so much better if that child knows that you don't know it and you admit. They [need to] see you admit it because they won't be able to admit it in the classroom if you don't admit it at home. I'm going

Aykac 50 to fly higher today but many of them won't ever take that step unless it's modeled at home. I mean most of these parents. I know it's been 30 years since they did a long division [problem], they don't have to remember how to do it. They just have to be willing to make sure that their child is being successful in an active way. I think most parents don't take the time to say I don't know. They don't get vulnerable in front of their kids. They don't model being a lifelong learner. You know what! I don't know baby. Let's Google it! And find out! My oldest child is working in Pre-Cal and statistics. I don't know how to do that. I was music major. I had to go through algebra. What's about it you know! But when she says something about struggling with I don't understand then I say let's look at it to get together. Let's Google it! Because there are plenty of things out there that will show. There are plenty of YouTube videos that will show me how to do this and I can walk alongside her in that process. I don't have to know how to do it. I just have to show her that I'm interested in learning something I didn't know, in admitting that I don't know everything. I think that's one of the biggest activities that parents can do is model that desire to be better than they current. Effective communication strategies for better parental involvement. Mrs. Shelly said that there should be no excuses for parents to say “I did not know,” since the school has a system, which provides 24/7 communication opportunities to parents about their children’s academia.

Aykac 51 …one of the things that we do is 24/7 communication through an information system we use Skyward, there's all kinds of systems out there, but there's no excuse of “I didn't know,” there's no excuse for that! You are the parent and it's your job to know! We give you 24/7 real-time access into their academia, find out. That's the whole point. We don't send home report cards or progress reports, it's posted online. You can look at it, you can print it if you want it, but there's no progress reports sent because I feel like when you send home a progress report, what you're unconsciously telling that parent “you don't have to pay attention because in six weeks we're going to force you to pay attention.” That's not what we're about and that's not parent ownership of their child's education that's not parent involvement. At the beginning of the year Mrs. Shelly communicated school expectations to her parents. She mentioned that parents should understand that if her school is a good fit for their child or not before they decide to bring their child to her school. She provided a bullet point list to make sure it is clear to all of them. I have the expectation that you will keep abreast weekly or bi-weekly of your child's progress academically. We have that expectation, we communicate that expectation, and we empower them to learn how to use it during information meetings. It's the first thing out of my mouth: “this will not be a good fit for everybody” and I know it. “Here's the expectation of what parents are supposed to do.” Here, if you want your child to be fully successful in our methods this is what it's going to take now! Do they all buy in? No! But I give them that bullet point list and every time I get a question from them or a comment from them, I

Aykac 52 turn it right back around on them. You have to do what's best for your child in their education. We hope that's here with us and if it's not we support your decision to go where you feel is a good fit for your child's education. But it takes a lot more involvement than they're usually willing or understanding that they're supposed to give. Mrs. Shelly required teachers to communicate with their parents regularly either through hard copy papers or through email. They also had regular parent teacher conferences throughout the year and invited parents when any issue arose regarding their children. I require teachers to contact parents once a week at least. They send home an assignment sheet without fail on the first class period of every week. It goes home hardcopy and electronic. Many of our teachers also send it out electronically; send a little blurb in the email of what's going on in their classrooms. Here’s what’s going on, here's what's coming up that kind of thing. More formally, we do parent conferences as-needed anytime. A teacher comes to me with a concern about a student and lack of progress; the first thing I say is how long has it been since we had a conference with parent. Let's see if we can't get that parent in here. When I asked her about the types of issue for which she required teachers to contact parents, she gladly shared the following: Anytime they have an issue; with lack of progress or if they see a pattern that they feel like needs to be corrected. I encourage them to contact the parent anytime there is a behavioral issue. If you're taking care of it in your classroom then you need to contact the parent and let them know here's what happened, here's how I

Aykac 53 took care of it. If they come to me, typically what happens is I'll talk to the child about what's going on. I want to hear their side of the story because there are always two sides and then we talk about choices and the character quality that goes along with that choice and then we get mom on speakerphone and the child tells mom what happened. I want the mom to hear the children say it in their own words. Parents are always involved with discipline because it's their child, it's their responsibility to make sure that child understands how to behave in appropriate ways. I'll repeat to the parent what I've said to the child because I feel like the parent needs to be equipped sometimes in what the expectation is and how I handle this. What does it mean to pay attention to your teachers, to listen? What does it look like to listen to your teachers? Because if the parent doesn't have an understanding of what specific things we expect, then how can we expect them to enforce it to the child? So, a lot of times discipline issues involve in equipping the parent as well. The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them I wanted to hear what Mrs. Shelly thinks regarding challenges she has been facing in parental involvement in her school. She stated the following: The challenge is lack of trying, the challenge is lack of understanding of their primary role, the challenge is the fact that they have given over responsibility of their child's education to the education system to the point where they just take their hands off. Here you go! Here's my kid! That's not how it works here! So, trying to educate our families that are new to our system can really be difficult.

Aykac 54 There will be days that are like, this is not working, I can't do this, I don't have time for this. I get it! Nobody can possibly be busier than I am. But it's important, and if you want your child ultimately investing in his future it happens every day, five minutes a day, it happens every week, five minutes a week. I mean, they are not difficult things; these are not things that take lots of time and effort. The effort is just trying. Little pieces add up, and if we can help them understand that, that's the true challenge. The challenge is lack of understanding of what that expectation is, lack of desire or ability. It's easier to send your kid to school and let somebody else handle their education and then you handle only as a parent their clothes, what to wear and food to eat and things like that. I think as society breaks down as the family breaks down. It makes education harder because there's not that natural support or modeling of learning. I think as technology increases and is more accessible in our families it makes that harder. I have the expectation that you will keep abreast weekly or bi-weekly of your child's progress academically. We have that expectation, we communicate that expectation and we empower them to learn how to use it. It's not a computer it's not a laptop, it's a Chromebook at the front desk and we tell parents if you don't have access at home come up here, we'll show you how to use it, we'll give you a password, we'll explain and give you a tutorial. We're empowering that parent to take ownership. Now do they take us up on it? Not usually! Even parents that don't have Wi-Fi at home, Internet at home, they don’t come to use [it]. Most of them, almost all of them have a smartphone and they can get Wi-Fi through

Aykac 55 their phone, so there's really no reason that they shouldn't be able to check their child's progress. My concern at the moment is trying to be more effective and efficient with building those relationships. If I'm expecting them to take ownership, and I'm also taking responsibility for [the] equipping of that ownership, there has to be a trust there that they will come and connect with me and listen to what I have to say. And then take them to heart, where I'm trying to help them do. There has to be buy-in and right now that's the biggest concern I have is trying to build that buy-in. Every response that I give to parents or even to teachers is turning it back around on to them. If they bring a concern to me, I ask what do you think you can do about that? What ways are you already trying to affect your students learning? When we sit in an ARD for a special needs student or a 504 disability of some kind, that's one of the first questions that I ask as an administrator; what are you doing at home to support this process? Because if you're not doing it at home or you just say you're doing it because you think that's what we want to hear, your kids not going to succeed. You've got to not just advocate for your student in a meeting and put [the responsibility] on us. You have to take responsibility for your own child's success at home. So, everything I say goes right back into that: what are you doing to be part of the process? I expect that of my teachers and of our students and even of my own children Everybody's part of the pot. We’re all a team together.

Aykac 56 I think giving them a variety of ways to be involved, even on the most basic level of coming and volunteering at the school, will help a lot. I had two parents here this morning that led a math facts club for first and second graders. Another one is encouraging anybody's idea. They're like “Hey can I come and do something like this?” Yes! Let's see how we can make that work within what we have to work with! Not coaching those ideas of innovation or involvement but also helping them understand more specifically academic things. How do you read an assignment sheet? What information is there? Students are given assignments from each teacher and we want to make sure it's common to every teacher in the building. If I have to look at all different assignment sheets, I need them to be all the same format and all in the same order so that when I pick one up I know exactly where to go for, what the information I'm looking for. That's one of the unique things about our school and we are helping parents understand the practicalities of what does it mean to say check your kids assignments, here's a link to a YouTube video explaining how to work this problem or here's a recording of me as the teacher explaining, here's how we learned it when we were in third grade, and here's how I taught it today. One of these ways should work for your child. Either do it how you know or do it how I taught them. Either way it should work but we've got to empower them in more practical ways than we're currently doing.

Aykac 57 Chapter V It’s Like Planting a Tree Mr. Manfield, the principal of a charter school located in the Cedar Hill area in Dallas, has been serving the children of Texas since 2008. After working as a teacher’s aide for a while, he decided to get his teaching certification and got into education in 2008. In a short period of time he received his principal certification to be able to serve in an administrative level in a school district. He classified himself as Asian-Indian American. He shared: I started working as a teacher's aide in a school district, and then I got my science certification for four through eight. I taught fifth grade science and high school accounting and banking for the first three years. Meanwhile [I] got my teaching certification and my principal certification from Texas A&M Commerce. After that, I moved to another school where I taught fourth, fifth and sixth grade science and math, and then I moved on to administration of the charter school which was a K through eighth grade. I have served as assistant principal for two years and I have been serving as a principal since 2015 at the current charter school. I am the founding principal of this new campus in Cedar Hill. When Mr. Manfield started his charter school, he had 320 students in his first year and in the second year they increased their enrollment to 780 students. Now he is serving 1020 students in his third year as a principal in his current school. The demographics of his school population was 45% African-American, 25% Hispanic, 30% White and rest was other.

Aykac 58 Before Mr. Manfield’s educational adventure started in United States, he had four years of experience as headmaster at an international private school in India where he had over thousand international students from forty different countries. He said he enjoyed being a principal at a Title I charter school a lot because he had opportunities to serve and impact the lives of the students, especially the ones coming from low-income families. Meaning of Parental Involvement Among Principals Mr. Manfield said that he and his school believed in parent participation. He considered parental involvement as combination of different expectations set by the school and common responsibilities of parents regarding their child’s education. He said: My school believes in parent participation and when I look at parent involvement, my number one is to ensure that the children are brought on time to school. They respect the rules and relations of the school. They also are actively participating in the child's education, when they go back home they provide them a congenial atmosphere for them to do their homework and study. They closely monitor their progress, they communicate with the teachers effectively to partnership with them to make sure that the child gets the best education possible. [What] parental involvement means to me is everything; dropping off their children on time to school, ensuring that the children come prepared to school with the supplies. They are properly dressed so that they don't lack confidence in themselves, they are not feeling any form of…I'm not getting the right word. It's actually…where their self-esteem is not questioned you know, that's why we have uniforms and we want all of them to have the same starting point. We want them to be constantly partnering with us, in trying to track the child's education.

Aykac 59 I usually give an analogy, where you maybe feel good about it. You can use it if you want. I say it's like a tree: do you plant a tree and we take care of it for a few hours and you take care of it for a few hours and if there is enough sunlight and if there is water, why shouldn't the tree grow? So, if we are both equally responsible, we have to do our duties to keep the tree grow[ing]. Mr. Manfield believed that schools have to find ways to build bridges between parents and schools. He said that the school is not a standalone unit; it is a collaboration of parents, school and community. He continued: We have to have parent school collaboration. I understand that parents have work but the more presence of the parents around you helps build confidence in the system. Because the school is not a standalone unit, it is a collaboration of the parent community. It reflects the parent community. It reflects the student body in us. I think all these aspects are very critical, and whenever a parent gets an opportunity to volunteer and help in the process, that builds a bridge. Whenever I have an issue with a parent or a teacher, first question I ask is “Did you ever communicate with the teacher/parent?” and many times I hear no! I said please do, that don't break that bridge. Even during the admission time, I tell them every time you should start with building that bridge and if you can be a bit nice to them, you will get 110 percent from them. I asked Mr. Manfield to provide insights about current relationships between his school and parents. He said he would tell the story of his campus and gladly provided following:

Aykac 60 When I started this campus here, I was little bit hesitant about the location. We are not in a typical neighborhood where you know there are houses around or close by your school. If you drive to this place, you will think that you're driving into the wilderness so when I was given this responsibility to start this campus I really didn't understand what the response would be from where would parents come. But it was a very shocking thing. I just had a very small opportunity or window to start the school because I just opened one section per grade level from kinder through 12th grade so I had a very small opening. But believe me, in less than two days it was like a hot cake. There were many parents applied and many were left crying because their kids were not selected from the lottery. I didn't know what was happening so at that time I got real concerned. I started speaking to these parents and asked “What is it that has attracted you towards us so much?” I got excited with what I heard from them. I only told them, “I hope you have the same enthusiasm and the same belief in us at the end of the year and you would have the same things to tell.” So, I kept my fingers crossed because you know, when you have this kind of enthusiasm, it can even go away the same way! I think the answer of that particular question I would think that it is the response from the community has been by the numbers that we grew to. We almost doubled. We landed up at seven hundred and eighty students in our second year so I think that shows about the current relationship that we have. We started the third year with over a thousand satisfied parents. Even though Mr. Manfield considered parents both as customers and as partners, he emphasized that when he meets with his parents he provides the best customer

Aykac 61 services. On the other hand, he expected them to become a partner throughout their child educational journey in his school. He explained: As a principal, I think it's my first priority when I meet a parent to provide them the customer service, right from the time they step into the gate until they leave us. I believe that we are here to serve them and to meet their needs. So, it's very important that I treat them like customers but at the same time it's not like a customer buying a pair of shoes and walking away. What we expect them is to continue to partner with us. In that partnership, what we believe is they have to partner with us in our philosophy, they have to partner with us in our mission and in our day-to-day discipline enforcement and also academic needs and behavioral and social and emotional needs of the child. When I asked him about his students’ role in parental involvement, he provided following: I usually define education to be in an equilateral triangle, where you have the students on one end of the triangle, you have the parents on one end of the triangle and you have the school on one end of the triangle. I believe that all have equal roles to play, and that's what I believe. So, they are partners, and when they need something, I look at it as serving their needs, which becomes a customeroriented service. At the same time, I expect them to be effective partners in this for their success. Influence of Parental Involvement on Student Success Mr. Manfield strongly believed that there is a strong relation between parental involvement and student success. He said:

Aykac 62 I believe there is a 100% correlation between parental involvement and student success. If you do a study, you will find that the academic performance of a child whose parent is involved will be much better than the child whose parent is not involved. There is a direct correlation and you can see that very evidently. If parents are involved, there's a very clear indication, even if the child is struggling, students do better in their school. There are students that I have seen just because there get parental support, parental encouragement; they are willing to work with the teachers. They are willing to come for tutoring; they are willing to wait that little extra. Those parents make sure that the child is doing the homework and brings the homework back the next day. I can’t find anything negative that shows parental involvement does not influence students’ performance in school. I strongly believe that there is a direct correlation; the more parental involvement, the more successful students or vice versa. I've got numerous examples for that I was a principal of a small school in Killeen where it was a kinder through eighth grade. When I took over that campus, it was on improvement plan campus. So, I said what I could do with that campus to improve the scores. I really didn't understand the whole demographics. School was located on military kind of a base. I went there I started talking to the parents. I started building relationship with them. Most of my eighth graders were expelled from the regular ISD. One day, there was an incident where my eight grade boys went to watch some of the district events in their field. The school police caught them and said you cannot enter the property. Police officer came to my campus next day and

Aykac 63 told Mr. Manfield, these guys can't even step onto the property. Next time if he sees them, he'll handcuff them. At that moment I realized that those students were in a very serious incident, that is why they were expelled. I got involved with their parents immediately. They were all very disgruntled and some of them were 17 years and 18 years old in eighth grade with broken homes. To get back to main campus for them was to pass in reading and math. I said “God, if you have placed me here let me do that for them.” I won the confidence of the kids and their parents. I started personally working with them. When we administer the first benchmark, none of my student passed reading or math. We continued to tutor them with the support of their parents and at the end of the year I left that place with a hundred percent results both in reading and math. It was one of the biggest turning points not only for them but for me as well. Effective Parental Involvement Activities Mr. Manfield provided different opportunities to his parents to help increase their parental involvement. He said: We have open houses before school starts where we meet them and have a school orientation. We go through everything in detail about our expectations, rules and regulations. And then we have teachers talk to the parents and answer their questions. As a principal I meet every new student who is willing to join or considering joining us. We walked them through the process of the environment and what our expectations are. We have several academic and sport events during the year. We have something called the “Warrior Showcase” that we start off with. It's a big event.

Aykac 64 We have the Christmas program, which is another big event. I'm talking about thousands of people coming in. We have a big play for all these things. We have Founders Day, we have a Veterans Day celebration. The Warrior Showcase is again a full-fledged display of arts and performance. Our new event center gets backed up. We organize this event one for elementary and one for secondary because it's so many parents who come and join us. As I said we have all these opportunities for parents to get involved. We have basketball, soccer, football even golf events, science and math night, literature night for parents. During our literature night we had different tents and sheds outside and parent volunteers worked with the kids, you know helped them in reading, helped them in several other things. We also have a big event called a Fall Festival. Just before Thanksgiving break we get every parent involved in this event. We invite them here. It's an early release day and our children dress up something a little bit of thanks. We have a parade from here to our baseball field, we have a fire engine, we have the whole community. It's thousands of people having fun with their children, teachers and school community. Mr. Manfield said that they have “Parent School Collaboration” team instead having a regular PTA or PTO. He continued: Our parent school collaboration (PSC) is a big team where they have their own Facebook pages and things like that. They post anything that they feel is interesting for the school parents to know. I make myself available for their meeting. I'm the only guy here actually. I'm a single principal for this whole campus. We meet every month. I have a strong team who has been there right

Aykac 65 from the beginning and they do some fundraisers. They are a kind of supplement and, you know, they bring in volunteers, and they recognize my teachers once in a while and [I] suppose they're like my little bank. I need something with through the school funds I can order, get it done from them so that's really helpful. We have advisory committee along with PSC as well. It is actually part of your campus improvement or district improvement plan. You're supposed to have a team working with you. As I told you, a newsletter, weekly newsletter goes to parents regularly. We have also used school messenger that we shoot out messages for the community whatever they need to know. Since this campus [is] a very beautiful place, we've started a new thing during the Christmas break. We allow parents and community to come and just socialize and hang around at the campus, take pictures and things like that. Our location used to be a campus for a private university and was very popular for that. Because of the beauty, you know, people used to come for taking pictures. So, we just want to continue that tradition for the community to come and relate with us. We also have an after school and before school program called brook of life. We have a lot of parents who kind of volunteer and help us in this program as well. This is a program for parents who are not able to pick up or drop off a child on certain times. This program starts as early as 6:30 am and goes all the way till 6:30 pm in the evening so it's a full-fledged system that we have. The kids are fed and we also have some quality time spent with them. We have a body running it,

Aykac 66 but we have quite a few of them who volunteer or sometimes work part time with them. It's a kind of an extension of the school. We have a Booster Club that is managed by parents as well. We have the volunteers. We have the cheer parent club. We have, every Tuesday, a program called “POWWOW” which is “Preparing Outstanding Warriors with Wisdom to Overcome and Win” so that's an opportunity where every week we reinforce our core values that we expect from them. We take that opportunity to have people speak about their lives, appearances, about making choices and importance of having great partnership with school. I asked Mr. Manfield if his school had a home visit program or if he visited his students to establish a partnership with parents. He shared following: I have not conducted any home visit. I would have loved to do it, but I've not been able to do it. That's one thing in my agenda to go and visit homes and meet with my students’ families. I believe that's a very strong thing because there [are] some families that really need that support and help. So, it is important to visit them and see students living environment. Best effective parental involvement activities at home. Mr. Manfield discussed that a great deal of parental involvement happens at home. He explained: The best parent involvement activities for student success happen at home. I think everything that I said about parental involvement is very critical but I would like to emphasize on one very important thing; whatever you do at home as a parent is very important, and they must be involved in their education at home. So, I tell the parents you cannot have a party going on at home every day. If you

Aykac 67 are putting the television and the music on full blast and forcing your children to sit down and study, it will not work. It has to be a quiet place. You should be also quietly reading or being part of them. One of the expectations from our parents as a part of Parent School Collaboration component is being involved in their child’s academics both in school and at home. We ask our parents to be a part of their game at home and recognize their child’s achievement. We want our parents to create a conducive atmosphere at home, follow their child’s progress, give them a place to study, emphasize and make it clear to their children that they have clear expectations, which [are that] they want the children to go to college. Every day you work towards that goal. There shouldn't be loud music, there should not be parties going on every day. They have to know that this is a study time and parents should define what a study time is, what a study place is and if possible, the parents should try and find time to be with them and make sure that they spend quality time with them. Effective communication for better parental involvement. Mr. Manfield emphasized that communication is the key component in school, especially when it comes to parental involvement. He believed that with clear communication schools could easily increase the parental involvement in their school since every parent want to be involved in their child’s education to some degree. He said that they start communicating with their parents right after they show interest in their school. He shared: We have an enrollment process where we start with an open house. We invite all applicants to introduce our school. We share our vision, we share who we are, and we share our mission statement. We tell them our core values and after that, when

Aykac 68 they fill in an application, we again spend time to talk to them. We explain our expectations very clearly to them. We would communicate to them and explain our expectation from them, what we would be providing for them and for their children through their years in our school. We emphasize that we expect a partnership role from them. For example, I tell them, if I have a discipline problem, if it's beyond me, I call you and I want you to be on board with us. If they're not able to be on board with us, our school is probably not the right choice for them. When it comes to customer service perspective, we go out of the way - there are parents who drop the kids a bit earlier in the morning; we don't make a lot of fuss about it. We have somebody here available to take care of their needs and sometimes we go out of the way to arrange certain vehicles for them while in the school. We go above and beyond to do everything that we need to do to provide them additional support. Our teachers go outside during dismissal and communicate with the parents on a constant basis. That's all part of the customer service. As I mentioned earlier we have a program called POWWOW on every Tuesday. That's an opportunity where every week we reinforce our core values, what we expect from them, and take that opportunity to have people speak about their lives, appearances, about making choices and emphasize on the great partnership that we believe in. I tell parents again, coming back to my analogy of the tree, I said if you go and look at the tree after three months there would be weeds around it. So, it's a daily process, you got to communicate, when the progress reports come out, when

