Eight lessons of parent, family,
and community involvement
in the middle grades

"The authors synthesized their findings across nine sites to arrive at conclusions that move beyond conventional thinking to enrich our understanding of the critical and complex nature of school/family partnerships in the middle grades." -- Phi Delta KAPPAN

By Barry Rutherford and Shelley H. Billig

In our study of parent and community involvement in education, we examined school/family partnerships in the middle grades (grades 6 to 8). Research on the potential effects of family involvement in early childhood education and in the elementary grades presents a favorable picture,(1) but less is known about the effect of parent and family involvement in the middle grades.

Our research focused on three areas: comprehensive districtwide programs, school restructuring, and adult/child learning programs. Three sites for each focus area were selected and visited twice during the 1993-94 school year. Comprehensive districtwide program sites included the Jefferson County (Kentucky) Public Schools; the Fort Worth Independent School District; and the Minneapolis Public Schools. For our study of family and community involvement in restructuring schools, we visited sites in Lamoni, Iowa; Georgetown, South Carolina; and Shelburne, Vermont. For our study of adult/child learning programs, we visited Community District 3, New York City; the Rochester (New York) Public Schools; and the Chapter 1 Parent Center in Natchez, Mississippi.

Each of these nine sites presented its own unique challenges for family and community involvement.(2) However, two central questions defined the responses at all sites. First, how do schools and districts involve families and the community as partners in education reform? We found many examples at our sites of various ways in which schools or districts met this challenge by providing opportunities and supports for families, school practitioners, community members, and businesses as they assume new roles in education reform. Second, how do schools and districts create partnerships that acknowledge the roles of the family, school, and community in the growth of the child, and how do these systems interact? One teacher to whom we spoke typified the responses to this question. She said, "No one person has the 'big picture' of a child at this age. We try to work with families to construct the picture, to strengthen the partnership, in order to help the children succeed."

Just as each site that we studied faced unique challenges in its efforts to create school/family partnerships, so each site also yielded a unique set of responses.(3) We synthesized our findings across all nine sites and developed a set of eight "lessons." These lessons broaden the scope of our findings beyond the specific context of an individual site. They also move beyond conventional thinking about family and community involvement to enrich our understanding of the critical and complex nature of school/family partnerships in the middle grades.

Each of these lessons is described briefly below, along with implications in the form of action statements that highlight what schools, communities, and families can do to implement the lessons. Finally, we offer examples of how specific sites put these lessons into practice.

Lesson 1: The stakes are high and immediate for everyone in the middle grades. During the middle grades, students make personal and educational decisions that have serious consequences. They wrestle with issues of authority, independence, and changing relationships with their families. Their visibility, both as individuals and as members of groups in community settings, requires that students learn and practice productive social skills for community participation. These challenges, coupled with the perception that the years spent in the middle grades are a watershed - and not merely a transition period between elementary school and high school - create a compelling case for the critical importance of the middle grades.(4)

Implications. Schools can create programs that respond to the unique needs of middle-grade families and students. Communities can publicize the success of middle-grade schools and students to emphasize their economic, social, and political importance to the community, and they can provide positive interventions for middle-grade students. Families can engage middle-grade children in active decision making. In the Fort Worth Independent School District, Vital Link places sixth-graders in more than 140 businesses for approximately four hours each morning during a one-week internship. In 1993 more than 2,300 students participated in spring or summer pilot internships. The goal of the program is to understand career opportunities in a variety of fields through hands-on experience.

Lesson 2: Challenges can become opportunities for parent/family involvement. In addition to coping with the physical and emotional changes of adolescence, middle-grade students and their families must also deal with changes in the way schools operate. Communication patterns between the school and children and families change; the student's day is fragmented, with many more teachers and subjects, added extra-curricular choices, and an increasingly complex curriculum. At the same time, these barriers present a variety of opportunities for families to participate in schools and to interact with their children.

Implications. Schools can create structures that decrease the fragmentation caused by the way schools are organized; they can provide parents with strategies to support the academic success of their middle-grade students; they can make available specific educational opportunities geared to the special interests of middle-grade families. Families can serve as advocates and resources for middle-grade children. Restructuring in Shelburne, Vermont, has focused on organizing elementary and middle grades into a nine-year system, divided into three-year "communities." This strategy makes it more likely that students will learn necessary skills and makes the middle school "more inviting and less threatening." In Rochester, New York, many parents take adult basic education courses as part of the Parent/Child Basic Learning Program in that district.

