PIRC PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT FUND
Parent-Initiated Projects Benefit Students, Improve Communications

By Tim Donahue

How involved are parents in your school? Dozens of studies and projects confirm that when parents are involved, kids do better in school. However, getting parents involved in their children’s education is not always as easy as it sounds.

American researchers have identified key barriers to involvement for immigrant and marginalized populations. Language, limited educational experience, and a disconnect between child-rearing assumptions at home and at school can combine to keep parents away from schools. Those barriers may operate even more powerfully in the U.S.-affiliated Pacific than on the U.S. continent.

In the U.S.-affiliated Pacific, language barriers are common, particularly where the community speaks a language other than the primary medium of instruction, English. Many parents have limited education. In the Freely Associated States of Micronesia (FSM), for example, formal schooling frequently ends at 8th grade. Finally, the American efficiency model of education requires that homogeneous age groups receive the same instruction under the direction of an adult who may not be related to them. This can be quite different from traditional Pacific adult/child mentoring.

Nonetheless, Pacific parents have very strong concerns about their children’s schooling. By prioritizing parent concerns instead of educators’, PREL’s Parental Information and Resource Center (PIRC) project has been able to promote parent leadership in schools in Pohnpei and Chuuk in the FSM and Majuro in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Because PIRC staff believes that the first step to engaging parents is to listen, they began by surveying parents’ concerns. At all schools surveyed, parents’ top priority was children’s safety and well-being. The parents took for granted that the school would handle the academics.

Next, PIRC staff developed a strategy to move parents toward partnerships that focus on improved achievement. By partnering with them on an issue of high parent concern, PIRC staff was able to activate the insight that parents become more engaged when they can take the lead.

Nothing prompts action like money, so to encourage parents to come up with solutions to their concerns, PIRC offers contracts of up to $500 to parent groups for projects of their choosing. Projects must address school concerns, be parent generated, and provide for sustainability. To date, over 15 schools in Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Majuro have implemented these Parent Involvement Contracts.

The projects differ depending on needs in different areas. Because FSM is ineligible for U.S. Department of Agriculture food support, parent groups at a number of schools have set up healthy snack programs. At ESDM Elementary School in Pohnpei, for example, parents take turns preparing soup, which is then made available to students at 25¢ a bowl. The minimal charge covers costs and keeps the project going.

Others projects include providing potable water and improving restrooms. At two schools in Chuuk, parents established awards for grades and behavior. Still other groups arranged transportation to get parents to PTA meetings so that they could participate more fully in school governance.

As educators, we want parents to understand standards and curriculum, to help their children with homework, and to support schools’ objectives. But it will probably be unproductive and may even be insulting to set up workshops on homework assistance when parents are worried about providing lunch.

PIRC’s strategy is to encourage parent involvement by partnering with the school to address parents’ primary concerns. By solving the issues of highest importance to them, parents come to recognize their potential as contributors to their children’s education. Educators can then build on success and rapport to introduce academic concerns as another area in which parents and schools can work together to help students.

It works. At schools where parents have implemented a Parental Involvement Contract, PIRC staff sees improved communications and greater agreement on the nature of and potential for parental involvement.