Aykac 69 the report cards come out. I also talked about social interactions, discipline issues. I tell my parents I get very upset if you come back to me after four months and tell me, my son has been bullied here for the past three months. I said ma'am “Have you spoken to me once?” Because I feel that my school is a hundred percent zero bully. I don't even like to use that word in their social interaction. I feel the important characteristics are a continuous consistent relationship with the teachers and the school. It is not that suddenly you wake up when the report card comes out and then start questioning. It's not just a once in a blue moon kind of a thing. You've got to be part of the integral curriculum of the school day-in and day-out. The more they get involved the better they will see results. We have a weekly newsletter [that] goes out to parents regarding all events [that] happened last week, [are] happening this week and will happen next week. I personally put them together and post it on our website and send a copy of that with students. Most of my teachers use personal websites, [and a] remind101 app that connects you with all school community through text messages. We have a school messenger that we use. You can phone or send mass emails to parents in one click. Beyond these platforms available to all parents, we have a “Thursday Folder” for the elementary kids to communicate with their parents. In this folder there is all-important paperwork that parents need for each week. We also use planners, they can take notes and communicate that with their parents. Mr. Manfield mentioned that his parent organization, Parent School Collaboration (PSC), is another good tool for him to communicate with parents. He continued:

Aykac 70 They are actually a bridge between the parents and us. They've become a nice bridge between them and me. Any time I pass them a message they will immediately respond. They are always available. We have very good communication. We contact via texting, email or face-to-face meeting when needed. Recently they came and fixed my coffee maker. You know, he took it and went and he said he'll try and fix it otherwise he bought a new one and kept it there. It's a very good relationship you know. They use all social media, they have a very tech person, and they use social media and connect with other parents easily. They don't mind if parents call them or ask them for any help. So, they have become a very strong body between. I don't mind that if they think that that's a forum for them to represent their grievances. Like everything else communication is delicate too. Because there are certain things you don't want everybody to know. Other days parents have asked me “Hey! We heard about an active shooter and you have not informed us.” I said “Do you want me to create panic? The shooter was never nowhere near us, he was somewhere miles away and before the school started, I had the police give me a clearance. So, there should be a balance between what you let them know [and] to what extent you let them know. That’s very critical which I think. Every time we have major events, they have a little booth outside. We provide them a platform to get to know to parents and talk to them and get to know each other. It is slowly growing but it's not as encouraging because, as I told you, parents have their own commitments, they have their own family problems,

Aykac 71 financial problems so I do respect that but I wish I had more parents getting involved. When I asked Mr. Manfield about his thoughts on an open door policy, he provided following: Open door policy means to me is, if there is a parent who comes here with some concern it's not necessary for them to have an appointment. I won't drive them away. I would be willing to listen to them. It does not matter if their need may be urgent or not but I want to meet with them and try to hear them. That's very important for me and for us as a school. I tell them “you don't have to wait for any concerns; you can come and meet me directly.” It's my open door policy that, who[ever] they are, or whatever concerns they have, if they come here I will make sure that I meet them, at least ask them if I [can] respond to them later, not at that moment, but I will address what their needs are and concerns. I will try to solve it because I know that you will appreciate the fact that that communication is the most important thing. Mr. Manfield said that he required his teachers to contact their parents constantly throughout the year. He said: We are expecting teachers to communicate with their parents on a day to day basis about what homework was given and in particular if there are some concerns. We also tell them to let their parents know if there is something good. But usual tendencies are if everything is sailing well we don't have the time to talk to them. We call them only when there is a problem so that's not the best thing. Officially we don’t have specific times designated throughout the year for parents

Aykac 72 to meet with their teachers, like regular parent teacher conference, but parents are free to call and schedule a meeting with their teachers as well whenever they want. I expect my teachers to contact their parents for academic, behavioral, social issues or for field trips arrangements. Anything, you know, even getting permission slips. Sometimes students forget to tell their parents to sign permission slips, it's not deliberate that they didn't sign a permission slip, just give them a quick call and ask them whether it's okay and endorse it. Anything related with the academic needs of the child, my teachers contact parents. As I told you, that parental involvement is an equilateral triangle; there is equal responsibility. Somebody has got more or less in this triangle but we've got to continue to partner and do what is best in the interest of the child. The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them Mr. Manfield acknowledged that even though his school-home connection is better than that of most schools, still there are many challenges he has been facing regarding parental involvement. He said he could overcome some of them easily but there are a few that are harder to fix. He continued: [My style is] to serve beyond anything. When I say serve, maybe I can use certain practical things. If I have to meet a parent at six o'clock, I will meet, no problem. I've had very surprised parents when they were given meeting times at 6:30 pm in the evening or sometimes 7 o'clock or sometimes early morning at 6:30 am. Because I know if they have to go to work, this is again part of the customer service, I'm always flexible. I've had a teacher who was one of my parents at that

Aykac 73 time, told me that she was surprised when I gave her a time of 6 o'clock to meet. I said, yeah, I know you're working somewhere and you have to pick your child and then come here. I knew my parents’ situations because I asked them all these questions when I met them first; where do you live? Where do you work? So, if I can arrange my schedule according to my parents’ schedule[s], I will do that to meet their needs. I even conduct interviews, if it's required, during a weekend. I have no problems with that. I will go out of the way and parents are very important for me. That's the customer service component of our business. I think the parental involvement has got to do a lot with their financial situation, their social situation, their family situation and their own approach and attitude towards the whole thing. So, it is a process. If you take a little bit, step back, and watch those school districts that are not doing too well on parental involvement, you will find that a lot of them have family problems. Unless a family is stable themselves, you know, how are they going to be involved in other things? If they are running around, fixing their own lives that's the problem that prevents them get[ting] involved in their child’s schooling. There are a pretty decent percentage of parents that see their children doing okay in school and they don't want to get involved because of that. They are happy and they want to get busy with their work. There are some parents, I would say, who are very involved and there are some who are in between. I think another barrier is their work schedules. Sometimes they don't understand that involvement in their child’s education has to be their priority. I have told my

Aykac 74 parents many times that how much you invest in your child will make you blessed and it will bring returns for sure. It's a challenge but there are several reasons for it. I have to mention here that unfortunately the social fabric today is so fragile that many families are broken. There are many children living with their mother or just with their father. Having a single parent struggling with life is a big problem because you don't have a stable family unit. I try to support these families and the children and their educational needs as much as I can. We have community-based surveys. I like getting feedback from parents. When I receive any comment or concern, I take a note and think about that. During drop off or dismissal time, I like talking to parents and hearing from them. It is very important to make yourself available to them and give them an opportunity to express their concerns. Another biggest challenge we face here is reaching out to parents via phone calls. They don’t update their phone numbers or addresses until we find out that. We ask them constantly to update their contact information. Some of them have limitations when it comes to Internet access and computers. Some of them, that's their nature, they don't look at their emails or look at anything basically. Somehow, they are busier than us. My school population is pretty diverse. We want them to actively participate in every area possible. To celebrate our diversity, we organize International Day that gives the opportunity for different races and different ethnicities to show and share their culture. We believe that this is a great way to

Aykac 75 close cultural or language gaps between the school and parents. We have a lot of kids who come in from Nigeria or from Latin American countries. Most of their parents don’t speak English. We use different apps or electronic dictionaries to open a communication with them. If I might not have a Portuguese dictionary or one of those, they can use online resources to translate. We make them as comfortable as possible. We would go out of the way to make them feel that language should not be a barrier. We bring in people who can help us with the kind of translation or interpretation. I think having periodical sessions where you can educate the parents about the significance of parental involvement is important. We should talk about home environment, what is conducive to learning, and what is parent involvement at home and in school. Parents don't have time to stop by school, schedule a meeting or even answer the call. So, I feel we should establish a system where we tell them what we are willing to do, and what we expect from them, and it has to be an ongoing process throughout the year. Several times we start something new and then in no time, or after some time, we forget about it. And then we have another new thing that we introduce without finishing the other one. I feel that you have three or four key areas that you focus and make sure that you follow through with that with the parents. I wanted to implement a new system to have my parents come to school. I told my teachers hold the progress report cards. We required parents to come and pick it up from teacher after having a short meeting. After two sessions I had to stop it because there nobody was really keen. Only a very small group of parents

Aykac 76 who are usually the parents of good performing students came. So, it was defeating my purpose. I think we should have one or two strategies put together and make sure that we follow through with the parents, [that] is the only thing that I see as a comprehensive plan to overcome. Still, will we get a hundred percent success in that? More likely no! But I'm sure we will move in a positive direction. I think it is primarily education, reaching out to them and even showing them research-based evidence of the success students have when parents are involved.

Aykac 77 Chapter VI Communication is as important as Blood is to Body Mr. Clear grew up in Dallas Texas and went to local public school district until he graduated from high school. He received his Bachelor’s degree from University of Texas at Dallas and completed his master’s degree at Lamar University. He applied to pursue his doctorate degree and is waiting for acceptance. Mr. Clear has been serving as a principal at a charter school for about two years now. Before he became a principal at a charter school, he served in different capacities in different settings in public schools. He started his education adventure as a substitute in a public school. While he was substituting, one of the principals encouraged him to become a teacher. He shared his story: I grew up here in Dallas Texas and went to Independent School District schools throughout my primary and secondary education. I graduated from high school and I received a bachelor's degree from University of Texas at Dallas. I got my master's degree from Lamar University and I'm actually applying now for the doctoral program, and I'm hoping to get in by the summer 2018. I'm married, and I have four kids and my wife. I've been in education 14 years. I started out well, actually, as a sub teacher in my first [job]. While I was in the classroom as a sub teacher, principals would come in and observe me. They told me that I should get my certification to become a teacher. So, I started the teacher certification program through Region 10 and earned my certification in special Education area. My first teaching opportunity was a behavior teacher. I taught the core curriculum and social skills. I did that for about seven years and

Aykac 78 then I became a department head in special education in my campus. I also did inclusion in social studies. After serving as a teacher I got my first assistant principal job and I have been serving as a head principal in this campus. It's a small school, kind of like a little small family forward, you know. We're going well, and we have good teachers and provide good quality instruction to our students. Mr. Clear’s school is located in South Dallas and serves kinder through sixth grade with a population of 220 students. 100% of his students are receiving free or reduced lunch and breakfast because of having 90% of students coming from low-income families. 40% of the students are Hispanic, 24% African American, 26% White, 4% American Indian and 6% of them are Asian. Mr. Clear stated that having the ability to impact the lives of students on a daily basis and providing a better quality education then regular nearby public schools make him feel good about being a principal at Title I school. He said that he tried to provide best education possible to his students because he wanted to see his students go to college and become professionals in workforce. He said he worked in a large district, a small district and now in a charter school district and this is his smallest school he had ever worked in. Meaning of Parental Involvement among Principals Mr. Clear defined parental involvement as being clear and having open communication between parents and school. He said: It is inviting parents to come and participate in different activities and a different program, that's the way, you know, it's creating a partnership. I've had great

Aykac 79 parent support on this campus. I have a good rapport with people. I'm able to make a connection with students and parents and teachers. I have an honest approach to have open communication policy. Parents obviously respond to being honest and being approachable and being friendly. If I do disagree on an issue I'm able to explain it to them in the way that I [make them] feel turned off or offended because I am telling the truth and they can always check and see if I am telling the truth or not. I think anyone will respond to honesty. Anytime you have parent involvement it demonstrates to the student and to the teacher that they want their students to learn. When children hear and see this support it helps tremendously. Because when a student sees that his parents care [about] his education and his teachers are trying to help them to get a good education, then he thinks that he needs to answer this call and start getting better in school. Same thing happens with discipline. If I tell them I'm going to call their parents and they get in trouble, I know that their parents are holding them accountable and that's a good sign. They are going to obviously give them some type of consequence and encouragement to do right thing at school next time. Mr. Clear stated that having an open-door policy would increase parental involvement in any school. He explained: When you have an open-door policy and you communicate it with your parents, it will become an open invitation to parents. Having an open-door policy means being approachable. My doors is always open to my parents. It is always open to students and teachers as well. The only problem is sometimes I have to tell them

Aykac 80 to wait because I have someone here in the office. My parents, teachers and students know that they can approach me anytime. I'm always available to my parents. I try to tell parents to make an appointment, but if they stop by and they really need to talk to me, if I can stop what I'm doing, I will talk to them. If I am not available at that time because of handling a discipline issue or having a phone conference, I ask them to wait. Once I am done I take the parents in my room and listen their concerns. I'm always willing to talk, always willing to listen, [I] always repeat back a parent's concern or praises to make sure we're communicating effectively. I see that as a great tool to have because I've worked under principals who were inaccessible and I know parents didn't like that. One of the things that I do too [that] the parents like, I stand out in front of the school as the parents dropping their students off in the morning. I greet each student with a handshake to welcome [him or her]. I say good morning, have a good day, you played good at the basketball game last night, he was good at the flag football game Friday. I call each student with their name. That was one of my challenges was to learn each student's name in the first six weeks but I was able to do that. Parents obviously appreciate you, and sometimes they'll roll the window down and say thank you. I even had one of our art teachers create a sign that I could hold up and say welcome to school this morning or you know you're appreciated; our parents are awesome. It's friendly [and] welcoming, creating a family atmosphere and a culture of caring, respect and protection.

Aykac 81 Mr. Clear made it clear that he considered his parents to be partners. He said that schools take care of students for about eight hours and parents handle the rest. Therefore, he believed that building a partnership is necessary for students’ success. He shared: I definitely believe that parents are our partners. Because we have their students for about eight hours a day, we definitely need to partnership with parents to make sure we're doing the best for their students. We both have the same goal in mind; they want their children successful and we want our students to be successful, not only in school but also in their life. I also see my students as partners, not as customers. They are partners because the students want to learn and we have to provide the best education. Their success is our success. There are some students who do not want to learn, not interested in learning, and they are our students. If I do not treat them as partners and meet their needs accordingly, they will fail and it will impact my school as well. I tell my students all the time that you are going to be the next president, or doctor, or teacher, or principal, or an attorney, or business owner, which means they are and will be a part of this community. We are building our future and in this process, we want them to think they are a part of this process as well. Influence of Parental Involvement on Student Success Mr. Clear believed that as parents get involved in their children’s education, their children would become more successful. He said: I absolutely believe that data shows correlation between the student success and parental involvement. For my school I can say that reading scores of students

Aykac 82 whose parents read at home with students or supported the students to do homework improved a lot. When their mother or father are involved in their education, I know that students 99 percent of the time will be successful because, like I said before, it's a partnership, and when parents, teachers and educators are on the same page, it influences student success. Since we all have the same common goal, it makes the process a lot more successful. There will be a big difference in student success between a student whose parent never comes to school, never contacts his teachers and never spends time with his child regarding his schooling, and the one whose parent has good communication with school and his child. There might be few exceptions, but in general, parental involvement will influence the student success overall. Effective Parental Involvement Activities Mr. Clear mentioned that he had great support from his parents and his school provides multiple opportunities to parents to get them involved in their children’s education. He gladly shared: We had a Veterans Day program where I had parents decorate and draw soldiers out of cardboard, made horns out of cardboard and made flags for us. It was very helpful. We had a Christmas program, and parents came and decorated and volunteered for that. We are about to launch the Watch-DOGS program, which is “dads of great students.” I have some fathers that are going to participate in that as well. I think it will be a great program. I used to have Parent Teacher Organization in my previous school but here we call it “Parent Teacher Student Organization” (PTSO). We meet once a month

Aykac 83 at least. The idea behind the PTSO is not only having parents involved but also having students be a part of this community. Again, as I said, we considered both groups as partners. My PTSO members come and help us during dismissal, drop off or in the cafeteria. They organize fundraisers and invite other parents to school. We invited an elected official from city of Dallas to come to our next PTSO meeting and talk about specific topics that our parents chose. We have students who need eyeglasses. We set up appointments with them with a doctor so they can go and get their checkup done. We want parents to take them to the appointment get their eyes checked and get their glasses. We have some activities for getting healthy like 5K-walk and run. I think PTSO helps a lot because we had approximately 100 parents show up at this small school in the last event. It is pretty nice, since half of the parents showed up. PTSO members invited other parents that we could not reach as a school. I think the watch-DOGS program is going to help. I've talked to some of the dads and explained to them the importance of men in the lives of their sons and daughters. It kind of has awakened that sense of responsibility and the sense of I can help my child be successful just by standing in the hallway or sitting in the classroom. I explained to them kids are less likely to talk if there's a man in the world. Fathers discipline kids in a certain way. As fathers, we're not going to negotiate with kids and will tell them “you have to be quiet and listen.” So, I think some parents, especially [those] whose child gets in trouble often, will buy in[to] this program and participate.

Aykac 84 Best effective parental involvement activities at home. Mr. Clear said that one of the best parental involvement activities happens at home: reading together with children. He shared: To me, reading is very important, and one of the best activities that parents can do with their child is reading together. I have been promoting the reading at my school and ask my parents to read at least 20 minutes a day with their child. I expressed them how important [it is] to read to increase the vocabulary and comprehension. That will help with their writing as well. Whenever we have any events we communicate this expectation with them and beg them to spend at least 20 minutes a night reading with their child. We share our progress on reading after each benchmark and ask them to continue reading together to increase the students’ reading score. That is a good way to communicate with parents, so they can see the benefit of reading together every day. Effective communication strategies for better parental involvement. Mr. Clear believed that communication is just as important to any partnership as blood is to a body. He continued: We have been using all possible tools to communicate with our parents. We use school messenger to send text or email. I send newsletters once a month that include important dates, celebrations for students’ success, names of the students of the month. I choose one boy and one girl, one boy or girl from fifth and sixth grade. We have different criteria for being eligible to be student of the month. They have to have perfect attendance, improve their grade point average in that month, [and] should have no discipline record for that month.

Aykac 85 We also have students of the week. Every week a student comes to me and asks: “Mr. Clear what can I do to become student of the month, or what can I did become student of the week?” I tell the students, if you behave, keep up the good work, come on time you will be eligible. If you have negative points then you need to decrease it first otherwise you cannot be a student of the week or month. I had one student [who] had negative 60 points and he changed his behavior, earned good points now he went to a positive eighty and he stayed in the positive range. Communicating these expectations with their parents helps them become better students since parents want to see their student’s name in student of the week or month. This pushes parents to check their online accounts, homework and behavior points. I asked Mr. Clear about his expectations of teachers regarding communication with their parents. He provided following: I require teachers contact parents on every issue they encounter with students. I try to encourage them to contact at least the first couple of weeks to give praise to the students, to give some type of positive comment. Because at some point there may be a time where teachers will have a negative phone call, but deposit[ing] some positive things into the bank earlier will prevent parents [from] getting upset easily. I ask teachers to contact parents when they have issue with students in class before they send students to the office. When I call the parent and I say your child was talking in class and this is a repeated offense, I do not want to hear “no one contacted me with this problem before”. I want to make sure teacher takes the first step to eliminate these kinds of problems.

Aykac 86 We require our teachers to keep a call log in case we have parents claiming no one informed her. I can ask teachers to show their call log and say the teacher contacted you on this day, at this time and left a message at this phone number. We have a 24-hour return policy. Once anyone receives an email from anybody, within 24 hours that email needs to be answered. The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them Mr. Clear listed his basic challenges into four categories; realistic, unrealistic, legal and illegal challenges. He said: There are a lot of different challenges; they can range from some things that are realistic, some things that are unrealistic, and some things that are legal some things that are illegal. When I say illegal, I mean violation of FERPA. I know a lot of times parents want to ask me about another student’s grades, or another student’s home life, or what did this student do to get in trouble, or my child got in trouble so what are you going to do other child? You know things like that are challenges. They ask “Can I bring a pizza for the entire lunch room?” Even though it is good to have a parent that would provide pizza to all students, you know that we just can't do that. Parents get upset and don’t want to understand the regulations and wants to see the law. They think that it is my rule and it is me not letting them eat outside food in school. It affects parental involvement negatively. Most of my challenges are like dealing with these kinds of parents. It impacts my parental involvement since they get upset with rules and regulations. Sometimes they come with big excitement with great ideas. I listen to them and be respectful of their ideas, but sometimes I have to decline their request after

Aykac 87 explaining the reason why we can’t do in a way that is not offensive. Most of the time they do understand you but you always find a few parents focused on negativity [who] do not want to understand your answers. Some parents do not understand the position of charter schools and [try to] dictate what happens in spending and want to do things that aren't necessarily legal. Some parents want their child to be involved in everything and maybe not necessarily give other children a chance. We are a small charter school and everything can get spread out easily. I recently had a situation where a parent for some reason started a bad rumor about one of my teachers, which was absolutely false, not true at all. Some parents started talking about this rumor so I had to call those parents in and show them that this was not true. Another biggest challenge I have here is parents change their phone number and they don't notify [the school]. Most of the times, either the kids really don't know the new number, or they choose not to give us. When the parent comes to pick them up, I try to immediately ask them to get their contact information updated.

Aykac 88 Chapter VII It’s All About Two-Way Communication Mr. Alan is an experienced school leader who has a master’s degree in educational leadership. He holds a principal certification for grades Kinder through twelve and is currently working at a charter school in Austin, Texas. Mr. Alan started his charter school adventure in 2008 at a Title I school after working at few private schools as a teacher. He taught foreign language classes both in private and charter schools before he started his administration career. He worked at Title I school as a principal in Dallas for 3 years before moving to Austin. He has been serving as a principal at another Title I charter school for about 3 years in Austin. Mr. Alan’s charter school serves sixth through twelfth grade students with a population of 574. He said that his school has the highest rate of low-income students in his district. 75% of students receive free or reduced lunch or breakfast. 86% of his students are Hispanic, 6% are White, 5% African-American and 3% other. Mr. Alan classified himself as white. Mr. Alan told that he truly enjoyed being a Title I principal although it has its own challenges. He liked being challenged while working as a part of wonderful team that touches lives of students they serve. Meaning of Parental Involvement Among Principals Mr. Alan defined parental involvement as parents’ job to be involved in their children’s education by providing necessary support to continue their education successfully. He shared:

Aykac 89 Parental involvement means to me is an expectation that parents understand that it is their job to get involved in their child’s education and provide necessary support not only to students but also their school to ensure they continue in their education successfully. Also, it is one of the main responsibilities of schools to have parents involved in their education. I believe every parent needs to be informed about their children's education at school. This is a very first step to start parental involvement. On the other side, parents want to know how their child progresses at school. I believe schools are obligated to keep parents up to date with all the changes and with all the progress. This is a part of parental involvement as well. I believe any activity that increases parents’ acknowledgement of education that the students [are] getting at school, and any activity that increases their role in their children's education activities are important and called parental involvement. Parent night activities, parent-teacher conferences, breakfast with the principal, breakfast with the teachers and college guidance counselors are the activities I believe are considered as parental involvement. I believe parents, first of all, should be knowledgeable about what's going on at school. The best case would be [for] parents to know the teachers of the house in person and to be familiar what resources or what content their child is learning at school. On top of these, of course parents should be able to keep up with their children's educational and behavioral progress and maintain two-way communication with the teachers.