Lesson 3: Relationships are the essence of middle-grade family and community involvement. Schools and communities are ideal contexts for developing and fostering strong relationships with the families of middle-grade students. One-on-one communication between families and teachers, the addition of school personnel to deal with family issues, and community contact with middle-grade students in their roles as consumers and workers all help to build support for middle-grade schools.

Implications. Schools can encourage direct contact between middle-grade families and teachers and can create staffing patterns that support these relationships. Communities can take advantage of middle-school students' relationships with local businesses (as workers and consumers) to make community connections that build support. Families can build personal relationships with members of the school staff.

"I wanted to be involved," a Minneapolis parent told us. "But I just didn't know how to get involved. If it hadn't been for one of the teachers calling and personally inviting me to come to the school and help, I wouldn't be here today." The efforts of Minneapolis teachers and family support personnel have resulted in increased parent attendance at meetings, a large parent volunteer program, and parents who are being trained as advocates for middle-grade students through the Parent Institute Program.

Lesson 4: Responsibility and decision making are shared by a broad array of players, including the child. Just as adolescents' roles change during the middle grades, so do their responsibilities and their processes of making decisions. School, home, and community are all places where middle-graders learn and are actively involved in either positive or negative ways. Teachers, counselors and service agency personnel, community members, business-people, families, and students themselves can and should share responsibility and decision making with regard to the curriculum and the delivery of instruction. The challenge for middle-grade schools comes in coordinating information and efforts across a broad range of stakeholders to create a coherent picture of the student.(5)

Implications. Schools should include middle-grade families, teachers, and students in decisions about curriculum and instruction; involve middle-grade families and students in conferences about course-work and individual progress; and coordinate information from the school to ensure smooth communication with middle-grade families. Families should identify school policies and expectations in preparation for their roles as advocates and supporters of middle-grade students.

Lamoni (Iowa) Middle School has fostered an environment in which, as one administrator put it, "Teachers are comfortable experimenting with structures to see what works." Teacher advisory groups, cooperative learning strategies, interdisciplinary units, and team teaching give students opportunities to make decisions about learning. Frequent contacts with families - both in the school and in the small rural community - allow open communication about curriculum, instruction, and student progress.

Lesson 5: Sustained parent/family involvement and community involvement depend on active advocacy by leaders. Leadership, both within the school and in the community, plays a key role in fostering parent/family involvement and community involvement. Leaders set the tone for involvement, make involvement a priority, and provide the context that enables school personnel, families, community members, and businesspeople to maintain an active role in middle-grade education.

Implications. Schools should look for a whole array of community connections; use creative approaches to "defining" leadership, designing programs, and solving problems; and provide a climate for success that includes making fiscal and human resources available. Communities should take an active role in making connections with schools. Families can represent the interests of middle-grade children, and they can use community connections to advocate for the school.

The principal at Barret Traditional Middle School in Louisville, Kentucky, describes himself as "part instructional leader, part administrator, and part public relations expert." He views his leadership as going beyond the boundaries of the school and into the community. Under his leadership, Barret Traditional Middle School sets expectations for family involvement, implements numerous strategies and activities fostering family involvement, and maintains partnerships with community members and businesses.

Lesson 6: A system of supports for front-line workers is critical to parent/family involvement. Frontline workers - teachers and other school personnel - are key players in family involvement. It is through these frontline workers that families are connected to the services provided by the school or the community. In order to be effective, these frontline workers need professional development, the ability and authority to make decisions about services to address family needs, structures that provide the workers themselves with social and emotional support, and a variety of other resources.

Implications. Schools can provide professional development for school personnel that deals with promising practices and programs for family involvement, they can empower frontline workers to make key decisions that connect middle-grade families with needed services, they can create structures that provide social and emotional support for frontline workers, and they can design support systems that outline expectations and give frontline workers resources for family involvement.

