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A study of promising practices in two California charter schools: using technology to increase parent involvement
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A study of promising practices in two California charter schools: using technology to increase parent involvement
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Content
A STUDY OF PROMISING PRACTICES IN TWO CALIFORNIA CHARTER
SCHOOLS: USING TECHNOLOGY TO INCREASE PARENT INVOLVEMENT
by
Jan Pittman Vanderpool
______________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
December 2008
Copyright 2008 Jan Pittman Vanderpool
ii
DEDICATION
This dissertation is dedicated to my immediate family and friends. To my wife Evie,
whose unwavering support was critical to me in those moments when I questioned
whether or not the effort was worth it; to my mother Mary Vanderpool, whose Agape
love was always a source of comfort in my most difficult of times; to my father who,
although no longer physically with us, instilled in me a work ethic that made me
demand no less than excellence in and of myself; to my brothers and sisters whose
constant presence although geographically distant, provided inspiration and
motivation to continue and to my many friends who always had a word of
encouragement whenever I might have started to doubt myself or my mission. I truly
owe it all to you.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I first want to express my sincerest gratitude and appreciation to the members
of my dissertation committee: Dr. Priscilla Wohlstetter, Dr. Dominic Brewer and Dr.
Helena Seli for their support and encouragement during this journey to
enlightenment which was to become my dissertation. I am especially grateful to Dr.
Priscilla Wohlstetter, the chair of my dissertation committee, whose belief in my
ability to turn out a quality product at times may have exceeded my own, and who
inspired me to increase my understanding of the material by at least an order of
magnitude.
I want to extend my thanks to the members of my thematic dissertation
group, Scott Anderle, Melanie Maxwell, Marie Morelock, Lupe Simpson, and
Vithrel Searchwell whose camaraderie was a godsend during the tough times. I also
wish to thank our group TA Jennifer Polhemus, who put in yeoman effort to provide
the support that we so desperately needed in constructing our work.
I wish to extend thanks to the Doctoral Support Center and especially Dr.
Linda Fischer whose patience, understanding and technical input in reading,
reviewing and offering helpful and insightful comments on my chapters helped me
make better sense out of all the data and make all of the pieces fit together. Thanks
are also extended to Cassandra Davis who so often interceded on my behalf to just
get things done.
Thank you to the staff and administration at Ivy Academia and Literacy First
Charter School for opening your respective institutions to my visits and being so
iv
forthright and giving in sharing with me significant information about your school’s
operations. The unrestricted access and openness of response made the process of
gathering data at the respective school a much more bearable task.
Last but not least, I wish to acknowledge the love and encouragement that I received
from my family and friends without whose support I never would have completed
this project
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION ……………………………………………………………. ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ………………………………………………... iii
LIST OF TABLES ……………………………………………………….. vi
ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………… vii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ……………………………………. 1
Figure 1. Theory of Action: Linking Technology Use by Parents to
Increased Parent Involvement and Improved Student Performance ……... 7
CHAPTER TWO: A REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURE ………. 17
CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODS …………………………. 41
CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS …………………………………………. 55
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS ……………………………………. 111
REFERENCES ………………………………………………………….. 133
APPENDICES …………………………………………………………... 140
vi
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Profile of Ivy Academia Charter School …………………………….. 58
Table 2. Ivy Parent Involvement Type and Technology Strategy Matrix …….. 61
Table 3. Profile of Literacy First Charter School ……………………………… 90
Table 4. LFCS Parent Involvement Type and Technology Strategy Matrix ….. 92
Table 5. Relationship of Strategies to Barriers to Parent Involvement ……….. 113
vii
ABSTRACT
This study explores the promising practice of using technology to increase
parent involvement in California charter schools. Charter schools, as laboratories for
innovation, are viewed as a response to changes in society along political, racial,
socio-economic and cultural lines and as an alternative to failing public school
systems. The study was conducted with the guidance of the University of Southern
California Center for Educational Governance and will add to its on-line
compendium of promising practices.
The research employed a qualitative case study approach in order to fully
explore the richness of relevant information uncovered at the school sites. The
subjects of the study were two California charter schools, Ivy Academia, Woodland
Hills and Literacy First Charter School, El Cajon. The study was bounded by four
research questions. These were: 1) How did high-performing charter schools use
technology to increase parent involvement? 2) How were the charter school’s
resources allocated to use technology to increase parent involvement? 3) What
challenges did the high-performing charter school face in using technology to
increase parent involvement and how were these challenges successfully addressed?