Aykac 90 Mr. Alan emphasized that having an open door policy is very important to make parents get involved in school. Open door policy means to me is being available for parents anytime they need me. It means to answer their calls when they call you. It means to meet with them when they need to meet with you. In general, most of the parents believe there are barriers between them and between the principal, and a lot depends on the principal’s attitude towards that. If the principal tells the secretaries to tell parents that they need to have an appointment to meet with the principal, and they can only meet with the principal through the appointment, then that's itself a discouragement. I understand that principals are very busy and they may not be available to meet with parents when they want or when they need but I also believe that principals should make this as their priority and do [their] best as much as possible to make parents feel comfortable and to be available and accessible for them. As I mentioned, parents also should be given the direct contact information for school principal. Parents also should know that if they have any dispute with the teacher or if they're not satisfied with the quality of school services, they can raise their concern and voice and let the school principal know. I do take every concern very seriously and I do my best to contact or to be accessible for parents when they have these kinds of concerns. I would like to hear from teachers and from parents about the issues they are having. I prefer to have a face-to-face meeting, and every time when I meet with parents, my

Aykac 91 approach is to be a problem-solver, and to make sure that the decision that we come up with serves for the best interests of student and school. Mr. Alan believed that being a charter school forces him to consider his parents as his customers. He said that if his parents are not satisfied with the quality of the education, he loses his parents. Therefore, he always treats them with a high quality of customer service. He explained: I do consider my parents and students as our customer. It is because we are school of choice and we are an open enrollment school. A lot is depending on the enrollment numbers, and it is important that we provide the highest quality education possible and highest quality service possible so we can retain and attract more students. We have to be competitive. We have to be customer satisfaction driven. Therefore, it starts with informing and guiding teachers letting them know the importance of [keeping] parents satisfied, and the importance of maintaining high quality education, so parents keep choosing our school. Because parents are a great force, they can bring you more enrollments. They can bring you more positive reviews. They can be your voice. They can be your advocates. They can bring funds for school, so it's a great driving force. It is important that we know the teachers know about it, and teachers are a great part of parental involvement.

Aykac 92 Influence of Parental Involvement on Student Success Mr. Allen highlighted that more parental involvement equals more student success. He said: I can definitely say that parental involvement has a direct impact on how students achieve academically and how they behave at school. Students who are coming from families where parents are more involved, where the parents follow up with their children's education at the day to day level with their assignments and with their grades, they tend to stay on track and they tend to have better educational achievements. Also, if parents have high expectation for their children and they keep up with those expectations, then we see students being more responsible and students being more goal-oriented for their future career or future education. I do believe that there's a huge correlation between parental enrollment and student achievement. As I mentioned, parental involvement helps students to keep on track. The support that students get from their parents towards their educational success is essential for their academic and social growth. I have several examples that showed that students’ success increased after parents got involved. At the beginning of our school year, we started conducting meeting with our parents. We called them for breakfast with the principal. They got to hear all the educational programs and new initiatives from the principal, from me. We noticed that most of their students attended extracurricular activities and competitions after that meeting, and they became volunteers for our school events.

Aykac 93 I think parents need to acknowledge and understand that it's not only school’s responsibility to educate children, and not to think that the parents’ responsibility is limited with only bringing their child to school. They should understand that it is like a joint custody; both school and parents have responsibilities and rights in educating the students. Once parents think like that, I believe that any little support from parents will definitely increase the educational success of their students. Effective Parental Involvement Activities Mr. Alan’s school offers multiple opportunities to its parents, including home visits, parent breakfast, parent nights and volunteer opportunities through an online system called Voly. He continued: We have a lot of opportunities for parents to come and volunteer at our school. I want to mention that providing multiple opportunities is another great way for parents to keep their involvement. When parents volunteer and donate their time for their school, it actually means “my teachers and administration are not alone” in educating their child. We do have a volunteering program and we have a tool called Voly, which helps parents conveniently sign up for the events and become volunteers at school. We have home visit programs, parent breakfast, college guidance nights where we invite parents. We make sure that they get all this important information about their child's progress at school while ensuring that they are involved in their children's education.

Aykac 94 We do have a parent-teacher organization (PTO) at school, and they meet monthly, and they have board positions filled out by elections. It is functioning very well. I'm really happy to say that the parent-teacher organization works very hard to raise funds to support our students and school. They are very much involved in students from different clubs in those fundraising events and activities. Having a PTO or similar organization in school is very important to reach out to the parents. They spread the word and recruit more people to be in school events. I think schools should put [forth] efforts to maintain the PTO and to make sure that it continues. I think besides having PTO, parent advisory committee would be a nice addition. I think parents should be actively involved in every committee that the school has. I myself invite and encourage parents to take active roles in our decision-making committees. We are a TSTEM designated school therefore we have TSTEM Advisory Board which consists of parents. As a part of Title I fund requirements, we have to have certain committees such as Campus Improvement Committee and School Improvement Committee which also consists of parents, teachers and administrators. We ask our parents to be a part of our school based decision-making committee. We like getting their feedback and opinions when it comes on how to spend our school's resources. We are a T- STEM Academy, which also requires us to have a TSTEM Advisory Board, which includes parents, teachers, students, administrators and community people.

Aykac 95 Mr. Alan believed that principal leadership style influences the level of parental involvement in schools. To increase the parental involvement in school, principals need to guide teachers by leading by example. He said: The most effective practices for the principal to get involved in parental involvement activities is, principals can guide staff members to contact parents or to be in touch with parents more frequently. But it is more effective when the principal himself or herself does these activities and leads by example. I have seen many cases, and I have witnessed this myself, where the principal's involvement in parental activities encourages other staff members, and the program becomes very successful, and it just brings a lot of great turnout to school. It starts with letting teachers know how important the parents for school. There are teachers coming from different environments, some come from private, some come from public schools which parental involvement may not mean the same thing as it is in charter schools. We have to be competitive; we have to be customer satisfaction driven. Therefore, it starts with informing and guiding teachers, letting them know the importance of [keeping] parents satisfied and the importance of maintaining high quality education, which will lead parents to keep choosing our school. Because parents are a great force, they can bring you more enrollments. They can bring you more positive reviews. They can be your voice. They can be an advocate of your school. They can bring different funds to school. So, it's a great driving force and it is important that we know the teachers know about it and teachers are a great part of parental involvement.

Aykac 96 Best effective parental involvement activities at home. Mr. Alan said that parents could easily be involved in their child’s education as long as they know what is going on in school. He shared: It starts with being knowledgeable about what your child is learning at school. To be able to get involved in your child’s education, you need to know your child’s teacher, his or her grades, homework, academic and discipline records. If we want parents to get involved in their child’s education at home, we should establish two-way communication. Parents need to know how and at what degree they should be involved in their education both at home and at school. This communication should be maintained with collaborative efforts of parents, teachers and administrators. We expect parents to ask their kids about their homework, assignments, and grades and make sure they do turn in their homework on time. Effective communication strategies for better parental involvement. Mr. Allan believed that he had effective communication with his parents. He tried to use every possible tool to make sure no parents were left behind, and that all parents received attention and support from him. He continued: I do communicate with my parents effectively and frequently, besides having regular communication ways such as weekly emails and weekly call outs to inform all of our parents about our educational progress, educational programs and important announcements. Other than sending regular newsletters, parent notices or announcements, we have a home visit program, parent breakfast, and

Aykac 97 college guidance nights. Of course, not all parents attend these programs. At this point our home visit program gets in to reach out the other parents. As a school system we do have a great emphasis on home visit program. My school is one of the schools in our district implementing the home visit program successfully. We have visited more than 25% of our students this year at their homes so far, and more than half of our staff members were involved in home visit program. Keep that in your mind, that these home visits are done either after school or weekends by our teachers. I'm proud to say that the interest among teachers towards home visit has increased a lot in the last couple of years and more parents and students are visited at their home. I have conducted around 25 to 30 home visits with fellow teachers and this is great and encouragement for teachers as well. I believe the best parent involvement activity is the home visit. Because this is a direct communication with the parents and it allows parents to ask all the questions they have about school. It also allows teachers to have enough time and enough focus to discuss all the issues, all the progress and all the needs of students in the class during home visit. I believe home visits are the most successful parental involvement activity. Mr. Allan underlined again that two-way communication is the key for parental involvement. He continued: I believe the most important characteristics of this communication to be two-way communication. In many cases, parents don't have enough time to dedicate for their children's education. Especially in Title I schools, most of our parents are

Aykac 98 low-income parents. Due to their low socioeconomic status, they are working in two or three different jobs and that means they have limited time available to spend for their children's education. They don't have enough time and effort to provide for their children's education. That’s why two-way communication becomes very crucial. As a title I school principal, we should know our demographics, parents’ status and arrange all events accordingly. When we communicate with parents without knowing the social and economic dynamics of our parents, we will not get any positive responses from them. Mr. Allan highlighted that leadership style of school leaders opens or closes this communication door. He said: I believe the leadership style that influences the parent enrollment in schools as leaders set the tone of our school voice, communication ways. We need to encourage parents to be more involved and we need to keep our doors open to them. Parents would like to know the leaders of school, principals and assistant principals, so they can communicate and contact them directly if there is any concerns regarding to their child's academic or behavioral progress. We live in the 21st century and we have to use 21st century tools, communication tools. We do utilize technology a lot. We have Facebook and Twitter accounts because these are the most frequently checked social media accounts nowadays. Almost everyone has access to Internet and has smart phones. It is easier for them to follow announcements and events that are happening at school through their social media account. The other strong tool that we have is our school database. It's called “Skyward,” which allows parents access to their

Aykac 99 children's educational records. Skyward also allows parents and teachers to maintain two-way communication. We have a call-out system that allows our school administrators to reach parents with important announcements. We do have a weekly mailing system that announces important updates to all of our parents through their emails. When I asked Mr. Allen to talk about his opinion regarding contacting parents at principal level and teacher level, he provided following: We contact parents regularly every week. I email parents each time I need to make any announcement. I also utilize an automated call system for emergency situations, where we send this call or text messages to our parents. As I said before, I have an open door policy and always make myself available to meet with my parents. As a school we do require our teachers to contact parents regularly as well. We ask them to let parents know about their child's educational progress by sending notes, using email system or via phone calls. Unfortunately, most of the teachers contact parents when their students misbehave, when the grades of students start falling. I do encourage our teachers to contact parents not only in those cases but also in cases where students start showing great improvement and start showing great behavioral and academic improvement as well. It is a positive reward for students and parents when they hear a compliment from their teachers. This is also a very proud moment for parents to hear a compliment about their children.

Aykac 100 The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them Mr. Allen listed some of the challenges he has been facing in his school and barriers he noticed on parental involvement. He said: The main issue is the time. Parents think they don't have enough time to spend for their children's education because of their work schedule. Having 75% of my students coming from low-income families means, there are multiple parents, both mom and dad, working in different jobs or multiple jobs with different work schedules. It is very hard for them to be available and accessible for teachers and school administrators for school events to volunteer. They even don’t enough time to be involved in their child’s education at home because of their work schedule as well. I think it's a great challenge for principals. Language barrier is another issue. 86% of my students are Hispanic and most of their parents speak only Spanish. Cultural barriers and gaps are another challenge for us. Every campus and every school, every region is different and has different characteristics. But we can overcome these by assessing the situation clearly and knowing the population well and developing a local strategy by using the best-known educational approaches that will fit in our school demographics. The relationship between parents and schools usually is not at ideal level. There is a big gap between school and parents in Title one school unfortunately. As I mentioned, due to language barriers, some parents hesitate to come to school and contact their teachers. We are making sure that we have enough staff members who speak both languages English and Spanish. It's also important that we have Spanish-speaking administrators so parents can feel more comfortable to

Aykac 101 come and contact those individuals and administrators when they have issues or when they need to get more help and more assistance towards how to help their child's education. I believe this itself has a great encouragement on parents. If the principal keeps a good and open communication with parents and makes parents feel comfortable, it will help a lot to increase parental involvement. I believe because of parents’ socioeconomic needs they change their address and contact information often. When they change their contact information, it becomes a burden for schools to keep up with maintaining and updating their contact information. We do have a lot of announcements; we send verbal notices, we send greeting notices to parents but in many cases, we see the addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, actual physical mailing addresses are not current and are not updated. It bounces back when I send an email. That means we are not able to reach a certain percentage of our parents. We constantly ask parents to update our database with current information. We keep educating parents on how important it is to be involved in their child’s education, organizing different events. We choose the best time that works for our parents and their work schedule. For example, if you only do all your parent meetings in the morning then a great percentage of parents, due to their work, can’t attend, or if we do it in the in the afternoon time, then those who can’t attend in the morning can’t attend. We provide the alternatives with a couple of different time frames for parents to come. On the other hand, we need to train our teachers. Many teachers are coming from different environments; some come from private, some come from public

Aykac 102 schools which parental involvement may not mean the same thing as it does in charter schools. Therefore, it starts with informing and guiding teachers, letting them know the importance of [keeping] parents satisfied and the importance of maintaining high quality education. Teachers need to be very approachable, very open, and they need to know that they are serving the students and parents. In our school, I believe we need to keep the activities and strategies that we currently use. We should increase the number of training opportunities for teachers regarding cultural and social dynamics of our school.

Aykac 103 Chapter VIII Get-to-Get Together. Share. Listen…and Make them Happy Mrs. Katy has started her career as an elementary teacher at a public school district Indiana. After serving few years in Indiana, she moved to Dallas, Texas where her charter school adventure started. She started as a special education teacher at a charter school in Ft Worth. At the same charter school where she started as a teacher, she became an assistant principal. She has been serving as principal for 6 years at a charter school in Grand Prairie. Mrs. Katy has received a bachelor’s degree in elementary education with a focus on special education and completed her master’s degree in educational administration. After taking one more class, she will finish her second master’s in special education. She holds generalist (EC-4), special Education (K-12), English as a Second Language (K-12) and principal (K-12) certification from the state of Texas. Her school campus serves Kinder through eighth grade students with a population of 568 students. Demographics of the school are: 48% Hispanic students, 36% African-American, 11% White and 5% other. 71% of her students come from low-income families. Mrs. Katy feels blessed to be serving such a needy population. She described her population as “extremely poor to middle school class” families. She explained the reason why she liked working at Title I charter school: My preference is always a Title I campus, because the needs of the student, you know, they're the kids that need the most love, the most attention, the most focus and those are the students that I like to be with.

Aykac 104 Meaning of Parental Involvement Among Principals I asked Mrs. Katy to provide her views on parental involvement and what it means to her. She shared the following: I define parental involvement as how involved a parent can actually be with the school that a student attends. It's not necessarily “we see each other face to face,” but really can I reach out to parents and have a conversation via phone, text message or a face-to-face? Do you have opinions that you offer to the campus? Because I know so many parents, especially at a title one school, they hold multiple jobs. They may be single parents so as much as they would love to be on campus for an event that's not always a possibility and they love their kids just as much as anybody else. I have been in elementary campuses, and now my campus is K-8 campus, and I can tell that parent involvement in elementary grade level is extreme; you have your helicopter parents. You know what, that is right, okay! So, you have your helicopter parents and you have those parents who feel the need to always be involved, whether it be at the events, or constantly contacting a teacher or the principal's. But then, once students reach the middle school age, I was thinking whether it's either the parent who doesn't want to be here or the student who doesn't want the parent here. You know our middle school kids are trying to separate from their parents and be their own people, so there's so many times that I believe they are not telling their parents that we have events or celebrations or parties of any kind. Middle school students can be here without their parents and hang out with friends. On the other side, it's a time when parents believe that their

Aykac 105 child is old enough to handle things on their own, so trying to get them to come and join us for something is extremely difficult. I just believe that parents’ role is to be a parent who supports their children in every way, and it needs to be important to them so that it's important to the child. When we call them, they need to answer their call. We have still parents when you try to call them the phone just rings a lot of times. They can hear the phone ringing but they just don't want to answer so getting them to answer and getting them to understand the importance of education is part of parental involvement. Also, when we have sports events or any academic events, we want our parents come and join us and support their kids. Mrs. Katy believed that parents and her students are both her customer and partner. She said treating parents with high quality customer service will lead you to keep them on your side to start a partnership. She shared: I actually look at it both ways. Before I ever got into education, I was actually in retail, and the customer is always right. That's the motto in retail, and a lot of times parents, when they come in, they really just want to know that you're listening to what they're talking about. If you give them the feeling that you are paying attention to what they say and you are going to work towards a goal that you both have come up with. So, making them happy is what you really want to do and if you keep them happy then you have less stress and you're going to end up with parents here a lot. I believe it will open the doors to create a partnership with your parents.

Aykac 106 Influence of Parental Involvement on Student Success Even though Mrs. Katy had no research about influence of parental involvement on student success, she believed that there is a strong correlation between them. She shared: I do believe that there is a huge correlation between parent involvement and student achievement. I haven't found data yet that will prove that because I really haven't thought and looked at it seriously yet. But I know that when you have students that are misbehaving, and the parent just blows it off and doesn't handle anything at home, then the student is going to be the same way. It's not going to be a focus that they have to actually plan to be learning. Because at that age they need to take education seriously, they need to be focused on doing that instead of thinking about what they're going to do after school or what friends they're going to hang out with, or the parties that are going on! Those parents who really have those conversations with their kids, and communicate their expectations with their kids, help a lot to the students to keep up with their grades. Effective Parental Involvement Activities Mrs. Katy mentioned that they try to offer multiple events on different schedules to be able to get as many parents as they can. They started using an online platform to recruit more volunteer parents, which helped them to increase the number of volunteer parents at their events. She continued: We schedule a lot of events on campus that we hope that we can get parents here. Using “Voly” has opened up the door for a lot of parents to be able to come in and volunteer. Just letting them know that the door is open is another way to make

Aykac 107 sure our parents come in. So many schools, you know, they stop you at the door and they don't let you come through. You're not allowed to come in and observe your kid. You have to set up appointments and stuff like that. I don't mind if a parent wants to stop by and stand outside of a classroom and look or walk in and sit down. That's totally fine. All they have to do is ask. There's nothing here that we're trying to hide that we don't want parents to see. If they can come and actually see what's going on, then they'll feel much better about it and they'll want to be here. This year we're starting the new “Parent Academy” program. That is something that I'm really excited [about] and I'm looking forward to so that we can actually grow our parents as well. We are going to have a lot of outside people coming in. A keynote speaker that's going to talk to our parents about the importance of partnering with academic team in order to have success in school with their kids, and the important role that they have in. We will have immigration sessions, banks, and will have some of the city people here. Come visit! We have a multicultural day called “We are around the world.” I started the Living Museum so this will be our third year for the Living Museum and that is actually where we get a lot of middle school students and parents. Living Museum is where each grade level is assigned to specific while they choose a specific time in history, and the class researches the people from that time period, and then on the day of our event they come dressed as the person that they have researched. We give them a little sticker that they put on their hand so they have

Aykac 108 to act like just a statue, and then when somebody pushes the button they have to recite information about that person. It’s great for all grade levels. Of course, you have your science nights, that we have, and we have the science fair and we have field day and a lot of people join us. I don't know if they realize that a lot of parents will come to field day if you tell them families are welcome to come and you let them buy t-shirts, just like the kids buy t-shirts. You have everybody teamed up so it's a family event, so we make it a family event. Our softball team gets out there and plays against some of the teachers, and so there's a lot of competition that some people love to come see. Mrs. Katy said that until this year they used to have PTO however after PTO parents’ students graduated, they could not recruit new parents into PTO this year. She mentioned that one of her staff has been working on that. She told: This year we do not have a PTO. We used to have a PTO. The students’ parents that were our president and treasury and everyone actually moved out. I have a new engagement coordinator this year who is working on getting that started again. Always it's difficult to find out how to get people here for a PTO meeting, you know. So, the biggest way we could find to get someone to attend a PTO meeting was, first have kids perform and second serve food. Even if that means I'm grilling hot dogs outside, I do that too. It increased the number of parents attend our events. We have actually considered having a parent Advisory Committee besides having PTO. We were really thinking about a type of a committee that is going to help our Hispanic families. The parents feel like they cannot come because they

Aykac 109 don't speak English. We thought about matching our Spanish-speaking parents with some of our English-speaking parents that actually can speak both languages, so that they can partner together and develop a relationship. They'll have somebody that they know here that they'll feel comfortable with when they come, to make sure that everybody's together I discovered that depending on what is actually being done during science night depends on which parents you have. So, I brought in the museum they will come and do specific science nights for you and you can pick specific grade levels that we’ll focus on. So, we had a CSI type thing. They had to determine who the killer was, you know, throughout, and they looked at all of the evidences. We had ten tables that were set. So this brought in more of the middle-school kids than it did the elementary kids, but we had a few extra stations, like making slime and stuff like that so that if we had the little ones come in, they would have something to do as well. When parents come to the first event, it's like a first impression. When they come the first time, they do determine if they ever come back. If they see that it's involving for them, that there's something interesting for them, then I think they come back. When we had our first multicultural day celebration, parents were going through the halls amazed at all of the things the kids were doing and being able to look at the different countries and tasting the different food. Seeing their kids’ performance, especially if it was their kids’, and it just trickles down, they just talked and talked and shared that information with the other parents, and

Aykac 110 the next time you've got it doubled. So, your attendance rate doubles with the Living Museum. We had maybe 20 kids that participated the first year, and some of the parents that would come, but the next year we did it almost tripled. Our parking lot was full because it was something they had not experienced before. As a part of these events, kids should talk about it at home with their parents, they do their research, they have to dress up which makes parents come and see them. That is parental involvement, when they get to come and share in the excitement of what their kids are doing. I think the more excitement you can develop with the kids, the more the parents are going to want to come and see that and share in that, because they want to share an excitement just as much as the kids. Best effective parental involvement activities at home. I asked Mrs. Katy to share her opinion on effective parental involvement activities at home. She said it starts right after they pick up their kids and continued: The best way for a parent to [get] involved in his/her child's education at home starts as soon as you pick him up from school. Just asking them how their day went, maybe asking them what they did in a specific class or if they know that there was a test. Ask him how they did if they know something was troubling them or they were excited about something. Just talking about it in open communication between the parent and the student. That really brings out discussion as to what's going on in this building once they leave. They can help out with homework or find someone who can help with homework. It's setting those expectations that it has to get done that they need to