The Kentucky Education Reform Act mandates "Youth Service Centers" in middle schools serving economically disadvantaged students. Teachers in Louisville are empowered to refer students and their families to these centers, where a wide range of services are available through local agencies in a "one-stop shopping" atmosphere. In addition, the school district and the parent/teacher organization provide teachers with training. Through teaming efforts, teachers report that they have more time available for connecting with families and that these connections produce powerful results.

Lesson 7: Families need connections to the curriculum. During the elementary grades, the connection of families to curriculum is easier to maintain. In the middle grades, however, multiple teachers, the increasing complexity of course content, and students' growing need for autonomy weaken this connection. It is important for families to remain involved in their children's learning, recognizing that the ways in which they are involved will undergo fundamental change during the middle-grade years.

Implications. Schools should engage families in meaningful home learning tasks; demonstrate ways for families to work with middle-grade students; and use the content and characteristics of middle-school learning experiences - what and how middle-schoolers learn - as starting points for family connections. Families can create an environment that values and promotes achievement and can communicate with the school and teachers about what is being taught and the progress their middle-schooler is making.

Community District 3 in New York City provides families with home learning "kits" that reinforce classroom instruction. In the Chapter 1 Parent Center in Natchez, Mississippi, staff members demonstrate materials and activities that families can use to work with their children at home.

Lesson 8: Schools need connections to the community. The geographic area served by a school broadens in the middle grades. The school is often located at a greater distance from a student's "home" community; middle-grade school attendance areas often draw students from several different communities. In defining "community," schools must recognize the unique strengths of diverse, multiethnic, and multiracial school populations in both rural and urban settings. They must implement strategies to provide multiple opportunities for the "community" to be involved in the middle grades.

Implications. Schools must recognize and acknowledge the unique characteristics of the community; design programs to build on strengths and needs of the community; seek opportunities to engage and invite the community to participate in school activities; and use a variety of strategies to communicate directly with the community. Communities must take an active role in school decision making. And families must find a variety of ways to participate and adopt new roles for participation.

Project REACH (Rural Education Alliance for Collaborative Humanities) at Beck Middle School in Georgetown, South Carolina, uses community members as instructional resources. Through Project REACH students learn about their own families and about the unique culture and context of their larger community. Community District No. 3 in New York City facilitates family outings to cultural events and art museums.

Educating middle-grade students poses unique challenges to families, schools, and districts as they strive to create strong partnerships to promote education reform. These eight lessons and the examples that accompany them illustrate some of the ways in which districts and middle-grade schools engage families and the community. These partnerships go beyond information exchange to foster school change and the creation of relationships that contribute to student success. Each partnership takes planning and visionary leadership, and each of the sites we studied is still engaged in this process. However, all of our sites show that, even in schools and districts in which students are considered "at risk," families and communities can and do support the changes in teaching and learning that are at the heart of education reform.

1. For a review of research on school/family partnerships, see Anne T. Henderson and Nancy Berla, A New Generation of Evidence: The Family Is Critical to Student Achievement (Washington, D.C.: National Committee for Citizens in Education, 1994).

2. Barry Rutherford et al., Final Technical Research Report, Vol. II: Case Studies (Denver: RMC Research Corporation, 1995).

3. Barry Rutherford et al., Final Technical Research Report, Vol. I: Findings and Conclusions (Denver: RMC Research Corporation, 1995).

4. On the critical nature of adolescence, see Carnegie Task Force on the Education of Young Adolescents, Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century (New York: Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development of the Carnegie Corporation, 1989). For reviews of middle-grade education and its effects on adolescents, see William M. Alexander and C. Kenneth McEwen, Schools in the Middle: Status and Progress (Columbus, Ohio: National Middle Schools Association, 1989); and Joyce L. Epstein and Douglas J. Mac Iver, Education in the Middle Grades: Overview of National Practices and Trends (Baltimore: Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools, Johns Hopkins University, 1990).

5. An excellent review of the role of responsibilities in school/family partnerships can be found in Strong Families, Strong Schools: Building Community Partnerships for Learning (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1994).

BARRY RUTHERFORD is a senior research associate with RMC Research Corporation, Denver, where SHELLEY H. BILLIG is the office director. This research was supported by a grant from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, Grant No. RR91172008. The views expressed are those of the authors.