4) What evidence exists that using technology to increase parent involvement
resulted in positive educational outcomes? Both schools in the study allocated a
significant portion of development funds for technology acquisition and
infrastructure improvement.
viii
Among the challenges that confronted the schools was a lack of computer
literacy among the parents and a lack of technology access among a significant
portion of the parent population. The study found that the use of technology
diminished existing barriers to parent involvement by expanding channels of
communication and facilitating transparency in the classroom. Stakeholders reported
significant positive changes in student behavior which they attributed at least in part
to the various technology strategies employed by the schools. Parent involvement
levels increased at both schools which stakeholders attributed in part to technology
strategies.
There were several issues of importance uncovered in this study that are in
need of further investigation: 1) Investigate the effectiveness of these strategies in
schools serving less-privileged population. Research demonstrates students living in
higher socioeconomic communities generally have parents who are better educated
and more likely to be familiar with technology and are more likely to have better
access to computers and Internet access at home. While this study did not confirm
this, more research is needed in lower SES schools to further test the hypothesis. 2)
Evaluation of the effectiveness of different technology education programs for
parents. The rapidly evolving field of educational and communication technology
prompts the question of how school administrators can stay abreast of these changes
and effectively evaluate the emerging products to determine those best suited for
their particular school environment.
1
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Connecting Poor Academic Performance to Parents
The federal budget for fiscal year 2006 reflects expenditures in excess of 56
billion dollars for the Department of Education (U.S. Office of Management and
Budget, 2006). The State of California’s proposed 2007-08 budget contains in excess
of 66.3 billion dollars for education representing 31.5% of the total budget
(California Department of Finance, 2007). This State allocation is to educate
approximately 6.3 million students in California in grades K-12. Despite these
staggering sums of money, three out of ten students across the United States who
enter the 9
th
grade will not complete high school. For African American and
Hispanic students the numbers are even more distressing, with as many as one in two
students failing to complete high school with their graduating class (Attar, 1994;
Beglau, 2005; Hatt-Echeverria, 2005).
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that in 2005 just
73% of high school seniors performed at or above the basic level in reading and only
61% performed at or above the basic level in mathematics. The report also found that
the achievement gap between White and Black students and White and Hispanic
students was 26% and 21% respectively. This gap, moreover, has remained
unchanged since 1992. The NCES report further indicated that overall while 43% of
White students tested at the proficient level, only16% of Black students and 20% of
2
Hispanic students were at the proficient level. Similarly, only 6% of Black students
and 8% of Hispanic students, compared to 29% of White students, tested at or above
the proficient level in mathematics.
Internationally, the performance of American students is also lagging behind
that of their contemporaries. According to the International Association for the
Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), the Trends in International
Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS, 2003) indicated that 4
th
grade American
students averaged 518 which was good enough for a 12
th
place showing ahead of
countries such as Slovenia (479), Italy (503) and Australia (499), but behind
international leaders Singapore (594), Latvia (536) and Hungary (529). American 8
th
graders’ mathematics performance averaged 504 which were good enough for a 15
th
place showing ahead of Romania (475), Israel (496) and Sweden (499), but trailing
the leaders Singapore (605), Japan (570) and Estonia (531).
In sum, the data clearly show that American students, in general, and Black
and Hispanic students, in particular, are lagging far behind both their domestic and
global contemporaries in educational achievement.
In 2001, Congress enacted No Child Left Behind (NCLB) which reauthorized
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. Prominent within the
tenets of NCLB were requirements for schools and districts to close the achievement
gap between ethnic subgroups and increase parent involvement in the school process.
In terms of parent involvement, the authors of NCLB acknowledged the large
body of research that found that increased levels of parent involvement in the school
3
process were associated with increased student achievement (Desimone, 1999; Fan,
2001; Jeynes, 2003; Llagas, 2003; Miedel, 1999). The findings were especially
crucial for children in minority households where traditional forms and levels of
parent involvement were low (Jeynes, 2003; Overstreet, 2005; Yan & Wenfan,
1999). It is important to note that traditional measures of parent involvement are
activities such as volunteering at school and attending school events. Unlike the
middle class, lower income families often do not have the flexibility of time or
transportation to participate in such activities, even though, they too value their
children’s education.