Aykac 111 go to bed at a certain time. How to prioritize their things at home? A lot of children don't know how to prioritize especially of middle school kiddos. They don't want to do nothing. So, parents need to be a little firm to set those priorities with them. Parents can share and they come and they even teach the kids, you know the skits or the dances or the songs or the music or anything like that. That's where we have the most parent involvement because it's familiar to them. Effective communication strategies for better parental involvement. Ms. Katy shared her communication efforts with her parents. She provided: The communication is one of the biggest areas that you have too, when it comes to any type of parental involvement. If a parent doesn't know what's going on, whether it be if you have an event on campus, or if a student is doing poorly or fantastic in a class. If we don't have that communication, parents will not be a part of that. We need to use every means possible to make sure that parents know what's going on in the school at all times being a kinder to eighth grade [school]. We regularly contact parents on Wednesdays through Wednesday mail. It is an electronic newsletter. I'll send class emails regularly out to parents if there's something going on in a classroom, like something special is going on, to welcome them in. I asked her if having open door policy is one of the tools she uses in communication with parents. She said: Open-door policy to me is just making sure that you're available at all times and they're free to come when they want to come. This is great way to open communication doors to your parents. I require teachers to contact parents

Aykac 112 anytime we have something going on. I expect them to reach out if there's a behavior issue. I also want them to contact parents to let them know something is going great. Everyone in my campus is required to respond within 48 hours and communication needs to be whatever works with that parent. If you have a parent that prefers a text message then send them a text. Not all of our families have Internet or computers so we have to reach them on what's convenient for them. I don't actually reward teachers for contacting parents. Motivation I feel needs to come from the teacher. I set an expectation; if I get word from a parent that they are having trouble reaching a teacher. The teacher will get an email from me or I will have a conversation with him/her that says you know somebody's trying to reach out. Can you please tell me what's going on? Because sometimes you have a parent that says I've tried and I've tried and they're not answering. At that moment I tell the parents that I will find out and it will not happen again. I call the teacher and try to hear his/her side of the story and if I find enough evidence showing that teacher tried to reach parent then I contact parent and tell her what I found out. I follow up with the parent again sometimes. I give 48 hours to teachers to get back to the parent and then I respond back to the parent, just letting them know that I'm checking up to see if this was taken care of and fill me in if it hasn't been. They know that I'm paying attention as well. I have one teacher who's visited every single student in the class so they know the families and they can tell you everything about their culture for those family members, and you know for them to be able to reach the family and bring

Aykac 113 them in and let the family know that they're just as important to us as their child is that helps bridge the gap. We always include the Spanish translations when we send things home. We try to have translators available when we have events or meetings to make sure that they can communicate. When we had the PTO, one of our PTO leaders was also Spanish speaker, so that they could speak at the same time and they were involved in that conversation. I'm always looking for more strategies If you can get a parent to volunteer, you can get them in because now they've agreed to donate their time. If they know what you're asking them to help with, and if they're familiar with that event, you will find more parents involved. For example, when we were doing multicultural day, our families get really involved in that because it's their culture. Because it's familiar to them, they love where they come from and they want to share. Another good communication style is quit calling for just bad stuff always. Think about it, it's the parent who's always being called because their student is constantly screaming or misbehaving in the class and they know that's what you're calling for. If that's what they're expecting you to call and say so-and-so is doing this, they don't want to answer the phone. They've heard it five times. Why are you going to call them again and let them know? But if you call and leave a message that says sorry I missed you but I just wanted to let you know how wonderful he's doing today or that he turned in his homework you know anything like that then maybe the next time you call, they'll answer because they have the possibility of hearing something positive.

Aykac 114 You could send cards and notes but voice to me is always so much better if you take the time to verbally do it then it shows that you take that as more important. Yes, you can write in note and you can send it or you can copy a piece of paper and send it home. That's taken a little bit of time too, but this is more personal. It's almost like standing in front of them and saying “Hey it was nice to have him here today” or “it's nice seeing you,” because I always tell mine it's good to see you today when the parents come in. The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them Mrs. Katy underlined that helicopter parents are all around you in elementary level, but when their kids start middle school you see those helicopter parents “land”. She discussed: Parent involvement in elementary grade level is extreme; you have your helicopter parents! You have those parents who feel that they need to be involved whether it be at the events or constantly contacting a teacher or the principal. But once students reach the middle school age, I was thinking whether it's either the parent who doesn't want to be here or the student who doesn't want the parent here. Because you know our middle school kids are trying to separate from their parents and be their own people. There are so many times that I believe they are not telling their parents that we have events, or celebrations or parties of any kind so that they can be here and hang out with friends without the parents being here. But it's also a time when parents believe that their child is old enough to handle things on their own, so trying to get them to come and join us for something is extremely difficult.

Aykac 115 I do believe that principal on campus determines how many parents do come and do participate in things that we have, because if I'm out there talking to families just at dismissal or drop-off in the morning, or, you know, in the lobby area when they're hanging out, then they have a comfort to be able to talk to me and be here with us. So it makes them see that they are a part of this school as well, and they are always welcomed. When you stand outside during drop off or dismissal and say hi to them, smile at them, ask them how they feel, [you] make them feel comfortable to communicate [with] you easily. When I got here I tried to schedule events at 5.30pm on those days but then noticed that 5.30 pm is not late enough for most of the parents then we scheduled them at 6 pm knowing where our families are coming from. Because you know being a charter school, our kids are from everywhere so you have to know how far they have to drive. It's the same leniency that I have to have when I don't have all my kids picked up after school. Because I know parents are trying and they're doing everything they can and they'll get here as soon as they can. So, allowing them a little bit of leniency makes them feel supported and they will support you when you need them. We try to provide snacks, pizza or refreshments at each event, depending on the type of our events, and our families are familiar with this. They know if they will be provided food or not before they come to an event. You need to choose your days and your nights wisely. We don't choose Wednesdays because Wednesday is typically a church night for most of my parents, and Fridays, nobody wants to do anything on a Friday evening. It's the end of the week, you

Aykac 116 want to go home, you just play, hit the weekend. Monday is the start of the week. How many of us have bad Mondays? Therefore, we schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays and events are either between 5.30 pm to 7 pm or 6 pm to 8pm. We also provide childcare for a four-year-old basically because we're only giving childcare to potty trained. They have to be fully potty-trained in order to be in the childcare.

Aykac 117 Chapter IX Be Active in Your Child’s Education! Mr. Bill has been serving as a principal at a Title I charter school in Waco since 2013. Before he became a principal, he worked as math teacher and college counselor at different high school. After working at public schools for few years, he started his charter school career as a math teacher in San Antonio. He moved to Dallas when he was offered a college counseling position at another charter school. Finally, he ended up getting a principal position at a charter school in Waco. Mr. Bill has a bachelor’s degree in math education and holds his master’s in educational leadership. He has teaching certification for 4-12 math and special education from state of Texas. He received his principal certification after few years he became a principal. Mr. Bill was a principal of K-12 school until they split the school as K-6 and 712. He took the upper grades and moved to an old HEB building after renovation. He currently has 486 students in grades 7-12. Demographic enrollment of his school was 71% Hispanic, 19% White, 7% African-American and 3% other. 72% of his students received free or reduced lunch, which qualified them to become a Title I school in Waco. Mr. Bill said that, as a principal, he had not had any experience at any public school, but he really enjoyed running a charter school where he felt blessed for serving such a high need population. He said: I do enjoy being a principal at Title I school. It is very valuable to lead the students who are underrepresented. Most of my students don’t have many role

Aykac 118 models in their family and helping them to go to college. That’s where we play a critical role in their life. Meaning of Parental Involvement Among Principals Mr. Bill thought that being a charter school naturally creates parental involvement at some degree. He said there are two types of parents: active and inactive. He continued: For me parental involvement is being active in your child’s education. When students who have an active parent that have been helping their education in their school life, you see the difference. When I say an active parent that helps their students in their education, I mean being involved in their child’s school, their school choice and supporting their education. We are a charter school and we are a school of choice. Parental involvement is very important for students’ education. Parental involvement should start from top to bottom, left to right. What I mean is we should include all teachers, parents and students and get their ideas, opinions to be able to have better parental involvement. Depending on schools’ population parental involvement level changes. We have less parental involvement in upper grade level whereas early grade level we see more parental involvement. Even though in upper grade, in middle school, parental involvement should be better and they should still be involved in their child school, we do not see that as much as we intended to see. On the other side students in middle school do not want their parents be around. They do not want their parents present around as often as in elementary. They want to be more independent person to make their own choices. Sometimes, students are selective

Aykac 119 with the messages sent by school and do not relay them to their parents. That affects our parental involvement rate in middle school. In middle school, I believe parents should be a guide for their child instead of telling them what to do each time. They should create a goal with their child and closely monitor them to reach their goal. Mr. Bill mentioned that he considered his parents customers more than he considered them partners. He said being a charter school put them in competition with other schools keep their students and parent at their school and forced them to provide quality education to make them happy, like a regular business does in order to keep their customers. He said: Ok…parents as a customer and as a partner? We are a school of choice. Our population comes from regular public schools. Parents will do their own research and choose our school if they like. Unlike from the regular business, our product is high quality education. We try to sell it. Therefore, I believe they are our customers and our product is our education level. They need to be happy with our end product. I also see my students as our customer. They have a choice in their education. Even though most of the time their parents decide or choose their school options, they have a say for if they are satisfied their education that is provided by us. They do stay longer and they do continue their education with us if they like and feel they are learning.

Aykac 120 Influence of Parental Involvement on Student Success Mr. Bill stated that even though he has not researched or read any statistical paper regarding parental involvement and students’ success, he strongly believed that there is a correlation between parental involvement and student success by looking at his own experiences in different schools. He said: We have not seen or read a paper regarding influence of the parental involvement on student success, but I have informal information, my own experiences, showing that parental involvement increases the students’ success. I noticed that students whose parents are more involved in their schooling become more successful. When parents ask questions about their school life and get involved in their schooling, students are more likely to be successful than their peers. Those students have higher test scores that I experienced here as an evidence. We had a student who was not turning in his assignments, then we conducted a home visit to discuss this issue and explain them how they can help their child. We noticed that that student's missing homework decreased, grades improved as well. Effective Parental Involvement Activities Mr. Bill said that since they see their parents and students as customers, they wanted to provide multiple opportunities to show their products. He believed that the more events at school, the more parental involvement. Therefore, he wanted to provide different activities where parents could come and have time to interact with other parents throughout the year. He continued:

Aykac 121 Parent nights, breakfasts, host parent day, FAFSA, TASFA nights, grade levels meetings and college readiness events are some of the activities we do with our parents. One of the best parental activities that we do here is one-on-one meeting with our parents regarding their child’s academic future. [Our] Dean of Academics does these meetings with their teachers. It is the best time to share goals and expectations with our parents. Since research showed that the parental involvement impacts the students’ success, we do have an obligation to deliver our programs to them. When the parents can easily communicate with school, when parents know who to talk and who to contact regarding their concerns or suggestions, [that is] evidence of good home school connection. We have a PTO at our school. They meet every other week or monthly. I have a PTO liaison attends all PTO meetings, but I attend couple of them throughout the year. I believe that PTO helps to increase the parental involvement. They organize events for our parents, schedule fun events and fundraisers for our students. They are the biggest bridge between school and parents. PTO can increase the parental involvement up to certain point. Depends on the performance of PTO members. I believe that they can help to make most of the parents active in their child’s schooling. We did discuss about having a parent-advisory team beyond PTO but we didn’t want to create a conflict with PTO as well. We think that PTO can lead these kinds of activities. PTO members take it as an alternative organization and get upset. However, we invite parents to participate in our Campus Needs Assessment or Campus Improvement Plan meetings.

Aykac 122 We want parents have voice in any decision we take, especially the ones [that] will affect them or their child's education. For example, last year we wanted to change our bell schedule and we had a team to survey the parents to get their opinion about bell schedule. We created our bell schedule based on the feedback we received from our parents. Throughout the year we show our appreciation to our parents who are in PTO or volunteer in special events to thank them. As a small token of appreciation, each semester we award the students and parents with different certificates for volunteering in school events. Inviting parents to school, organizing parent nights are good examples of communication but we also have home visit program, which is a great communication tool. During home visit our teachers provide upcoming activities, events, school expectations, in their home environment where students and parents feel more comfortable. Best effective parental involvement activities at home. Mr. Bill briefly touched on what parents can do at home to get involve in their child’s education. He said: The best parental involvement is to participate in school events and contact their teacher directly. When it comes to out of school time, I believe having enough time to monitor their students’ progress closely is very important. They should ask about their grades, talk about what is going on in school or in class. Ask about what they learned or if they have any homework or if they need any help.

Aykac 123 Effective communication strategies for better parental involvement. Mr. Bill said that his school used different tools to keep the communication channels always open and available to parents. Besides using common communication tools like all other public schools, he started using “Let’s Talk” and “Remind” apps. He explained: Especially this year with my assistant principals we try to implement a free application is called Remind. Nowadays, most of the parents have smart phones. Remind is a free application that you can [use to] announce your programs, events directly to students’ and parents’ phones. It is a very simple process. You just create a group in the app, and when you send a text message, it goes to everyone. Parents can opt out if they do not want to receive. It is free with no charge. It’s been working really well. We utilized Let's Talk software, which lets community members to express their feelings to school officials through an online platform. Anyone in the community can share their feedback or concerns with us by using Let’s Talk app. We have to reply the emails within two days otherwise system sends a warning notification. It also really helped a lot to increase our communication with our parents. Other than that, sometimes with letters, sometimes verbal, sometimes phone calls, we get their feedback. We do get our parents feedback for any discussion we have at school. We contact with them through our teachers, coordinators, surveys or one-on-one meetings. One of the biggest barriers in communication is language. Most of the time the announcement in school is made in English only, not in other languages.

Aykac 124 About two three times we send remind messages to our parents and students. We have Wednesday mail sent weekly. I have an open door policy. Whenever I am available and parent would like to meet with me I make myself available. At the beginning of the year we require our teachers to visit their students at home. We require our teachers to contact their parents if students have failing grades or discipline issues. Grades and discipline issues are main items that we require teachers to contact their parents always. Sometimes we do not reach the parent and leave messages, but parents do not check it on time. We try to have interpreter during our parent events to translate. We intentionally hire front office personnel who are bilingual. We also have several teachers who can speak Spanish, and we try to hire teachers who are bilingual as well. We use interns or alumni to translate us. [We are] trying to have more people who are bilingual and ask our teachers to help each other to translate during any events or meetings. Bilingual staff members are one of the keys to improve parental involvement. We do see more participation when parents are provided a person speaking in their own language since they feel more comfortable to talk. Google translation or an electronic device that can translate easily could help. I am a big believer of home visits. I think my leadership style influences the level of parental involvement at my school. So far, we visited 1/3 of our students at their homes. 80 percent of our teachers participated in home visit program. This is good indicator showing that we take action to increase the parental involvement at our school.

Aykac 125 Our teachers mostly do home visit, but as a principal, I also had home visit as well. I do visit, especially 8th graders, to talk about high school programs, graduation plan etc. Also, those 8th graders who we visited and explained the high school programs, became more interested in high school. The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them Mr. Bill’s biggest challenge was the language barrier but he believed that he could overcome this barrier by implementing good communication strategies and training teachers about the needs of his school community. He said: One of the challenges is language barrier for us. We have a very high Hispanic population and we have very high ESL student population. Since we have high percentage of ESL and Hispanic population we had to try to use different tools to reach them such as, text messages, emails, car lines flyers in different languages. We try to have interpreters during our parent events to translate. We intentionally hire front office personnel who know Spanish. We also have several teachers who can speak Spanish. We try to hire more teachers who are bilingual. We use interns or alumni to translate us. Bilingual staff members are one of the key factors to improve parental involvement. We do see more participation when parents are provided a person speaking in their own language since they feel more comfortable to talk. Google translation or an electronic device that can translate easily could help as well during a meeting if you have no available bilingual teacher at that time. Having a single parent is another challenge. Most of them have two different jobs and are not available to stop by school because of their busy

Aykac 126 schedule. To overcome these challenges, we need to be proactive and create some time to visit them at their home. Home visit is a good practice to minimize these problems. We have sports events, musicals, Christmas nights, and we try to schedule our parent meetings before or after these programs to increase the parental involvement. Parents like to see their kids performing in school in musicals or sports, so we try to have teachers available for our parents during these times to communicate with them. When we have a parent event, we provide childcare as long as we have enough resources and funds. We try to have a translator in all meetings we have. To increase the participation, we provide lunch or dinner as well. During teacher in service programs, we try to train our teachers by sharing some data regarding parental involvement and share our expectations. We provide incentives for teachers who do home visits. We provide certificates, gift cards, free dress days, recognize staff through email and in staff meetings. We let staff members to share their experience about how they achieve high parental involvement or their feelings after having home visit in staff meetings.

Aykac 127 Chapter X Be Proactive Mr. Gilbert never thought he would end up in the education business, as he always wanted to be an engineer. He received his bachelor’s degree from a university in Europe in the Industrial Engineering field and completed his master’s degree in science and technology in Louisiana in 2005. He moved to Austin, Texas right after finishing his master’s program to look for a job. His master’s degree in science and technology helped him to find a job at a small charter school as a computer teacher along with IT position. He worked as a computer, math and science teacher at the same school until 2010 before he moved up to assistant principal position. Since 2014 he has been serving as a principal at Title I charter school in Garland, TX. His school serves 7-12 grade students with a population of 561. His enrollment population in middle school was 335. 47% of his students received free or reduced lunch through National School Lunch Program, which qualified his school to receive Title I funding. 33% of the population was Hispanic, 27% African-American, 25% White, 14% Asian and 1% others. Mr. Gilbert has no experiences other than charter schools and most of his schools so far were Title I designated school. He said he really liked working in his current school. He told that he touched the lives of students as a teacher and he wanted to continue this as a principal. He said: I enjoy being a Title one school principal and a teacher because I think I do have more impact on my students. I help more low-income students to bridge the gap and give them access to college and opportunities for their future. Also, I see a lot

Aykac 128 of parents and students who need more help because they are from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and I do have that power to help them. Meaning of Parental Involvement Among Principals Mr. Gilbert view on parental involvement has two sides; what parents do for their children’s education and what schools do to have parents involved in their children’s education. He explained: I think that involvement is not only parent involvement, but also schools’ involvement in involving the parents in their child’s education. Usually parental involvement is perceived as how parents are involved in their child’s schooling but where is the schools position in this equation? Therefore, having collaborative involvement, both parents and school, makes for meaningful parental involvement, and that’s is what parental involvement to me. We should communicate with the parents constantly. I think the parental involvement that should come from school side is sending them emails, calling them for any announcements, sending newsletters, organizing passport nights, having science fairs, parent breakfast, parent picnics, parent-teacher conferences and all other activities and communications. On the other side, I think parents should be involved with their child’s education by following up with the classwork, homework, by asking what happened at school, by asking them daily in the dinner table. They should contact their child’s teachers often, visit the school their child while eating lunch with the friends in the cafeteria and give and take feedback to teacher to see what's going on.

Aykac 129 We have an open-door policy, not only me but also my staff. It provides school wide consensus that parent is first; when they come, we should make ourselves available to meet with them. Whenever a parent is here to ask a question or if they need help we are there unless we are busy with something more important. We make sure to our parents’ concerns are addressed as soon as possible. Mr. Gilbert shared that he considered his parents to be both customers and partners. He thought: How do I consider my parents as customers or partners? I think I would say both. I see them as customers because we do want to make them happy, we do want to satisfy them with what they need and what they are looking for, with how our building looks like, with how we professional we treat them, and how we communicate with them. On the other side, we see them as partners because they leave their kids with us and in with our hands, which makes us treat them as partner. I don't consider the students as customers, most often we consider them as partners who need help, who need guidance, who need to improve and grow. As they do better, we do better. As they fail, we fail. But to some extent when it comes to cafeteria food, or the activities we offer them or the extracurricular we provide, we do want them to be happy. So to some extent we can consider them as customers. But in in general we see them as partners.

Aykac 130 Influence of Parental Involvement on Student Success Mr. Gilbert acknowledged that even though most of the time parental involvement influenced student success, he had a few successful students whose parents were not involved in their education at all. He shared following: I have seen both ways. I have seen some parents that were not much involved and the kids were very successful, but that's not very often. For the most part, what I observe is if the parents are involved and have good communication with school, the kids are better, in the academic sense, and their behaviors improve towards school. We do have parent breakfast for our Saturday math and English courses throughout the year. I observed when we have the parents in and sit with the kids on the breakfast table, and listen to the presenters, and visit the classes that gets the kids going for a couple months. We have parent breakfast or dinner at the beginning of the year, middle of year and end of the year. That keeps the parent motivated, and it helps the kids to be on track. When we visit our students and share all what parents need to do to help their child and what we want to see in school, it really helps students to become more successful since they get support from both parent and teachers. Effective Parental Involvement Activities Mr. Gilbert discussed about the activities his school offered to increase parental involvement. He shared the following: I think the best parental involvement activities are not only fun activities that we organize in and out of school but also teaching the parents about how the

Aykac 131 softwares [sic] are used, what's expected of the students for high school, what's expected out of them and how the parents can help their kids at home and in the school. I believe this is more important, to have parents come to school events each time without knowing the importance of their involvement. As a part of this effort, we are going to do a “Parent Academy” [during the] second semester, for instance. We are going to talk about how the parents can be more involved with their students’ academic and social lives, including cyber safety, school related software programs and activities. I think it will be a good activity because we are not only inviting the parents to our school, we also will educate them on how they could be more involved and educated on it. We have parent teacher organization and we meet on a monthly basis. The PTO does help the parental involvement in school. They organize a dance every year and in that dance the parents need to be involved and they need to be chaperoning their child. The PTO also does some fundraising activities and the parents are also involved for those fundraisings before and after school. I think having an “Advisory Committee” is a good idea as well. We do that as a part of being a STEM Academy. We have another Parent Advisory Committee to help with the kids with their extracurricular and academic achievements to help them communicate with the businesses and find volunteer opportunities and internship programs. We recognize the February Black History Month, Cinco de Mayo, Hispanic Heritage Month and the other cultural holidays. Making sure the kids and the parents are welcomed. To help teachers bridge the gap between school

Aykac 132 and family, last year we organized the passport night, kind of multicultural event. A lot of parents came, and they helped within the classrooms to set up booths for different countries. They served food, they showed their country’s culture and represented it with the costumes and dressing. We welcome them to come to the school for any needs that they may have. We have a phone line in the front office, so whenever a parent comes and they want to translate in, let's say Vietnamese, we have a service on our phones that we can get translators on the other line to help our families. Best effective parental involvement activities at home. Mr. Gilbert’s expectations from parents as a part of parental involvement at home was simply asking their kids about their day and closely monitoring their progress. He said: I think to simply ask them how did they do at school today, and if they are struggling with the friendships and academics, or if they have any problem with the homework and grades. Our online parent portal helps them to keep track of their child’s progress on a daily basis. They can reach out to the teachers often enough to check how the kids are doing. Be proactive, contact your teachers as often as you can, at least once or twice in a semester, to see how the kids are doing in the new middle school. Effective communication strategies for better parental involvement. Mr. Gilbert provided guidelines to his staff regarding his expectation on communication with parents. He shared following: We have guidelines with the staff - to make sure we have effective communication with our parents and students to serve them best. For instance, we

Aykac 133 have two-business days response policy. Teachers and the staff need to respond to their parents’ requests in two business days. We communicate with parents weekly via newsletter. We post all of the activities, events on our school Facebook page and Twitter account. We want to make sure that the parents are in the loop and aware of what's going on in school. We also have the front office staff answering the phones all day long and making sure no phone calls were missed or unanswered. I think communication is one of the obligations for schools to educate the parents and encourage them to show not only their child’s the results and the progress, but also the school’s. If we have a program, if you have a STEM Fair going on, and if that STEM Fair will affect these students’ academics and social growth, we make sure the parents are aware of the activity. We email them about the activity and encourage them to participate. We show them how they can be helping their kids to prepare projects. We send them newsletters on the progress weekly, on how the kids are doing. That could be on Facebook or Twitter or Wednesday mail, and we invite them for the fair. At the end of the semester we give the kids trophies and certificates. We also have our website where we post all of the upcoming, recurring and past events and activities. We make sure that the parents are in the loop. We also have a parent portal where our parents check the student's academic and behavioral progress in school. Communication needs to be an ongoing effort. When we put a few weeks of communication gap between parents, then they are disengaged and it's hard for

Aykac 134 them to come and get involved again. As a part of our communication effort, we have been promoting a home visit program at our school. When we go to home visits, we give them a short presentation about our school, upcoming events and the reason why we visit them. We tell them that our doors are always open. We want to visit them at home; however, if they are not available for home visits, we invite them to the school to meet us. We send them surveys at least once a year to ask them if they are feeling welcomed, if [there are] any concerns they have and any suggestions they have. We always have an open-door policy; we look for every chance to improve. We also meet every incoming student and parent before they start to go over our expectations. We meet with the parents if they are withdrawing students to listen, if there was any reason they withdrew and if there anything we could improve on. We require our teachers to communicate as often as needed. We require them to contact parents when the child is improving all with their behavior and academics or when there is an incident about him. Again for all kids who are excelling, who are doing better and who are needing tutorials or support, we make sure the teachers call their parents and invite them for a brainstorming meeting to discuss about possible solutions and create an action plan. We make sure the parents are notified. During our staff meetings and via internal email communication with staff, we often ask the teachers to establish good parent communication. We make sure they are upfront and honest with their communication, so the parents are aware of the real picture. We don't reward the teachers on a regular basis but at

Aykac 135 least couple times in a year, we recognize them by giving them certificates and we recognize them in staff meetings. The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them Mr. Gilbert mentioned that among so many challenges, not being notified about problems by the teachers or by the parents in a timely manner, before they became worse, was the most difficult one for him. He said: I think the biggest challenge is when the teachers fail to communicate with the parents on time, and as a principal when I find out about it towards the end of the semester or when it's too late to fix it. Another common problem at charter schools is parents don’t update their current contact information and we can't reach them. When we mail the letters, they are returned by the post office because of a wrong address; or, when I email them, it will bounce back. I think we can do a better job at the beginning of school to have all of the information updated. We should use Twitter and Facebook accounts actively during the year rather than emails or phone calls. Because their social media accounts will not change as often as their contact information. We have bilingual front office employees and teachers. Whenever we have an ARD meeting or a parent meeting with Spanish-speaking parents, we make sure we have an interpreter in the room also. Some of our teachers are using an app that translates English to other languages, and they do that when they communicate with their parents. Our website has a feature, it translates the website and the news to several foreign languages so no parents are having a hard time to translate that using other tools. We have a phone line in the front office so

Aykac 136 whenever a parent comes and they want to translate in, let's say Vietnamese, we have a service on our phones that we can get translators on the other line to help our families.

Aykac 137 Chapter XI We are Partners Mr. Dan started his administrative career in his early thirties. He started as a science teacher at a charter school in Houston. After serving about four years at this charter school, he got a position as an assistant principal in another charter school in the same city. After getting his principal certification in 2015, he moved to Austin to take over a principal position in another charter school. He has been serving as a principal for 3 years at his current campus in Austin. Mr. Dan holds a teaching certification in science (4-8) in addition to a principal certification from the state of Texas. Mr. Dan’s current school served students from grades sixth through twelfth with a population of 930. Out of 930 students, 480 of them are middle school students. 56% of the students are identified as economically disadvantage students and received free or reduced lunch. The demographics of his school population was: 54% Hispanic, 16% Asian, 15% White, 10% African American and 5% others. Mr. Dan proudly said that he enjoyed working at a charter Title I school. He said his school was a college prep charter school and he was happy to see that they are shaping their students’ futures by helping them to go to college. He said: I like that, you know, being a principal at this campus. You see that there is a need, and when you do something for them it makes you happy. Most of our students are their first-generation that will go to college. We're trying to focus on the college readiness and make them ready for their college life. We have many students who graduated as first generation college students in their families, and when I witness that, I feel so blessed and happy.

Aykac 138 Meaning of Parental Involvement Among Principals Mr. Dan provided his insights on parental involvement. He said: Parental involvement is actually one of the main parts of the process on how to make students successful. Parental involvement becomes more important in Title I schools as most of the parents have different works, different work schedule and not stable income. It all makes the parental involvement harder. It is very important. When we see that the parents involved in student education, the student becomes more involved in his or her schooling as well, which will bring more success to the student’s future. I noticed that most of the time the students whose parents are more involved stay away from trouble and try to be good students. Because they know that his/her parent will hear it soon and it will not be good for him or her. Communication with the parents as a school is key point to start parental involvement. We, both school and parent, have a common goal, which is providing a better future for our kids. Without parents involved in this process it will be really hard to move forward. I am trying to make myself available all the time, before and after school to meet with my parents and listen their concerns or feedback. Parents can see me, reach me and can approach me easily so we can have a better communication. I have the outside morning duty every day. I'm trying to go after school during dismissal as well. Asking parents to provide feedback and having them feel that they are part of this community is very important.

Aykac 139 Mr. Dan made it very clear that he always considered his parents to be partners. He said: I always consider the parents as my partners, not my customers. But of course, we are a charter school where we are dealing with enrollment, with the financial difficulties and these are directly related with our quality of education and how our parents happy with that. Of course, it is important to have many students so we can survive for the rest of year but when we look at it overall, without partnering with my families it will not be easy. I see my students as partners as well. They are definitely not my customers because you need to work together. They are the one need to make differences. To make that difference we have to work with them, we have to give a lot of attention on their individual needs. Especially in Title I schools you have the most special population, lots of ESL students. We have to see them like a partner and work together to make their life better. Influence of Parental Involvement on Student Success Mr. Dan claimed that as parents get involved in child’s education, the students’ success gets higher and higher. He said: I do believe that when you have parental involvement, student achievement gets higher and higher, okay! There are a bunch of researches you may find that shows when the parents are involved and the parents are present in their child’s schooling, students’ success increase. What we have done here is, after determining all the areas [in which] students are weak, we had a one-on-one meeting with their parents. After we got

Aykac 140 the parent on our side, we have seen that those students’ success increased. It means that when parents push their kids to do their homework, support them beyond school time, they will get more successful. Effective Parental Involvement Activities Mr. Dan talked about their activities and events that helped them to increase parental involvement. He said: We're trying to get the parents into the decision-making process. What we do for that is we're sending different surveys to them to get their feedback. We take their feedback into our consideration and make decisions all together. We have a Campus Improvement Plan committee, so the parents come and discuss about the needs of the school. We reward our parents, teachers and students by organizing appreciation nights at the end of the year to show our appreciation with their efforts. We post students’ and parents’ achievements or their contributions to school on our school website. We do have an open-door policy as well. When anyone wants to talk to us, any of our admin, we are always available in our office and accept them as quick as possible to address their concerns. Our teachers also have open door policy and they also keep communication log each time they have an activity with parents so we can track the teachers’ activities throughout the year. We do home visit. We have visited more than 20% of our students, which makes more than 200 students. Everyone in the school participates in this program.

Aykac 141 We do have a PTO, but one of the weaknesses for our campus, I would say, is not having a strong PTO. Their involvements are very low at this time and we have been working on it. Our PTO is not functional, and they could not raise the money and some of the members left already. We will reinstate the PTO soon. Best effective parental involvement activities at home. Mr. Dan briefly shared his view on parental involvement at home. He said: I expect our parents to check with their kids about their homework, talk about the school issues at dinner table and ask if they can help in any way. I want them to check their students’ progress by using our database and discuss his/her grades and behavior together. As long as parents and students have a good communication, parents will get involved in their child’s education all time. Effective communication strategies for better parental involvement. Mr. Dan mentioned that they try to communicate with their parents through emails, newsletters, and school messenger system and through organizing different events throughout the year. He said: One of the communication tools we use is sending newsletter. We call it Tiger Mail. Whoever wants to share their activities, events or announcement, they send it to a designated person and he enters all in Tiger Mail. It is emailed every Wednesdays to parents and posted on the school website. We want our teachers to contact their parents regularly as well. We send students academic progress cards every six-weeks. We have a home visit program, and, so far, we have visited more than 120 families. When we visit them, we give them academic progress of their students

Aykac 142 and what they need for the rest of the year. We talk about the school, we talk about how we want to communicate with the parents or what they want to change etc.… When we started the home visit program, we had few teachers involved but after providing incentives to teachers, most of my staff members participated in the program. We try to reach out our parents by organizing sports events. Parents want to come and watch their kids playing basketball, soccer or volleyball. It is not easy to bring all parents to school even though we organize different events, therefore we started visiting them at their houses. This is going well so far, and we start to visit usually upper grade levels first where we have trouble getting the parents involved in school. I also created a committee from our teachers to brainstorm about enrollment, communications and the needs of our school. Teachers come together and think about these issues and provide feedback and suggestions. The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them Mr. Dan shared his challenges regarding parental involvement in his school. He said: I think one of the challenge for my campus is, even though we are trying to put lots of different activities so we get me more parents, there are still lots of parents who never show up for any events. They only drop them off and pick them up most of the time. Since we are a 6-12 grade school, we want to educate our parents regarding their high school life, and even their college life. We would like to have presentations with all parents to go over the requirements, expectations,

Aykac 143 and graduation requirements, available scholarships. When we do not get parent’s support, it is hard to move forward with students as well. Language is another challenge for us. I think [it is] one of the big problems here, when you have high population of ESL students and ESL parents. This might be a reason why they do not participate in school. We try to hire bilingual secretaries to meet the needs of our Hispanic parents. We have a system in front office to translate all languages as well. In addition, since more than half of my students are coming from lowincome families, their parents have different jobs to make money for living. Most of my parents have different jobs, multiple work places, and their schedule is not good for them to attend our meetings. We try to schedule our events on different times and dates but it does not always help them to attend.

Aykac 144 Chapter XII Be Visible Mr. Arthur has a computer information system background and started his education career about 11 years ago as a computer teacher at a charter school. He taught computer classes at the middle school and high school level before he became an administrator. He served as assistant principal at a charter school in Waco and moved to Dallas three years ago when he got a principal position at a charter school in Arlington. Mr. Arthur’s school serves kinder through twelfth grades with a population of 932 students. His school’s demographics were 46% Hispanic, 26% African- American, 21% White, 6% Asian and 4% American Indian and 3% others. 53% of the students were on free or reduced lunch program. Mr. Arthur mentioned that he did not have any public school or private school experiences. He holds teaching certification for Technology Application (EC-12) and Math (4-8) grade from the state of Texas. He said he enjoyed a lot working at Title I charter school. He said: I enjoy a lot being at a Title I school. I like the problem-solving part of the challenges. I like being able to come up with solutions to various challenges that arise daily quarterly, semester. As admin team, we need to work on a different approach or need to find solutions to our students needs. This is what I like, enjoy about working at a title one school. Meaning of Parental Involvement Among Principals Mr. Arthur mentioned that parental involvement made his job easier. He discussed:

Aykac 145 I think parental involvement means a lot to schools, at least to me. If we have parents that are very involved in school, I believe that it will make the school’s administer, our teachers’ and just educators’ jobs easier. Because both parents and the school should work together for student success, but at the same time, we need to realize that it's not going to be always possible to expect same amount of involvement from every family. I think we need to be welcoming. We need to provide opportunities. We need to communicate with parents on ways that they can support their children. We need to keep them, you know, close to school. It is not just, okay, you drop your child off and we'll take care of them. Parents and teachers should meet as a team, like all together at once at the beginning of the year, to talk about students, about their strengths and opportunities where they need to improve. Throughout the year, we should keep them informed through phone calls, emails or school website or by using social media accounts. The level of parent involvement at school is different for each school and for each grade level. We see more involvement in lower grades and almost no involvement in high school grade levels. When I think about the reasons why parents do not want to participate in their child’s school, I find a few reasons; one might be their previous experience when they were in middle school, or just maybe they worried about coming back to school. Another one might be the communication that we put in place. School did not do well when they were in school or we do not do well now on communicating.

Aykac 146 Mr. Arthur believed that parents should be considered as customers mostly. He shared the following: I see parents more as customers more than partners. Because we are serving not only to their child, but also the parents. They trust us and give their children in our hands. Therefore, to be able to meet their expectations, everyone in the school system should work hard to provide the best quality education and best opportunities to them. It is the reality that in the secondary schools you don't see much parental involvement. They do not want to be a partner with you but expect the best quality education. Since I feel like I need to satisfy my parents with my school, I need to treat them as a customer. When it comes to students, I think, students should be viewed as partners because they are on ours. They should be willing to get that education, they should be open to you. They should know what the teachers provide at school so in order to make them, get them involved, or be open to what we offer, they need to be involved. They need to be taken as a partner. Our students’ success is our school’s success, so they should be a part of our school. I think they should have a say in school activities or school procedures. Is it always possible? Maybe not, just because of the time issue, but I think we should seek as much as we can, because then they will value what they are now getting as a student. Influence of Parental Involvement on Student Success Mr. Arthur supported that parental involvement and student success have a correlation. He said:

Aykac 147 I believe that there is a correlation between students’ success at school and parental involvement in their education. I see a lot more elementary parents involved in their children's education versus in the middle school or in high school. I noticed that middle school students’ homework completion rate is lower than elementary students, and I believe the reason is middle school parents leave that responsibility to student. When I have a meeting with parents regarding their child’s academic progress or behavioral issues, I ask them if they are involved in their education at home and most of the time they admit that they did not follow up with teachers. I encourage them to encourage, support and involve in their child’s education. When they see the risks or potential consequences students might be getting, then they become more involved, and you can see the result easily, and almost 100% of the time you will witness that student’s behavior or grades will increase, sometimes in short period of time, sometimes a little bit longer than you expect. Effective Parental Involvement Activities Mr. Arthur started discussing that how important it is to meet all parents at the beginning of the school year to go over the school’s expectations and the parent activities they offer throughout the year. He continued: Having that one-on-one meeting with the parent at the beginning of school year is very important. We either do it through home visits or bringing them to school. It is important to create an environment where everyone knows each other personally, where it's not only communicated just over the email. On top of arranging early meetings with parents, we have parent teacher conferences

Aykac 148 throughout the year. We encourage teachers to be present during drop off or pick up time, just to catch them and greet them and introduce themselves to start the relationship. We try to have our parents involved in our decision-making process on school related policies. Every year we have a campus needs assessment committee. It consists of parents [who] come together to assess our campus needs for following year and provide their feedback to school administration. We also ask our parents to sign up for our volunteer portal to help us out throughout the year. When we have any events or activities we post it on our website and parents register to be volunteer. We recognize the volunteers by giving them certification of appreciation at the end of the year. We have a parent teacher organization (PTO). They meet monthly, other than the executive meeting. I usually attend, I would say for the most part. To be able to have more parents attend the PTO meetings, we schedule the meetings on the day we have an event. Let’s say we have a dance night, then most likely we have a PTO meeting as well. We have Fall Festival, Christmas night, sports events and celebrations. Having a parent advisory committee other than the PTO might work as well as long as we clearly communicate the differences and expectations to prevent any conflict with the PTO. Best effective parental involvement activities at home. Mr. Arthur said that the best parental involvement at home was helping students on their homework and reading together. He said:

Aykac 149 Best parental involvement at home to me is reading books together and completing their homework. I believe it is in the best interest of students and parents [to] spend some time together about their child’s education. Parents should encourage students to read and do their homework constantly every day, because reading will increase their comprehension level, which will help them to understand other subjects. Parents need to communicate with the child’s teacher based on what they see or hear from their child. Effective communication strategies for better parental involvement. Mr. Arthur discussed that the level of communication with parents depends on principals’ leadership style and their view on parental involvement. He shared: The tone of the communication with parents starts with the tone of the leaders in the school. I think being visible during school events, during drop-off time or pick up time is a message to the parents. By being visible, you are telling parents who you are and eliminating the barriers that can prevent them [from] contact[ing] with you. I request from all of my admin team that they should be visible to parents. I know it's not going to be possible on my first day or two to have parents involved in school, but it will help them feel comfortable to contact us, share their feedback and suggestions throughout the year. They might not attend every single event, but it will force them to come and join us at least once for their kids. I think when we create an approachable and welcoming environment for our parents as administrators; it will increase the parental involvement gradually. We send weekly newsletters through email. We use social media, mostly Facebook. We post the news and announcements on our website as well. We

Aykac 150 require teachers to contact parents when a student is failing or when they have discipline issues where they are at risk of getting a detention. Besides that, we ask teachers to reach our parents for positive things throughout their courses. Depending on the situation, we ask teachers to communicate either written or verbally. I do not reward the teachers for contacting parents as it is a regular expectation from all teachers. The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them Mr. Arthur shared his challenges on parental involvement briefly: One of the challenges is language barrier for my school. Almost half of my parents are Hispanic with limited English. Therefore, I am having a translator in our meetings when I am meeting with a Hispanic parent. We make sure we send all notices in Spanish and English. Another challenge is not having all teachers on the same page on this expectation. You will have a few teachers not following the expectation and staying behind in communicating with their parents. Because of the parent work schedule, they may not find enough time to come and participate in any events. In middle school, students usually do not take the parent letters to their parent, and we are having problem communicating with parents through their child. We send emails, but not all parents use or check their emails. As a principal, the biggest challenge is how to find the best solution that will prevent communication problems when you put all these challenges into your consideration.

Aykac 151 Chapter XIII We are True Partners of Our Parents Mr. Mark has thirteen years of experience at charter schools. He started as a teacher in College Station and then moved to San Antonio to serve as an assistant principal. After working as an assistant principal for 3 years, he got a principal position at a charter school in Houston. He started his principal career at a Title I charter that served kinder through eighth grade students. He also worked as a high school principal in the same district for four years. Currently he has been working as a principal in Austin for 2 years. Mr. Mark received his bachelor’s degree in science education and completed his masters the following year after graduation. He has science (4-8) and principal (K-12) certification from the state of Texas. Mr. Mark’s school had 532 students. 35% of his students were Hispanic, 26% African-American, 22% Asian, 15% White and 2% others. 48% of the students received free or reduced lunch. Mr. Mark mentioned that he has been working at title I charter schools throughout his educational career and had no private or public school experience at all. He said he felt very happy to serve s special population; he believed that he tried to give best opportunities to his students. Meaning of Parental Involvement Among Principals Mr. Mark defined parental involvement as continuous effort starting from home and evolving at school. He said: I believe that parental involvement is a multiple stage of collaborative efforts provided by both parents and schools. Among the many stages, based on my

Aykac 152 definition, I don't know how others principals define this, but parental involvement starts at home and it does not end at the school. It is an ongoing effort that evolves throughout the years. So, it is not only parents’ responsibility nor the school’s. I just feel like we are equal partners, so, like, either a third partner or equally responsible regarding students’ futures. We can see the parental involvement differences between each grade level. Elementary parents are very involved always. When it comes to middle school, you see sixth and seventh grade parents are more involved than eight grade parents. Parents start losing their attention to their kids when their kids get into middle school. Even though, I believe, students need more attention from their parents than when they are in elementary. Because students get off the track as they grow up, somebody needs to be following up with them. I believe that parental involvement should be more in higher level than lower level. Mr. Mark believed that considering parents as customers was not a good approach. He said he always considered his parents as partners in their children’s education. He shared the following: I do not believe that my parents are my customers. They are not, definitely. Some principals might think that parents are our customers since they see the school as an investment, and for their business to move forward, they need good customers. Even though I provide a service to my parents and students, this service is not like a regular service they receive from a restaurant or regular businesses. We are talking about our future, our kids’ future. Parents are true partners of our teachers and our schools. In this sense, I want my parents to understand my intentions

Aykac 153 regarding activities or events or when I request something from them. Therefore, I believe both my parents and students are my partners and they should stay like that. Influence of Parental Involvement on Student Success Mr. Mark underlined that parental involvement increased the students’ success. He continued: There is a strong, like very strong correlation between parent and student success. There is a misconception about that since most of the people think that parental involvement is important in elementary but I believe it is more important in upper grade levels. I believe that parental involvement should be more in upper grade levels than lower grade levels. Like high school, parents should involve more than middle school and middle school parents should involve more than elementary level parents. Because as students grow up, not all of them are growing up responsible, most of them are losing their attention because of their ages’ problems. Therefore, to be able to keep them successful, they need their parents’ support. I have an example. One of my student’s mother was always in school, contacted staff members often, she came down to any events [in which] her child participated. Since she supported and [was] involved in her child’s education as much as she could [be], the student became more successful.