At least in part, NCLB was designed to raise the importance and incidence of
parent involvement in K-12 schools as a mechanism for increasing student
achievement. Recent research has reviewed differences in measures of parent
involvement while designing program interventions that were culturally sensitive and
income appropriate (Hoover-Dempsey, 2005). These findings and others regarding
the importance of parent involvement were incorporated into the federal policy that
Congress ultimately enacted.
Provisions within NCLB for high poverty schools and school districts require
a written parent involvement policy, jointly developed by parents and school-site
educators. By law, the policy must include:
• Plans for parent involvement in developing school improvement plans
• Technical assistance to schools in planning parent involvement activities
4
• Coordination of parent involvement programs among districts and
schools
• Annual evaluation of the effectiveness of parent involvement in
improving academic achievement
Research has shown that there is a strong connection between parent
involvement and student achievement. When parents are openly courted and
appreciated for the value that they bring to the school, they are much more likely to
become involved and participate in school activities. This involvement can take the
form of assisting with homework in the home or volunteering for school events away
from the home.
NCLB, which mandates that schools and districts make a concerted effort at
parent and community involvement, publishes recommendations for ways that
schools and districts can increase parent and community involvement.
Recommendations include:
• Involving parents in planning operations
• Providing timely and informative information to parents regarding
programs and offerings
• Coordinating and integrating parent involvement strategies with other
programs
• Building school and district capacities for strong parent and community
involvement
5
According to the theory of NCLB, implementing these suggestions and other locally-
developed policies and practices, will encourage increased levels of parent
involvement.
Developing a Theory of Action: Determinants of Parent Involvement
While the achievement gap between White students and their Black and
Hispanic counterparts has been well documented, the underlying cause of this
disparity is subject to open debate. The achievement gap between ethnic groups has
remained remarkably stable over time. As race and ethnicity are so closely aligned
with income, negative factors associated with poverty will disproportionately affect
groups over-represented in lower SES neighborhoods. Racial, ethnic or cultural
factors may be no more significant in determining the achievement gap than the
purely economic factors of parent income levels (Desimone, 1999).
As suggested earlier, research has demonstrated that high poverty, minority
schools tend to be lower performing than their more affluent counterparts. Among
the variances found between the groups of schools, are levels of parent involvement.
Traditional measures of parent involvement show more affluent parents to be more
involved with their children’s education. Parents of students attending high-poverty,
minority schools tend to have a number of commonalities. Of these common traits,
several distinct predictors have been linked to and associated with parent
involvement.
Among the most strongly correlated predictors are parent income and
education level (Hoffman, 2003; Marschall, 2006). Parents who are poor and without
6
much formal education tend to be less involved with their children’s school.
Researchers speculate that this is because of unfamiliarity with the culture,
procedures, rituals and routine of the school environment (Hoover-Dempsey, 2005).
Lower parent education levels also tend to be correlated with lower socio-economic
status (poverty) and poorer neighborhoods which, in turn, are more likely to have
higher concentrations of low performing schools. Not surprisingly, such schools are
most common in urban areas (National Educational Computing Conference, 1998).
Overall parent involvement at low performing schools is typically at lower levels
than that found at higher performing schools (Fan, 2001). Higher concentrations of
poverty within a school have been found to be a significant negative predictor of
children’s future academic performance (Brooks-Gunn, 1997; Clements, 2004).
Thus, students attending high poverty schools tend to perform less well academically
when compared to students attending schools in more affluent neighborhoods.
In research examining parent involvement specifically, previous studies
suggested that a school’s policies can help overcome the negative effects of poverty
and low education levels. Schools whose policies and practices fostered a spirit of
receptivity generated the highest level of parent involvement. When parents are
made to feel welcomed and valued within the school institution, they are more likely
to become involved in their children’s school experience (Abdul-Adil & Farmer,
2006; Ames, 1993; Hoover-Dempsey, 2005).