Aykac 154 Effective Parental Involvement Activities I asked Mr. Mark to share effective parental activities his school offers to his community. He said: We need to have activities that create ownership among parents. I do believe that parents are the key part of the educational role in a child’s education. We try to have them be a part of the decision-making team, not only for school issues but also for their students. Therefore, it is important to know how they want us to do, what they want to see and what kinds of environment they want to have in school. I try to listen them and get their feedback through different events. We do have a PTO, parent teacher organization at our school. Every year in May, I sit with my parents and PTO members and share my vision and expectations and get their feedback from them. We plan the next year after discussing all the recommendations. When they know the principal’s vision and expectations about the events and activities, our parents are going to actually feel more comfortable sharing their views and they become more involved. It also increases the ownership. So, I have been doing this for several years. When I want to start a new program, I want parents and teachers to understand the reasons. Therefore, it is very important to have them involved in decision-making along with providing the reasons. The PTO is not the only solution to get the parents involved. They are one of the parts of the solution and they help to connect the parents with schools. Teachers’ communication with parents is one of the critical elements to increase parental involvement. When parent and teacher are well connected, I observe that

Aykac 155 parents are getting more involved. When they see their involvement is helping their child and they are getting benefit out of their involvement, parents become more involved. Therefore, my teachers also organize more events to get more parent in school. I have an open door policy. People can come anytime as long as I am available. I am a very relaxed person and my parents come anytime. I do not require them to schedule an appointment to talk to me. I try to be visible, in school and outside of the school, during dismissal and drop off time. I have worked in San Antonio and Houston for several years. After I came to Austin I did realize that teachers are not aware of the school’s background, their students’ cultural needs, what the diverse population needs are. I started to train the teachers about the cultural awareness, language differences, ethical differences etc. We want to do after school activities with parents and asked the PTO to provide food for the events. Providing food is a very strategic plan to increase the attendance. Who does not like free food, right? I had parents and teachers come together to get to know each other and talk about whatever they want to know; working together, our differences and commonalities and school issues. This was a great opportunity for teachers and parents as well. We had another cultural night where we invited our parents to come and show their cultures, share their foods. Best effective parental involvement activities at home. Mr. Mark highlighted that the best parental involvement activity at home is Reading with their kids at least 20 minutes. He said:

Aykac 156 I expect them to read, 20 min at least. If parents start reading 20 min with their kindergarten, then when they get the middle school, almost 90% of the students will be above their grade level. If they read only 5 min per day then the average will be 20% of students will be above average level by the at the end of the elementary level. A child is a life project, and if parents take it in this way, and understand how important it is, they will be involved in every minute of their child’s life and they will spend more than 20 min with them. If they think that it is the school’s job and I am just the guardian, then students will not be successful. Therefore, parents must be involved in their child’s education at home as well. Effective communication strategies for better parental involvement. Mr. Mark said he tried to use school messenger, newsletters, one-on-one meetings, before and after school activities and home visits to communicate with his parents. He said: We use school messenger, which is used mostly by public and private schools. We also send hard copies of newsletters along with posting it on our website or emailing them to parents. I noticed that not all parents use emails very often or read the news from our websites. Therefore, we discussed that we should go back to the old system and use parent envelope or folder system. We had a folder for each student and we printed copies of all announcements and placed them in that folder. It was sent to parents every week Wednesday and by Friday students must have returned the envelope to their homeroom teachers after parents signed the communication log on it. So, we will start that, and will make the parents sign the folder each week to make sure it gets in to their hands.

Aykac 157 Parent communication is so important. We want to create a trust between the school and parents, and the first step to start it is creating a healthy communication. Healthier lines of communication build trust easier. When trust exists, then it is easier to have parents involved in schooling. I communicate with my parent through phone calls, daily emails, newsletters, parent teacher conferences and parent breakfasts. I did realize that we are not neighborhood school, which means my students and parents [are] coming all the way down from other side of the city as well. Therefore, whatever activity I will organize after school, they should be more meaningful and appealing to parents. Each time they come, they should learn new things. They should feel that they learn new things each time they come, and this should be well communicated and advertised before the events. Each activity should be arranged well, and time for each activity should be planned well. Parents should not think that organization or events are not planned smoothly and they waste their time by attending the events. I require my teachers to contact parents weekly. I ask them to communicate with their parents on every Sunday by sending emails regarding what they will do in coming weeks. I also want them to contact their parents for any issue, like when they have any problem with a student or a discipline issue. We should be communicating with other good things as well. I do not reward the teacher for contacting parents. They need to believe first this will help and my students will get benefit out of them. It should be meaningful.

Aykac 158 When I started this campus, there was a very negative interaction between parents and the school. Parents were not following the proper channels to resolve their problems. They were emailing their concerns to everyone who was not specifically a part of solution. I took some actions and had meetings with parents to educate them how they can resolve their conflicts, and what the proper channel is without hurting or making others busy. I did train my teachers and administrators about how to deal with parents and what they need to do. I want to make sure that before I receive a complaint from a parent, they discuss it with teachers or other parties that were involved and if they are not satisfied, then I am happy to jump in. The Challenges of Parental Involvement and Overcoming Them Mr. Mark mentioned that his biggest challenge was parents’ lack of communication with their teachers. He briefly explained: Parents’ lack of information or no communication with their teachers or schools in their child education is my biggest challenge. Principals’ efforts in this communication with parents are the most important part in the solution. We should not wait [for] parents to communicate with the school. We need to be proactive to reach them out. Another challenge was lack of knowledge on cultural awareness among my teachers. I have new and veteran teachers but most of them have no idea about how to approach the needs of their students who come from different backgrounds. Home visit programs helped a lot to solve this problem, since they have seen the background behind some of their students’ behavioral issues when

Aykac 159 they visited them at home. I also provided training to all of my staff about cultural awareness.

Aykac 160 Chapter XIV Narrative Analysis The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study was to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by principals. This study allowed ten middle school principals of Title I charter schools in Texas to share their beliefs on parental involvement and its influences on students’ success. Four research questions formed the basis of this research. Findings are reported by the following research questions: 1. How do principals define parental involvement? 2. What do principals observe regarding the influence of parental involvement on student success? 3. What are the most effective practices principals implement regarding parental involvement? 4. What challenges do principals encounter regarding parental involvement and how can these be overcome? Research Question One This question sought to understand how middle school principals of Title-I charter schools define parental involvement. Findings indicated that principals define parental involvement as collaborative efforts and working together. Findings also suggested that principals define parental involvement differently based on either a customer or partner point of view. Principals believed that the parental involvement definition changes according to the principal’s leadership style.

Aykac 161 Collaborative efforts and working together. Six principals clearly stated that they considered parental involvement as a combination of different expectations set for both school and parents. They believed that school and parent must work together and take joint responsibility for students’ education. Mrs. Shelly said: Traditional methods of education tend to see the school or the teacher as the keeper of the knowledge, we are the experts, you send your child to us, we don't touch your world, you don't touch our world and it doesn't work. She added “I feel like parents need to take that responsibility back because they're still the parent, and ultimately the authority over their child.” Mr. Manfield emphasized that parents should be partnering with schools constantly in trying to track the child’s education. He underlined that parental involvement is common expectations and responsibilities, not only for parents but also for schools. Mr. Bill emphasized that parental involvement starts from top to bottom, left to right, where all teachers, parents, administrators and even students are responsible in the process. Mr. Gilbert supported Mr. Bill and asked, “Usually parental involvement is perceived as how parents are involved in their child’s schooling but where is the school’s position in this equation?” He added “Therefore, having collaborative involvement, both parents and school, makes the meaningful parental involvement and that is what parental involvement is to me.” Mr. Dan emphasized that both parents and schools have a “common goal,” which is preparing and providing a better future for our kids, and he added: “Without parents involved in this process it will be really hard to move forward.” Mr. Mark noted that

Aykac 162 parental involvement is multiple stages of collaborative efforts provided by both parents and schools. He stated: “Parental involvement starts at home and it does not end at the school. It is continuing efforts that evolve throughout the years. So, it is not only parents’ responsibility nor school’s.” Four principals out of ten stated that they experienced a drastic change in parental involvement when students move from elementary to middle school and from middle school to high school. Mrs. Katy said: Parent involvement in elementary grade level is extreme; you have your helicopter parents. But then, once students reach the middle school age, I was thinking whether it's either the parent who doesn't want to be here or the student who doesn't want the parent here. She also assumed that parents wanted their kids to handle things by themselves in middle school. She said, “On the other side, it's a time when parents believe that their child is old enough to handle things on their own, so trying to get them to come and join us for something is extremely difficult.” Mr. Bill said the following regarding his observation of less parental involvement in upper grade levels: We have less parental involvement in upper grade level while we see more parental involvement in early grade level. Even though in upper grade, in middle school, parental involvement should be better and they should still be involved in their child school, we do not see that as much as we intended to see.

Aykac 163 He believed that middle school students did not want their parents be around them at school as much as they were in elementary. He added that middle school students wanted to have more freedom, to be independent people who make their own choices. Mr. Mark claimed that parental involvement in sixth grade was better than seventh grade and seventh grade parental involvement was better than eight grades. He said, “Parents start losing their attention to their kids when their kids get in middle school.” He added that parents must be more involved as their children grow up. From customer/partner point of view. Principals provided different views about the meaning of parental involvement according to how they consider their parents’ role in school. Four principals considered parents as partners while three of them believed that parents were their customers and the rest of the three principals considered them both as customers and partners. Mrs. Shelly preferred using “assisting and partnering” instead “involving.” Mrs. Shelly believed that even though she treats parents as partners, still parents see themselves as customers. Mr. Clear noted that schools take care of their children for about eight hours and parents handle the rest. He said: Therefore, I believe that building a partnership is necessary for students’ success. We both have the same goal in mind; they want their children [to be] successful and we want our students [to] be successful, not only in school but also in their life. Mr. Dan acknowledged that even though being a charter school forced them to treat and consider their parents as customers, he believed that parents are partners, not customers. He added:

Aykac 164 I always consider the parents as my partners, not my customers. But of course, we are a charter school where we are dealing with enrollment, with the financial difficulties and these are directly related with our quality of education and how our parents [are] happy with that. Of course, it is important to have many students so we can survive for the rest of year, but when we look at overall without partnering with my families, it will not be easy. Mr. Mark believed that considering parents as customers is not good approach. He said he always considered his parents as partners in their child’s education. He said “Even though I provide a service to my parents and students, this service is not like a regular service they receive from a restaurant or regular businesses. We are talking about our future, our kids’ future.” Mr. Alan, Mr. Bill and Mr. Arthur believed that parents are their customers and that parental involvement is defined based on quality customer service. They all shared that parents’ satisfaction with the quality of their children’s education forces them to treat their parents as customers. Mr. Alan said “When my parents are not happy, I lose my students. That means less funds for my school.” Mr. Bill shared the same concerns and said: We are a school of choice. Our population comes from regular public schools. Parents will do their own research and choose our school if they like. Unlike from the regular business, our product is high quality education. We try to sell it. Therefore, I believe they are our customers and our product is our education level. They need to be happy with our end product.

Aykac 165 Mr. Arthur said because parents expect to get a better quality of education from charter schools, everyone in the school system should work hard not only to provide a better education for students but also to make parents happy. Unlike the other principals, Mr. Manfield, Mrs. Katy and Mr. Gilbert considered parents both as customers and partners. Mr. Manfield emphasized that when he met with his parents he provided the best customer service. On the other hand, he expected them to become a partner throughout their child’s educational journey in their school. Mrs. Katy mentioned that providing high quality customer service to parents would start a partnership. Mr. Gilbert shared: I see them as customers because we do want to make them happy, we do want to satisfy them with what they need and what they are looking for, with how our building looks like, with how we professional we treat them, and how we communicate with them. On the other side, we see them as partners because they leave their kids with us and in with our hands, which makes us treat them as a partner. Principals had similar views about their students’ role in parental involvement in their school. Six of the principals considered their students as their partners. While three principals did not share their view about their students, only one principal said he considered students as customers as well. Mr. Manfield defined parental involvement in education as an equilateral triangle where students, parents and the school are on each end of the triangle. He said, “I believe that all have equal roles to play.” Mr. Clear noted that he treated his students as partners. He stated, “Their success is our success. If I do not treat them as partner and meet their

Aykac 166 needs accordingly, they will fail and it will impact my school as well.” Mr. Gilbert shared the same view and added “We consider them as partners who need help, who need guidance, who need to improve and grow. As they do better, we do better. As they fail, we fail.” Mr. Dan stressed the fact that students are our future and added, “We need to work together, they are the ones [who] will make differences in our lives in the future.” While Mr. Arthur considered his parents as customers, he had a different view on students. He said, “They need to be taken as a partner. Our students’ success is our school’s success, so they should be a part of our school. I think they should have a say in school activities or school procedures.” Based on leadership style. All principals agreed that principals’ leadership style defines parental involvement in schools. Mr. Arthur discussed that meaningful parental involvement depends on principals’ leadership styles and their views on parental involvement. He shared: The tone of the communication with parents starts with the tone of the leaders in the school. I think being visible during school events, during drop-off time or pick up time, is a message to the parents. By being visible, you are telling parents that, who you are, and eliminating the barriers that can prevent them [from] contact with you. I request from all of my admin team that they should be visible to parents. Mr. Allan stressed that to increase the parental involvement in schools, principals need to guide teachers by leading by example. He said principals could guide staff members to contact parents or to be in touch with parents more frequently, and he added

Aykac 167 “But it is more effective when the principal himself or herself does these activities and leads by example.” Mr. Allan highlighted that the leadership styles of school leaders opens or closes this communication door for parental involvement. He concluded that principals set the tone of the school’s voice and communication methods that defines parental involvement. Research Question Two The second question investigated what principals observe about parental involvement and its influence on students’ success. Findings suggested that principals believe parental involvement positively influences student success. The main purpose of the second research question was to understand principals’ views on relationship between parental involvement and students’ success. Even though all 10 principals participating in this study noted that parental involvement and students’ success were closely related, two of the principals added that it was not the only factor in students’ success, as they had successful students whose parents were not involved at all. Mrs. Shelly was one of the two principals who claimed that parental involvement is not the only factor for students’ success in school. She said,” I can tell you that without a parental involvement it makes student success that much harder. Is it possible? Absolutely!” She continued, “I feel like when people say that it's only through relationships that happens, then you're invalidating all of those of us who didn't have them and still succeeded.” Another principal was Mr. Gilbert. He said that he had seen both cases; successful student without parents’ involvement, and students who became successful after parents became involved. He shared:

Aykac 168 I have seen both ways. I have seen some parents that were not much involved and the kids were very successful, but that's not very often. For the most part, what I observe is if the parents are involved and have good communication with school, the kids are better in the academic sense, and their behaviors improve towards school. All other eight principals underlined that parental involvement is the most important factor and influences students’ success positively. Mr. Manfield claimed that: I believe there is a 100% correlation between parental involvement and student success. If you do a study, you will find that the academic performance of a child whose parent is involved will be much better than the child whose parent is not involved. There is a direct correlation and you can see that very evidently. Mr. Manfield continued sharing his experiences, and said that he had numerous cases that proved his beliefs: There were students that I have seen, just because they got parental support, parental encouragement, they were willing to work with the teachers. They were willing to come for tutoring; they were willing to wait that little extra. Those parents made sure that the child is doing the homework and brought the homework back the next day. I can’t find anything negative that shows parental involvement does not influence students’ performance in school. Mr. Clear stressed the fact that when parents, teachers and schools work together it will influence students’ success. He said, “When their mother or father are involved in their education, I know that students 99% the time will be successful.” Mr. Clear said that

Aykac 169 in his school, reading scores of students whose parents read at home with students or whose parent supported them in school improved a lot. Mr. Allen pointed out that parental involvement not only increased students’ success but also increased students’ positive behavior towards the school. He also mentioned that parental involvement makes students more responsible and more goaloriented. Even though Mrs. Katy had read no research about the influence of parental involvement on student success, she believed that there is a strong correlation between them. Mrs. Katy said: I really haven't thought and looked at it seriously yet. But I know that when you have students that are misbehaving and the parent just blows it off and doesn't handle anything at home, then the student is going to be the same way. Those parents who really have those conversations with their kids and communicate their expectations with their kids help a lot. The students to keep up with their grades. Mr. Dan mentioned that research has shown positive correlation between parental involvement and student success. He said he believed in parental involvement and its influences on student success. Mr. Arthur claimed that one of the reasons for having low homework completion rates in middle school is low parental involvement. He said, “I see a lot more elementary parents involved in their children's education versus in the middle school or in high school. I noticed that middle school students’ homework completion rate is lower than elementary students, and I believe the reason is middle school parents leave that responsibility to students.”

Aykac 170 Mr. Mark discussed that parents should be more involved in their child’s education in middle school rather than in elementary. He said: There is a strong, like very strong correlation between parent and student success. As students grow up, not all of them are growing up responsible; most of them are losing their attention because of their physical and emotional development. Therefore, to be able to keep them successful, they need their parents’ support. Research Question Three The third question investigated effective practices and strategies principals have regarding parental involvement. Emergent themes included the following: open door policies, home visit programs, suggested activities at home, effective communication practices, parent-teacher communication routines, parent programs and activities, and involving parents in decision-making processes. Open door policy. All 10 principals who participated in this study mentioned that having an open-door policy is an effective and important communication tools for principals. All charter school principals considered their parents either customers or partners or both. Therefore, they believed that being available for their customers or partners is very important to keep parents happy and satisfied and to maintain relationships at a high level. Mrs. Shelly defined her open-door policy as welcoming the parents and providing opportunities to parents to contact her anytime. She said even though she makes herself available she wants parents to discuss their issues with the teachers first before they come to her. Mr. Manfield said that he never rejected parents when they requested to meet with him. He said:

Aykac 171 [What an] open door policy means to me is, if there is a parent who comes here with some concern it's not necessary for them to have an appointment. I won't drive them away. I would be willing to listen to them. It does not matter if their need may be urgent or not but I want to meet with them and try to hear them. That's very important for me and for us as a school. Mr. Alan emphasized that having an open door policy is very important to help parents get involved in school. To Mr. Alan, an open door policy meant that he was available for parents anytime they needed him. It meant to answer their calls when they call him. It meant to meet with parents when they need to meet with him. Mrs. Katy said that she required teachers to have an open door policy as well. She stated, “[An} open-door policy to me is just making sure that you're available at all times and they're free to come when they want to come. This is great way to open communication-doors to your parents.” Mr. Mark mentioned that an open door policy starts with being visible. He said he tried to be “visible” in school and outside of school, during dismissal and drop off time, which helped him to communicate his open door policy with his parents before they try to schedule an appointment. He added, “I do not require them to schedule an appointment to talk to me.” Mr. Gilbert said that having a school-wide open door policy provided a consensus among teachers that said, “parents come first.” Mr. Clear highlighted that an open door policy would work as long as principals communicate it to parents. He said it would tell parents “I am approachable, do not hesitate to contact me.” Home visit program. Seven out of ten principals mentioned that they conduct home visits with their parents and students at their home throughout the year. The other

Aykac 172 three principals acknowledged that, if they had such a program, it would increase the parental involvement. Mr. Allan said that even though they had been offering different activities at the school for parents there were still parents would not come to any of them. He said, “At this point, our home visit program gets in to reach out the other parents.” While he acknowledged that conducting home visit was not easy since it is done either after school or at the weekend, each year more of his teachers participated in the program. He emphasized that it is direct communication in an “unofficial” setting. Mr. Bill explained that the home visit is a good opportunity to provide information about upcoming events, school expectations and get feedback from parents. He preferred to visit 8th grade parents personally to talk about his expectations and high school graduation requirements. He also said that a home visit was a good practice to minimize the challenges he was facing regarding parental involvement. Mr. Gilbert stated that as a part of their communication efforts, he had been promoting a home visit program at his school. Mr. Dan said that when he started the home visit program a few years ago only a few teachers participated, but for the past two years teachers have received an incentive per home visit, which helped him to have more teachers participate in the program. New parents are Mr. Arthur’s priority when conducting home visits. He said that reaching out to new parents at the beginning of the school year gave him a great chance to talk about his expectations, school culture, and to clarify any confusion parents might have. Mr. Mark discussed how the home visit program helped his teachers to understand how to approach the needs of their students who come from different backgrounds. He

Aykac 173 said:“ Seeing your student’s home environment gives you an opinion about the problems you are facing in class as a teacher.” Suggested activities at home. All the 10 principals in this study agreed that parents should be involved in children’s education at home. However, the most common parental involvement activities those principals expected to see included asking questions about school, checking homework, discussing any issue their children had in school and closely monitoring their children’s academic and disciplinary progress by checking the student information system on their school websites. Mr. Allan mentioned that if parents were not knowledgeable about what their child was learning at school, it would not help parents be involved at home. He claimed that parents should have two-way communication; one way with their children and one way with their children’s teachers, to be able to have a meaningful involvement. Mr. Manfield discussed that a great deal of parental involvement happens at home. He asked his parents to create an atmosphere conducive to studying at home, follow their children’s progress, give them a place to study, and to emphasize and make it clear to their children that they have clear expectations. Mrs. Shelly provided her two best parental involvement activities which could be done at home: Two things: one, ask parents to make it a priority in their head, make it a discussion in their home every day of learning, look at their child's assignment sheet every day, asking them if they've done their homework, checking to see if they've done their homework and two, admit you don't know everything as a parent.

Aykac 174 Mr. Arthur, Mr. Clear and Mr. Mark mentioned that reading together at home or making sure students read every day individually were their favorite parental activities that they expected to see at home. Effective communication practice. One of the emergent themes in this study was effective communication practice used by charter school principals. All 10 principals in this study emphasized that communication was vital to their school and parents. Principals in this study stated that they communicated with their parents on a regular basis through multiple communication tools. For example, Mr. Dan mentioned that they communicated with their parents through emails, newsletters, and school messenger system and through organizing different events throughout the year. He realized that they needed to send hard copies of newsletter or any announcements in a folder. He explained: I noticed that not all parents use emails very often or read the news from our websites. Therefore, we discussed that we should go back to old system and use parent envelopes or a folder system. We had a folder for each student, and we printed copies of all announcements and placed them in that folder. It was sent to parents every week on Wednesday, and by Friday students must have returned the envelope to their homeroom teachers after parents signed communication log on it. Mr. Gilbert noted that communication should be an ongoing effort throughout the year. He said, “When we put a few weeks of communication gap between [ourselves and the] parents, then they are disengaged and it's hard for them to come and get involved again.” Therefore, Mr. Gilbert sent surveys to parents to get their feedback regularly regarding any issue that might impact their child’s education.

Aykac 175 Mr. Bill added new software to reach his parents called “Let’s Talk”. Anyone in the community could share his or her concerns or express their feelings with school officials by using this online platform. Mr. Allan said they have been using social media to reach out the community and parents, which worked better than sending regular emails to parents. Mrs. Katy said that every staff must return any phone calls or emails from parents within 48 hours. Mr. Manfield’s school has started using Remind101, and app, which connects parents with the whole school community through text messages. He also asked his teachers to create personal webpages for their classes to communicate with their parents. Mrs. Shelly said that there should be no excuses for their parents to say “I did not know” that since school has a system which provides the opportunity for parents to communicate about their children’s academia twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Mr. Clear‘s school used school messenger to contact their parents. Parent-teacher communication routines. All the principals in this study required their teachers to contact their parents either weekly or biweekly through email, newsletter or face-to face meeting. All schools had a certain number of parent teacher conferences scheduled throughout the year as well. Mrs. Shelly required the teachers to make contact once a week at least. She added that her teachers send a weekly parent notice, either through a hard copy or electronically, every Monday morning. Mr. Manfield told his teachers to communicate with their parents on a day-to-day basis about homework and assignments. Mr. Clear’s expectation was contacting parents for every issue teachers encounter in class. He also required teachers to keep a call log in case of any parent complaint

Aykac 176 regarding a lack of communication from a specific teacher. Mrs. Katy said that any staff member must contact parents within 48 hours if any parent tried to reach them or left a message. Mr. Mark asked his teachers to communicate with their parents every Sunday by sending an email about what is coming up and parents’ role in that week. The first thing that came to most of the principals’ minds about the types of issues they required teachers to communicate was for negative things. For example, Mr. Shelly’s answer was: Anytime they have an issue with lack of progress or if they see a pattern that they feel like needs to be corrected I encourage them to contact the parent. Anytime there is a behavioral issue, we contact the parent. Mr. Manfield expected his teachers to contact their parents for discipline, social and academic issues. He added: …in particular if there are some concerns. We also tell them to let their parents know if there is something good. But usual tendencies are if everything is sailing, well we don't have the time to talk to them. We call them only when there is a problem, so that's not the best thing. Mr. Allan stated the similar concerns as Mr. Manfield had. He said, “Unfortunately, most of the teachers contact parents when students misbehave, when the grades of students start falling.” He added that he encouraged teachers to call parents to share some positive news about their child as well. Mrs. Katy discussed that teachers should stop calling parents only when “bad stuff” happens involving their kids. While Mr. Arthur and Mr. Mark agreed that calling parents for “good stuff” is a better way to

Aykac 177 communicate, they both said the first thing they required their teachers to contact parents for was when the students’ grades went down or any discipline issues occurred in class. Parent programs and activities. Each principal who participated in this study mentioned that they offered different parent activities based on their communities’ needs, along with common programs and parent organizations. Seven of the ten principals had parent teacher organization (PTO) at their school. A few of those principals preferred to call their parent organization something different. For example, Mrs. Shelly called it PAC, Parents Achieving Community, and she made every single parent a part of this community. She added: Parents are their own best resources, in the same way that teachers perform. The parents are the same way, they are each other's own best resources, and if we can get them to meet together to discuss common things. Mr. Manfield preferred to call it PSC, Parent School Collaboration. He said PSC was open to any parent, like a regular PTO. However they mostly communicated with each other and other parents through social media. He said: Our parent school collaboration (PSC) is a big team where they have their own Facebook pages and things like that. They post anything that they feel is interesting for the school parents to know. I make myself available for their meetings. I'm the only guy here, actually. I'm a single principal for this whole campus. We meet every month. I have a strong team who has been there right from the beginning and they do some fundraisers. Mr. Clear used to have a regular parent teacher organization (PTO) at his previous school, but they believed that students had to be a part of this organization and formed a

Aykac 178 new organization called PTSO, Parent Teacher Student Organization. He said, “The idea behind the PTSO is not only having parents involved in it, but also having students to be a part of this community.” In addition to having a parent teacher organization, a few principals created different programs to increase the parental involvement such as Snack N’ Chat, WatchDOGS, Parent Academy or University and POWWOW. Mrs. Shelly implemented a new parent program called “Snack N’ Chat”. She came up with specific topics to discuss with parents each week and invited parents to stay after dropping off their children in the morning to have coffee and donuts and talk about the topics she chose. Mr. Clear started a new program called “Watch-DOGS, dads of great students.” The reason he started Watch-DOGS in his school was to make sure more dads were involved in school. He said: I think the Watch-DOGS program is going to help. I've talked to some of the dads and explained to them the importance of men in the lives of their sons and daughters. It has kind of awakened the sense of responsibility and the sense of I can help my child be successful just by standing in the hallway or sitting in the classroom. I explained to them kids are less likely to talk if there's a man in the world. Fathers discipline kids in a certain way. As fathers, we're not going to negotiate with kids and tell them you have to be quiet and listen. So, I think some parents, especially [those] whose child gets in trouble, often will buy in this program and participate. Mr. Manfield added a new program called “POWWOW-Preparing Outstanding Warriors with Wisdom to Overcome and Win”. The purpose of POWWOW was to

Aykac 179 provide another platform for parents and students to talk about their live appearances, making choices and importance of having great partnership with school. Another great program offered by four principals who participated in this study was “Parent Academy or Family University.” Mrs. Shelly’s school called it “Family University,” and Mrs. Katy, Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Bill called it “Parent Academy”. The idea behind Parent Academy or University was to provide multiple educational sessions based on their communities’ needs. They were one-day events, held on Saturdays in the second semester. Local businesses, police department, fire department, doctors, counselors, banks presented different sessions throughout the day. Principals provided food and childcare to increase the attendance. Veterans Day, Multicultural fair, Booster club, Christmas Musicals, Founders Day, Hispanic Heritage Month, Black History Month, parent breakfast and dinners were other common activities that were offered and celebrated by the principals who participated in this study. Parents in decision-making process. Six of the ten principals who participated in this study mentioned that they had a site-based decision-making committee consisting of parents, teachers, students and community members. Mrs. Shelly said that her decision-making committee met on an as-needed basis rather than meeting regularly throughout the year. She added, “This was a very effective way to involve parents and create ownership.” She believed that having parent representatives in this committee enabled her to represent her school voice appropriately in district meetings. Mr. Allan talked about having a parent advisory committee beyond a PTO. He said being a STEM designated school required him to establish a TSTEM Advisory board

Aykac 180 that needed to included parents. He invited and encouraged his parents to be a part of his decision-making committees. He said: As a part of Title I fund requirements, we have to have certain committees such as Campus Improvement Committee and School Improvement Committee which also consists of parents, teachers and administrators. We ask our parents to be a part of our school based decision-making committee. We like getting their feedback and opinions when it comes on how to spend our school's resources. We are a T- STEM Academy, which also requires us to have a TSTEM Advisory Board, which includes parents, teachers, students, administrators and community people. Mr. Dan said he tried to get his parents involved in school decisionmaking process by sending different surveys to get their feedback. He said, “We take their feedback into our consideration and make decisions all together based on the needs of our school.” Mr. Mark emphasized that, to be able to create ownership among parents, school must have parent involved in decision-making process. He shared: We need to have activities that create ownership among parents. I do believe that parents are the key part of the educational role in child’s education. We try to have them be a part of the decision-making team, not only for school issues but also for their students. Therefore, it is important to know how they want us to do, what they want to see, and what kind of environment they want to have in school. I try to listen them and get their feedback through different events.

Aykac 181 Research Question Four The fourth question investigated the challenges that middle school principals encounter on parental involvement and how they overcome them. Emergent themes included the following: language barrier, parents’ work schedules, not having up-to-date contact information, parents getting upset with rules and regulations, lack of knowledge on cultural awareness among teachers, parents’ lack of time and family issues. Language barrier. Four of the ten principals listed “language barrier” as their first challenge at their schools. For example, Mr. Arthur said that half of his parents were Hispanic with limited English and he had to have a translator in each meeting he had in school. Mr. Dan mentioned that having a high population of parents with limited or no English was another reason for low parental involvement in his school. He said that he hired bilingual secretaries in the front office to communicate with his parents. Mr. Bill was the other principal who listed “language barrier” as his biggest challenge on parental involvement, and he added: “Since we have a high percentage of ESL and Hispanic population we had to try to use different tools to reach them, such as text messages, emails, and car lines flyers in different languages.” He also said that besides hiring bilingual front office personnel, he also tried to hire bilingual teachers. Since Mr. Allan had 86% of Hispanic population with high number of Spanish-speaking parents, he chose bilingual administrators on his team to better communicate with his parents. Mr. Gilbert said some of his teachers used smart applications that translate English to other languages. He added:

Aykac 182 Our website has a future. It translates the website and the news to several foreign languages so no parents are having a hard time to translate that using other tools. We have a phone line in the front office so whenever a parent comes and they want to translate in, let's say, Vietnamese, we have a service on our phones that we can get translators on the other line to help our families. Parent’s work schedule. Parent work schedules and parents working multiple jobs were another challenge mentioned by the principals who participated in this study. Mr. Dan said: Since more than half of my students are coming from low-income families, their parents have different jobs to make money for living. Most of my parents have different jobs, multiple work places, and their schedule is not good for them to attend our meetings. We try to schedule our events on different times and dates but it does not always help them to attend. Mr. Bill explained that because of low parental attendance in their events at school, he and his staff started to visit parents at home. He said after initiating the home visit program they noticed that their parental involvement rate increased every year. He added, “Home visit is a good practice to minimize these problems.” Mr. Manfield acknowledged that the issue of parents’ work schedules was one challenge, and he made himself available before and after hours to meet with them. He also said that he kept telling parents to understand how valuable it is to find the time to be involved in their children’s education. All of the ten principals stated that, to be able to increase the parent attendance in their events, they tried to schedule parent meetings

Aykac 183 before or after school-wide events such as Christmas Dance, Winter Choir, musicals, or sports events so that parents attend these meetings more often. Mr. Alan noted how important it was for parents to work around their work schedule to attend school events. He said: We keep educating parents on how important [it is] to be involved in their child’s education organizing different events. We choose the best time that works for our parents and their work schedule. For example, if you only do all your parent meetings in the morning then a great percentage of parents, due to their work, can’t attend, or if we do it in the in the afternoon time then those who can’t attend in the morning can attend. We provide alternatives with a couple of different time frames for parents to come. Not having up-to-date contact information. Mr. Gilbert mentioned that one of his biggest challenges was not having all teachers communicate with their parents on time. After saying that he added, “Most of the time it was because of not having the current contact information of parents.” He said: A common problem at charter schools is parents don’t update their current contact information and we can't reach them. When we mail the letters, they are returned by the post office because of wrong addresses. Or, when I email them, it will bounce back. He added: I think we could do a better job at the beginning of school to have all of the information updated. We should use Twitter and Facebook accounts actively

Aykac 184 during the year rather than emails or phone calls because their social media accounts will not change as often as their contact information. Mr. Allan talked about a similar problem for his school, lack of contact information for parents: I believe because of parents’ socioeconomic needs they change their address and contact information often. When they change their contact information, it becomes a burden for schools to keep up with maintaining and updating their contact information. We do have a lot of announcements; we send verbal notices, we send greeting notices to parents, but in many cases, we see the addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, actual physical mailing addresses are not current and are not updated. It bounces back when I send an email. He added that they reminded parents to update their contact information regularly throughout the year. Mr. Clear said when he had wrong phone numbers or email addresses, he tried to catch the parents during dismissal or drop off time to make sure they came to front office and updated their contact information. Mr. Manfield shared the same challenge regarding up to-date contact information for his school: Another biggest challenge we face here is reaching out to parents via phone calls. They don’t update their phone numbers or address until we find out that. We ask them constantly to update their contact information. Some of them have limitations when it comes to Internet access and computers. Some of them, that's their nature, they don't look at their emails or look at anything basically.

Aykac 185 Parents get upset with rules and regulations. Participants mentioned that parents do not understand the position of a charter school and see it as completely different from public schools, which leads them to request unreasonable things. When these requests are not fulfilled by school personnel, they get upset and keep their relationship with the school to a minimum. For example, Mr. Clear said: I know a lot of times parents want to ask me about another student’s grades, or another student’s home life, or what did this student do to get in trouble, or my child got in trouble so what are you going to do other child? Or they ask “Can I bring a pizza for the entire lunch room?” Even though it is good to have a parent that would provide pizza to all students, you know that we just can't do that. Parents get upset and don’t want to understand the regulations and wants to see the law. They think that it is my rule and it is me not letting them eat outside food in school. Lack of knowledge on cultural awareness among teachers. Three of the participants mentioned that there is a lack of information about cultural awareness among teachers. Mr. Mark said: I have new and veteran teachers, but most of them have no idea about how to approach the needs of their students who come from different backgrounds. Home visit programs helped a lot to solve this problem, since they have seen the background behind some of their students’ behavioral issues when they visited them at home. I also provided training to all of my staff about cultural awareness. Mr. Alan provided:

Aykac 186 Many teachers are coming from different environments; some come from private, some come from public schools, which parental involvement may not mean the same thing as it is in charter schools. Therefore, it starts with informing and guiding teachers, letting them know the importance of [keeping] parents satisfied and the importance of maintaining high quality education. Teachers need to be very approachable, very open and knowledgeable about whom they serve and what the school culture is. We should increase the number of training opportunities for teachers regarding cultural and social dynamics of our school. Mr. Bill added that every year, during the summer teacher in-service program, they had a session about cultural differences and importance of parental involvement. Lack of time. Most of the participants mentioned that parents have difficulty finding time to stop by school. Most of the parents come only to drop their kids off in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. Mr. Manfield shared: Parents don't have time to stop by the school, schedule a meeting or even answer the call. So, I feel we should establish a system where we tell them what we are willing to do and what we expect from them and it has to be an ongoing process throughout the year. Mr. Alan also emphasized that lack of time was a challenge for parents to be involved in school activities: The main issue is the time. Parents think they don't have enough time to spend for their children's education because of their work schedule. Having 75% of my students coming from low-income families means there are multiple parents, both mom and dad, working in different jobs or multiple jobs with different work

Aykac 187 schedules. It is very hard for them to be available and accessible for teachers and school administrators for school events to volunteer. They even don’t enough time to involve in their child’s education at home because of their work schedule as well. Family issues. Most of the participants stated that family issues such as being a single parent, having multiple jobs, financial issues are common challenges that they encounter at their schools. For example, Mr. Manfield said: I think the parental involvement has got to do a lot with their financial situation, their social situation, their family situation and their own approach and attitude towards the whole thing. So, it is a process. If you take a little bit [of a] step back and watch those school districts that [are] not doing too well on parental involvement, you will find that a lot of them have family problems. Unless a family is stable themselves, you know, how are they going to be involved in other things? He added: The social fabric today is so fragile that many families are broken. There are many children living with their mother or just with their father. Having a single parent struggling with life is a big problem because you don't have a stable family unit. Mr. Bill noted another challenge for parents to become involved with the school was that of single parenting: Having a single parent is another challenge. Most of them have two different jobs and are not available to stop by school because of their busy schedule. To

Aykac 188 overcome these challenges, we need to be proactive and create some time to visit them at their home. Home visit is a good practice to minimize these problems. Summary In Chapter XIV the narrative analysis of the findings was presented. In Chapter XV, the researcher reported summary of the study, conclusions, implications, and makes recommendations for further studies.

Aykac 189 Chapter XV Summary, Conclusions, Implications, and Recommendations This study investigated the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by middle school principals. The chapter includes the following sections: The summary of the study, conclusions, implications for practice, recommendations for future research, and concluding remarks. Summary of the Study Parental involvement and its influence on children’s education has received more attention recently with the worldwide changes in politics, history, and the economy (Radisic, 2010). Research has shown evidence that there is a positive correlation between parental involvement and students’ achievement (Martin, 2015). Since state and federal governments want to improve schools’ and nation’s report card, principals have a crucial responsibility to make sure all of their students become successful (Schubert, 2010). Schubert (2010) argued that principals are the leaders of the school; they set the tone of the school culture and of daily interactions with parents and the community in a variety of ways. Their perspectives on parental involvement set the expectation and serve as an important model for the staff and teachers. Riost-Harrist (2011) indicated that parental involvement and school events had positive effects on student achievement. Parental involvement becomes more important in Title I schools since they generally are lower performing and of lower socio-economic status with low parental involvement. Schools receiving Title I funds are required to create parental involvement plans and provide academic support to low-income students identified as academically

Aykac 190 behind or at risk of failing to increase student achievement (U. S. Department of Education, 2011). A charter school is defined as schools, chosen by parents, that are open enrollment, tuition-free public schools, funded by state, and often independent from traditional public school districts and run privately (NAPCS, 2017). According to NAPCS (2017), as of today 44 states and Washington, D.C allow charter schools to operate. The number of charter schools has reached over 6900 nationwide, serving more than three million students in the United States during the 2016-17 school year. Knaak and Knaak argued that most parents who chose the charter schools are academically oriented, concerned public school parents. Buckley (2011) noted that parents chose the charter schools because of the higher level of accountability. In addition, Buddin and Zimmer (2005) claimed that, even though there are some people against the charter school idea, charter schools have become an effective option for many parents, especially for lower-class parents and minority groups. School culture and the expectations set by principals are an important factor in impacting students’ achievement after teachers (Leithwood et al., 2004). Judith (2011) argued that a principal’s perception or his or her leadership style could affect the environment of the school. Thus, to build a school where not only students but also parents engaged and feel welcomed, there is need for a clear understanding of middle school principals’ perceptions of parental involvement. Overview of the problem. Historically, school administrators and teachers have voiced their concerns about parental involvement in their schools, especially because it concerns the academic, psychological, and physiological welfare of children (Watson et

Aykac 191 al., 2012). Students’ school performance is heavily impacted by parents and families’ involvement in their education (Epstein, Simon, & Salinas, 1997; Henderson & Mapp, 2002). The research conducted within the past two decades suggests that parental involvement in school improved student success (Constantino, 2008). Burke (1999) argued that as students move up to the middle and high school level, parental involvement significantly decreases. Archibald et al. (2008) claimed that since youth start having biological and social changes starting middle school years, it influences their academic motivation, which causes low achievement. Abrams and Gibbs (2000) argued that in middle school, parents and educators’ perceptions differ on parental involvement, student success and roles of principal. Kerbow and Bernhardt (1993) indicated that schools had not understood the importance of parental involvement in middle school clearly resulted low parental involvement therefore causes low student achievement. Khan (2004) concluded that educators and policy makers should pay attention to parental involvement in middle schools as student success declines in middle school years. Purpose statement and research questions. The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study was to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by middle school principals. The following questions guided the study: 1. How do principals define parental involvement? 2. What do principals observe regarding the influence of parental involvement on student success?

Aykac 192 3. What are the most effective practices principals implement regarding parental involvement? 4. What challenges do principals encounter regarding parental involvement and how can these be overcome? Review of the study design. Creswell (2013) suggested that the phenomenological form of research is one of the best-suited forms of study to understand several individuals’ common and shared experiences of phenomenon. Phenomenological approach is a highly acceptable design to learn participants’ subjective perceptions (Savitz-Romer, 2012). Therefore, phenomenological narrative research approach was employed to collect and analyze all participants’ perceptions on parental involvement in this study and focused on the investigation of the common perceptions of principals. Participants. Purposeful sampling method was used to select the participants for this study. Creswell (2009) described purposeful sampling as selecting individuals and sites to purposefully inform an understanding of research problems and central phenomenon in the study. The participant group of this study was a small purposeful sample of 10 middle school principals of Title I charter schools in Texas who had served at least one full year as a principal in his/her current school or had previously served as a principal at least one full year at another Title I charter school districts. Data collection and analysis. Ten middle school principals of Title I charter school in Texas were interviewed for this study. Each participant was initially contacted by e-mail. Five participants were interviewed face-to-face and other five were interviewed through an online platform. The research questions were provided to each

Aykac 193 participant in advance. Each interview was transcribed shortly after it was conducted. In each interview a “general sense of the information” (Creswell, 2009, p. 185) was considered to obtain the information. Larkin, Flowers and Smith (2009, p. 83) suggested that the identifying “anything of interest” during transcription is very crucial to find out the themes. The most significant statements from each interview were recorded (Creswell, 2007). As it was suggested by Creswell (2009, p. 186) organizing the interviews material into “chunks or segments” was very useful. All transcribed data was read again and again (Larkin et al., 2009) as a collective source of data that progressively helped to emerge the themes and general areas of common perceptions. Summary of major findings. Major findings of this study are summarized by research questions. Research question one. This question sought for to understand how middle school principals of Title-I charter schools define parental involvement. Emergent themes included the following: 

collaborative efforts and working together,



from customer/partner point of view,



based on leadership style

Research question two. The second question investigated what principals observe about parental involvement and its influence on students’ success. Emergent theme included the following: 

influences the student success

Aykac 194 Research question three. The third question investigated to effective practices and strategies principals have regarding parental involvement. Emergent themes included the following: 

open door policy,



home visit program,



suggested activities at home,



effective communication practice,



parent-teacher communication routines,



parent programs and activities,



parent in decision-making process.

Research question four. The fourth question investigated the challenges that middle school principals encounter on parental involvement and how they overcome them. Emergent themes included following: 

language barriers,



parents’ work schedule,



not having up-to-date contact information,



parents get upset with rules and regulations,



lack of knowledge on cultural awareness among teachers,



lack of time,



family issues.

Conclusions This qualitative phenomenological narrative study explored the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived

Aykac 195 by middle school principals. Specific conclusions based on this study are discussed by the research questions. Research Question One. Research Question One investigated how middle school principals of Title-I charter schools define parental involvement. The findings suggest that most of the principals considered parental involvement as a combination of different expectations for both parents and school. They believed that the school and the parents must work together and take joint responsibility for the students’ education in school. Research findings from this study also show that charter school principals are experiencing less parental involvement as students move from elementary to middle school. This supports the findings of studies done by Burke (1999) and Bowen (2003), which argued that as students move into middle and high school, parental involvement significantly decrease. Principals believe that one of the reasons of less parental involvement in middle school is middle school students want more freedom and be independent person to make their own choices. This finding is consistent with research by Griffiths-Prince (2009), which claimed that middle school is a critical year for children that they start separating themselves from home and the family. The study also revealed principals believe that some of the middle school parents think that their students are old enough to handle things by themselves. Thus, they do not need to get involved often in their education. This supports the findings of research by DePlanty et al. (2007), which cited that parents used to believe that as students get older, parental involvement would not be needed as much as in early grades.

Aykac 196 Another research finding from this study also revealed that principals believe that as students move to the upper grade level, parents should be more involved in their education since this is the time students are going through physical and emotional changes, there are more distractions keeping them away from their education and they need more support. This finding also is consistent with the research by Archibald et al. (2008), which claimed that the biological and social changes young adults experience starting in their middle school years influence their academic motivation and cause low achievement. Thus, parental involvement becomes more important during early adolescence. Research findings from this study also suggested that principals have different views about their parents’ and students’ status at their school and these views affect the type of parental involvement strategies they choose to implement. Principals considered parents as customers, as partners or both as a customer and partner at the same time. Also, this study revealed that principals believed that most of the parents consider themselves as customer rather than partner. This finding supports Abrams and Gibbs (2000), who argued that parents’ and educators’ perceptions differ on parental involvement. Research findings from this study confirmed that level of parental involvement in school depends on principals’ leadership styles and their views on parental involvement. Principals demonstrated that they guide their teachers by leading by example. This finding is consistent with research conducted by Peiffer (2003), who agreed that a

Aykac 197 principal’s attitude is the key to increasing parental involvement in school programs. Auerbach (2010) stated that strong leadership is the key factor that makes the difference in good school. Findings from this study lead to conclude that charter school principals want to work together with parents in their child’s education. The principals are aware of the child’s social and psychological change in middle school. They also acknowledge that parents’ relationship with their child in middle school is not as same as it was in elementary. Also the principals have different view on their parents’ status and treat them accordingly. The principals would benefit creating a strategic parental involvement plan after considering these factors and the service they would like to provide to their community to be able increase parental involvement in their school. Research Question Two. Research Question Two investigated what principals observe about parental involvement and its influence on students’ success. The findings from this study affirm that all principals strongly believe parental involvement influences students’ success. This leads to a conclusion consistent with the literature, which stated that parental involvement increases students’ achievement (Harris & Goodall, 2008; LaFolette, 2014; Leithwood et al., 2004; Warren, 2010). Research Question Three. Research Question Three investigated effective practices and strategies principals have regarding parental involvement. The principals who participated in this study understood the importance of having an open door policy and believed that it is an effective communication tool to reach the parents. This also leads to the conclusion that principals believed that visibility is important in positively impacting parental involvement at the school. This helps create a welcoming atmosphere

Aykac 198 for parents. This finding is consistent with the literature, which showed that having a positive, parent-friendly, caring and welcoming school environment makes parents more involved and engaged, which yields better results in student achievement than all other individual initiatives (Epstein, 2010; Bauch & Goldring, 2000). Likewise, Gibbs and Slate (2003) claimed that principals must be visible and accessible for a better parental involvement in school. Research findings from this study suggest that principals go above and beyond to reach their parents by conducting home visits. They committed to visit parents’ houses if parents have no time to stop by the school. This finding supports Batista (2009), who argued that secondary school principals should create meaningful programs and opportunities for parental involvement beyond identifying the obstacles related with parental involvement. The principals in this study emphasized that parental involvement should continue at home. The most common parental involvement activities those principals expected to see at home included: asking question about school, checking homework, discussing any issue they had in school, closely monitoring their children’s academic and disciplinary progress by checking the student information system on their school websites and sharing their expectations and goals with their kids. The research indicated that parents could encourage their children at home for high achievement and further learning and set educational goals with them (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2007; Patel & Stevens, 2010). Also, this finding is consistent with the research by Xu et al. (2010), which found that

Aykac 199 student performance increases when parents are involved in their children’s school activities, help students with their homework at home and share their expectations with them. Effective communication and using different communication tools are very important in decreasing miscommunication between parents and schools. The findings in this study also lead to the conclusion that principals understood the importance of communication by implementing different strategies to create an open line of communication between parents and schools. In addition to using regular email communication or sending newsletter, most of the principals in this study utilized social media accounts like Facebook or Twitter, smart applications like Remind101, school messenger and even home visit programs. This leads to a conclusion consistent with the literature that claimed that successful principals look for effective communication tools always (Arnold, Perry, Watson, Minatra, & Swartz, 2006). Principals in this study implemented different parental activities and open houses according to their communities’ need in order to increase parental involvement in their schools. Some of them modified the regular parent teacher organization (PTO) and created parent achieving community (PAC) or parent school collaboration (PSC) or parent advisory committee or parent teacher student organization (PTSCO). Some other programs they started were: Watch-DOGS program for dads, Living Museum, POWWOW- Preparing Outstanding Warriors with Wisdom to Overcome and Win, Parent Academy or Family University, Snack N’ Chat, and parent breakfasts or dinners. This finding leads to a conclusion consistent with the research by Gordon and SeashoreLouis (2009), who highlighted that school leaders need more holistic and authentic effort

Aykac 200 to address the issues in their community to increase the level of school success. The success of the students’ academic achievement correlates with principals’ leadership ability to navigate the needs of the community. Findings from this study showed that principals are proactive in getting more parents involved in their decision-making process. They do so by asking parents to provide their feedback through surveys or become a member of site-based decisionmaking committee on their campus. This supports Epstein’s (2010) one of the six parental involvement activities that creates a parent-friendly climate to increase student success. Findings from this study lead to the conclusion that the principals should be more innovative and flexible to reach their parents. The principals could increase the parental involvement by being visible and available to their parents. There is a need for principals to look for up-to-date effective communication tools that are user friendly and used often by parents to keep them posted. Research Question Four. Research Question Four investigated the challenges that middle school principals encounter on parental involvement and how they overcome these challenges. The findings from this study revealed that language barriers, parents’ work schedules, not having up-to-date contact information, parents getting upset with rules and regulations, lack of time, lack of knowledge among teachers and family issues were the most common challenges that principals encountered. These findings are consistent with literature that discussed that socioeconomic status, work schedules, parents’ past school experiences are some of the important factors influencing parental involvement (Hill & Taylor, 2004; LaRocque, Kleiman, & Darling, 2011).

Aykac 201 Research findings suggest that principals implemented different strategies to overcome these problems such as hiring bilingual staff, providing translators at their meetings, having a phone system that provides translators in any language, and creating better schedules for parents by offering the events at multiple different times during the day and week. They also committed to providing childcare and food to increase the parental involvement in their activities. These findings are consistent with the research done by Colombo (2006) that claimed hiring bilingual staff increased not only parental involvement but also student achievement and helped minority parents feel comfortable attending school events by removing the language barrier. Rapp and Duncan (2012) suggested that schools must work on better scheduling to ensure all parents have opportunities to be involved in their children’s school activities. In addition to Rapp and Duncan, Payne (2006) noted that when schools have events, principals must make sure that there are multiple opportunities for parents to attend school functions and provide transportation, childcare, and even meals. Findings from this study lead to conclusion that there is a need for principals to get familiar with their school population’s needs for an effective parental involvement. The schools would benefit contacting parents earlier in the year and share their expectations and educate them about differences and similarities between charter schools and public schools. Also there is a need for principals to have a better schedule by planning parent events on multiple different times based on parents’ work schedule and provide childcare, transportation, translators and meal to increase parent involvement in school events.

Aykac 202 Implications for Practice The number of charter schools has reached over 6900 nationwide, serving more than three million students in the United States during the 2016-17 school year (NAPCS, 2017). Charter schools serve mostly minority populations and will continue to grow in Texas as well. Parental involvement is an issue in our schools all over the nation. Parents and schools have different expectations and perceptions on parental involvement, which makes communication a bit more difficult for both parents and principals. Besides that, charter schools serve a majority of underserved students in the community, with a high population of parents with limited English, creating extra challenges for charter school principals in getting parents involved in their children’s education. The findings from this study provide principals with strategies, implemented by the charter school principals participating in this study at their schools, that will help them discover ways to better meet the needs of their underserved populations. The findings from this study also suggest that charter school principals actively think about ways to increase the parental involvement. They also use current technology and social media to reach out their parents. Suggestions to increase parental involvement at schools include the following: 

Be proactive and communicate with parents early in the year.



Use social media to reach out to parents in addition to regular communication tools.



Use smart applications like Remind101 or Voly to contact and recruit more parents quickly.



Be visible on campus and outside during dismissal and drop off time.

Aykac 203 

Provide training to teachers at the beginning of the year regarding parental involvement.



Provide training to teachers regarding diversity and cultural awareness.



Share your expectations clearly with your staff and parents at the beginning of the year.



Be the parents’ voice by getting feedback from them and having them be a part of the decision-making process at school.



Hire more bilingual staff.



Create meaningful educational activities according to your communities’ needs.



Work around your parents’ work schedules and be flexible when scheduling activities during the day or week.



Provide childcare, meals and transportation to increase parental involvement.



Schedule parent meetings before or after a general events such as musicals, sports events, start home visit program and provide incentive to the staff that visits their students (Dallavis, 2014; Vera et al., 2012).

Recommendation for Future Research There is a need to provide the best school environment not only for students but also for our parents. Demand for charter schools will continue to grow all over the nation. While having more charter schools, it is important to know what charter school principals are doing on their campuses to support parental involvement; more parental involvement means more student success, which in turn means more successful charter schools. Considering the fact that the current study investigated only ten middle school principals’

Aykac 204 perceptions on parental involvement and its influence on student success, it would be better to have more principals in the next study. Some future research recommendations on this topic include the following: 

Principals’ Perception of Latino Parents Involvement in Title I Charter Schools



Principals Perception of African American Parents Involvement in Title I Charter Schools



Principals Perception of Specific Grade Level Students’ Parents Involvement in Title I charter schools



Since 6th grade is a transition year from elementary to middle school, another study could look into principals’ perceptions of the differences between 5th grade and 6th grade parent involvement.



A study on a comparison of female and male principals’ perceptions of parental involvement.



A quantitative research study can be done by collecting more data from principals all over the nation through the surveys.



Parents’ perceptions on parental involvement on students’ success in charter schools / public schools.

Concluding Remarks This study provided insights into Title I charter school principals about parental involvement and its influences on students’ success. The findings of this study revealed that charter school principals tried to provide the best educational service not only to their students, but also to their parents. As I interviewed them, I noticed that the charter school

Aykac 205 principals ran their campuses as if they were their own businesses. They worked before and after hours to provide a quality service that made their parents happy and students succeed. Each of the principals believed that student success depended on both schools and parents collaborating and working together, and they accepted that, as principals, they were largely responsible for parental involvement at their school. What I was most impressed with was the fact that each principal in this study understood the importance of leading by example for anything they required of their teachers. I believe that this is the type of the leadership that will increase buy-in among teachers for more parental involvement activities in charter schools.

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Aykac 217 Appendices Appendix A

Interview Guided Protocol

Appendix B

Letter of Invitation to Participate in Study

Appendix C

Subject Consent to Participation in Research

Appendix D

Human Subjects Review Board Cover Sheet for Approval of Research Using Human Subjects

Appendix E

Request for Approval from Human Subjects Review Board

Appendix F

NIH Certificate

Aykac 218 Appendix A Interview Guided Protocol Research Topic Influence of Parental Involvement on Students’ Success in Title I Charter Schools in Texas as Perceived by Middle School Principals. Developed Script to Guide the Interview Process This interview is part of the requirements for the completion of the doctorate degree at Lamar University. The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study was to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by middle school principals. Epstein’s (2009) framework considers involvement as shared effort of parents, community, and school. The concept of Epstein’s parental involvement is based on a multidimensional approach that creates parent-friendly climate to increase student success. Epstein’s (2010) six types of parental involvement are; (a) parenting, (b) communicating, (c) volunteering, (d) learning at home, (d) decision making, and (e) collaborating with the community. Epstein suggested that the level of interaction between family, school, and community supports student success Please provide responses based on your experiences only. Your responses will be kept confidential and you will not be identified individually in any way in the final report. You may decline to answer any of the interview questions or stop answering anytime if you so wish. Thank you for your participation. Background Questions 1. Tell me about yourself.

Aykac 219 2. How would you classify your race or ethnic group? 3. What is your school population? 4. What is your school demographics 5. How long have you been serving as a principal at Title I Schools? 6. Do you have experiences at regular school or private school as a principal? 7. What do you enjoy a lot being a principal at Title I School? Research Questions 1. How do principals define parental involvement? A. What does parental involvement mean to you? B. Do you consider your parents as customers or partners? a. What makes you think that? b. Do you consider your students as customers or partners as well? c. How do you communicate the customer/partner service point of view to the parents and students? C. What types of activities you consider as parental involvement? D. What are the best parental involvement activities for students’ success? E. What basic obligations do you think schools have promoting school-home communications about school programs and progress? F. What do you believe are the most important characteristics of a good homeschool connection? G. To what extend do you believe parents should involve in school? a. What are the challenges do you face as a principal on parental involvement?

Aykac 220 b. What kinds of concerns do you have about current relationships between your school and parents? H. Do you think your leadership style influences the level of parental involvement at your school? 2. What do principals observe regarding the influence of parental involvement on student success? A. Do you believe that there is a correlation between parental involvement and student achievement? Do you have any specific example that showed your students’

B.

academic achievement increased after certain parental involvement? C.

What do you do to encourage and support parental involvement in

their student's education? D.

To what do you think an active comprehensive parent involvement

program/plan is important to student success? 3. What are the most effective practices principals implement regarding parental involvement? A. Explain your process for involving parents in school and their students’ education. a. Do you have a set school wide program to have parents involved in school? b. What type of school-related policy and decision-making do you involve parents? c. How do you create awareness and show appreciation of the parental

Aykac 221 involvement in school throughout the year? d. What types of tools you use to establish a strong home-school connection? e. Do you conduct home visit for your students? f. Have you ever conducted home visit to your students as a principal? B. Do you have a Parent-Teacher-Organization at your school? a. How often do they meet and do you attend each meeting? b. To what extend do you think PTO help to increase the parental involvement? c. How do you use them to help with active or inactive parent involvement issues? d. What do you think having a parent-advisory committee to help maintain parental involvement other then PTO? C. What are some typical issues have you identified as compelling your contacting parents? a. How often do you contact the parents on a regular basis? b. What does open door policy mean to you? c. How often do you require teachers to contact parents? d. For what type of issues do you require teachers to contact parents? e. How do you communicate/establish the standard for strong parental involvement to your teachers? f. How do you motivate teachers to contact parents? g. How do you reward teachers for contacting parents regularly?

Aykac 222 h. To what degree do you address or respond to the parent’s concerns and issues? D. What are some of your common practices on involving a diverse parent population? a. What are some examples of practices showing how you bridge cultural and language gaps between the school and the parents? b. How do you use teachers to help bridge the gap between school and family? c. What strategies should the school employ to enhance parent involvement in your school? E. What is the best way for a parent to involve in his/her child’s education at home? F. What should be the parent role in their child’s education? 4. What challenges do principals encounter regarding parental involvement and how can these be overcome? Tell me what question I did not ask and should have asked, and then answer it for me. Within five (5) days after completing the interview with you, you will be provided a copy of the transcript to confirm the accuracy of our conversation and to add or clarify any points that you wish. Thank you.

Aykac 223 Appendix B Letter of Invitation to Participate in Study Date Name Address Dear ……. This letter is an invitation to consider participating in a study I am conducting as part of my Doctoral degree in the Department of Educational Leadership at Lamar University under the supervision of Dr. Clementine Msengi. I would like to provide you with more information about my research and what your involvement would entail if you decide to take part. The concerns about the parental involvement have been an issue at US schools for a long time. Especially parental involvement becomes more important at Title I schools. Researches showed evidence that there is a positive correlation between parental involvement and students’ achievement. Principals are the leaders of the school who set the tone of the school cultures and interacts the parents and community on a daily basis in a variety of ways. The school culture and the expectations set by the principals in schools and they are the second very important factor in impacting students’ achievement after teachers. Their perspectives on parental involvement set an important model and expectations for the staff and teachers. Epstein’s (2009) framework considers involvement as shared effort of parents, community, and school. The concept of Epstein’s parental involvement is based on a multidimensional approach that creates parent-friendly climate to increase student

Aykac 224 success. Epstein’s (2010) six types of parental involvement are; (a) parenting, (b) communicating, (c) volunteering, (d) learning at home, (d) decision making, and (e) collaborating with the community. Epstein suggested that the level of interaction between family, school, and community supports student success. Also level of parental involvement, mostly, depends on principals’ encouragements, knowing the perceptions of principals are very important to drive the school. In order to build a school where not only students but also parents engaged and feel welcomed, there is a need for clear understanding of principals’ perceptions of parental involvement The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study was to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by middle school principals. Participant group of this study will be a small purposeful sample of ten principals of Title I charter schools in Texas who served at least one full year as a principal in his/her current school or had served as a principal at least one full year at another middle school previously. Participation in this study is voluntary. During the interview in spring 2018, four (4) open-ended interview questions will take place in the interview form. Duration of interviews will be no longer than 45 minutes and will take place in a mutually agreed upon location or online conferencing interviews using Skype or Google Hangout. You may decline to answer any of the interview questions if you so wish. Your answers will be recorded during interview with your approval. There will be no incentive for participation or consequence if you opt out. Your responses will be completely anonymous, and no individual names or institutions will be recorded during the course of

Aykac 225 this survey. Your name will not be associated with any research findings. The data will be stored electronically in a secure place. The Lamar University Institutional Review Board has approved this study however you are free to decide not to participate in this study or to withdraw at any time without adversely affecting your relationship with the investigator or Lamar University. There is no compensation for participating, however, on completion of this study, I will share a summary of the findings with you. Your input is extremely valuable for understanding of the perceptions of principals on parental involvement. If you have any questions regarding this study, or would like additional information to assist you in reaching a decision about participation, please contact me at 210-xxx-xxxx or by e-mail at [email protected]. You can also contact my supervisor, Clementine Msengi at 409.880.8902 or e-mail [email protected]. I very much look forward to speaking with you and thank you in advance for your assistance in this project.

Sincerely,

Principal Researcher Salih Aykac [email protected]

Dissertation Chair Clementine Msengi [email protected]

Aykac 226 Appendix C Lamar University Department of Educational Leadership College of Education SUBJECT CONSENT TO PARTICIPATION IN RESEARCH Title of Study: Perceptions of Middle School Principals on Parental Involvement and Its Influences on Students’ Success in Title I Charter Schools in Texas. Purpose of Study: The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study was to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by middle school principals. Name of Investigator(s) with contact information: Salih Aykac, [email protected] Name of Dissertation Chair with contact information: Clementine Msengi, [email protected] I understand that I agree to participate in a research project and that the purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study was to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by middle school principals. I will be asked five interview questions. With my permission, the interview will be tape-recorded to facilitate collection of information, and later transcribed for analysis. Shortly after the interview has been completed, I will be provided a copy of the transcript to confirm the accuracy of our conversation and to add or clarify any points that I wish. Participation in this study is voluntary and there will be no incentive for participation or consequence if I opt out. My responses will be completely anonymous, and no individual names or institutions will be recorded during the course of this study.

Aykac 227 My name will not be associated with any research findings; however, with your permission anonymous quotations may be used. The entire procedure will no longer than 45 minutes. My participation will take place in a private area or by using online platform like Skype or Google Hangout with only the researcher present. I can decline to answer any question on any time during the interview. Risks All the questions will be confidential and no individual responses will be reported. My name will not be used in this research study. There will be no identifying characteristics about me or about the people I refer during the interview. All recordings and data will be held in a password-protected computer. Also, they will be destroyed when they are no longer needed. Benefits There is no compensation to participate in this study; however, benefits of participation may include a contribution to scholarly research. There will be no direct benefits to the subjects. The results should be of interest and value to the school leaders, to understand the perceptions of principals on parental involvement, which will help to find better ways, approaches to increase the parental involvement in Title I schools. The benefit to society will be that all stakeholders in education will benefit from improvement in the greater educational success of the students. Participation I understand that my participation in this study is voluntary and that I may withdraw from the study at any time. I may refuse to participate, or I may decide to stop the survey or interview at any time. My refusal to participate will involve no penalty or

Aykac 228 loss of benefits to which I am otherwise entitled. I understand that I will not be compensated for my participation. I will be given a copy of the dated and signed consent form to keep. Acknowledgment: I, _________________________________, have read all of the explanation about the research study as mentioned above and accepted to take survey / interview voluntarily. 

With full knowledge of all foregoing, I agree, of my own free will, to participate in this study. ___ YES



I agree to have my interview tape recorded. ___ YES



___ NO

___ NO

I agree to the use of anonymous quotations in any thesis or publication that comes of this research. ___ YES

___ NO

Participant Signature: ___________________________________ Date: __________ Principal Investigator____________________________________ Date__________

I very much look forward to speaking with you and thank you in advance for your assistance in this project. If you have any questions about the research or your rights as a subject, please contact the Dissertation Chair person listed on this form.

Aykac 229 Appendix D IRB Approval

Aykac 230 Appendix E NIH Certificate

Aykac 231 Biographical Note Salih Aykac received his master’s degree from UT Tyler in Educational Leadership & Policies then completed Superintendent Certification program at the same university and got his Superintendent Certification. Before he started working at charter school in 2005, he worked at a private school as a math teacher and Math-Count coach for five years. After working four years at different capacities at a charter school, he was offered a principal position in 2009 at a charter school in San Antonio, Texas. In 2013 he moved to New Mexico and worked as a director at a charter school there. He was accepted into doctorate program at Lamar University in 2016 where he earned Doctorate of Education in Educational Leadership in 2018. Currently he works as a principal at Harmony Science Academy-Dallas.

Style manual delegation: Typist:

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition Salih Aykac