Aside from school policies, observers have noted that the innovative use of
technology offers promise by providing mechanisms for increasing the level of
7
involvement among disenfranchised, high-poverty, minority parent populations
(Marschall, 2006). For example, the use of automated telephone dialing systems and
on-line attendance systems can enhance the reliability and frequency of
communications between home and school (Bauch, 1994). Further when
communication improves between parents and the school, the familiarity of contact
elicits a stronger sense of self-efficacy in parents when interacting with school
culture. This theory of action is depicted graphically in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Theory of Action: Linking Technology Use by Parents to Increased Parent
Involvement and Improved Student Performance
Based on previous research, parent involvement is a broad ranging term
applied to a myriad of activities associated with a parent’s interaction with school, or
events related to school (Epstein, 1986). For purposes of this study, parent
involvement was examined from three broad perspectives:
• Home-based behaviors such as working with students on homework or
parent-student reading time
• School-based activities such as volunteering in the classroom, attendance
at school events or chaperoning school trips
Technology
focuses on
communication
between home &
school
initiatives
Parent’s self-
efficacy
improves
Parent
involvement at
home and school
increases
Student
achievement
improves
8
• Parent-teacher, school-home communication such as reviewing student
portfolios, monitoring student attendance or responding to teacher and
school emails and announcements
Barriers to Parent Involvement
As suggested earlier, poor, minority parents have not often participated in
parent involvement activities because of a number of factors. First, parents with
limited knowledge of English or low levels of formal education feel they are
disadvantaged when communicating with their children’s teachers and school
administrators. Not surprisingly, past research has suggested that poor, minority
parents were often less knowledgeable and involved in their children’s education
programs than were parents of European-American children (Yan, 1999). This
disadvantage, moreover translates into real and imagined barriers to school
involvement for poor and minority parents. On the other hand, when parent’s
opinions and input are openly valued, they are more likely to become involved with
their children’s school activities (Overstreet et al., 2005).
Past research has demonstrated identifiable differences between affluent,
White parents, and those from lower SES and minority subgroups. Of particular
interest to this study is the significant disparity in technology knowledge and usage
between affluent and less affluent parents. Part of the gap can be attributed to
generally lower levels of parent education and lower SES which, in turn, lead to a
lower percentage of white collar or office jobs where computer usage is more
prevalent. Additionally the educational experiences of affluent parents often exposed
9
those parents to technology. For example, beginning in the 1980’s, public school
students (many of whom are now parents) received training in computers and had the
positive and immediate experience of technology reinforcing learning. The
knowledge and experience with technology becomes a part of the social capital that
the affluent parents, unlike their less affluent counterparts, have at their disposal
(Attewell & Battle, 1999; Samaras & Wilson, 1999).
Previous research has consistently found that poor, minority parents tend to
want the same things for their children as more affluent parents. However, research
has also demonstrated that these parents, as a group, tend to participate in
traditionally-defined school involvement activities at a lower level than do more
affluent parents. If not for lack of interest, what explains the discrepancy in their
levels of participation?
According to past studies, the causes of lower participation rates among poor,
minority parents in school activities are likely the results of a combination of factors
both internal and external to the parent. When viewed through the social cognitive
lens of Alfred Bandura, parent self-efficacy could be a primary determinant of the
different participation levels (Bandura & Locke, 2003). On the other hand, a cause of
low participation rates could have a locus external to the parent. Uri
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological perspective assumes an interwoven matrix of contexts
that shape the behavior of the parents (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The complex
interactions of environmental factors among high-poverty parents tend to limit
10
opportunities for involvement. The lower level of parent involvement is more likely
the result of a combination of factors both internal and external to the parent.
While a person may have the capacity to affect a particular aspect of their
life, they may not feel qualified to do so. Further, the presence of self-efficacy, the
belief that one can effectively control a particular situation, is domain specific. That
is to say, while a person may feel fully qualified to expound at great lengths on any
number of topics with friends and family, the same individual, when placed in a less
familiar environment, may become mute with trepidation and unease (Jeynes, 2005;
Manning & Lee, 2001; Marschall, 2006; Martinez, DeGarmo, & Eddy, 2004).
Applying this theory to poor, minority, non-English speaking parents, school would
appear as an intimidating, unfamiliar domain; one in which parents would most
likely not feel very efficacious.
This study sought to uncover promising practices where technology-based
solutions were used to facilitate an increase in school involvement by parents. This
researcher conducted an implementation study of how schools increase parent
involvement through the use of technology.
Charter Schools: Laboratories for Innovation
Reformers originally created charter schools to improve the public school
system. The laws authorizing charter schools, which have now been enacted in 40
states and the District of Columbia, were founded on the theory of site-based
management and local autonomy. In 1991, Minnesota enacted the first charter school
law. Presently, there are over twenty-four hundred charter schools in the United
11
States concentrated in a few states which include California, Arizona, Florida,
Michigan and Texas (National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, 2007). Charters
schools provide considerable discretion to site-level administrators as to how they
should be structured, staffed and administered. Although charter schools are
typically required to follow state-mandated testing requirements, the means by which
students are taught is left largely up to individual schools.
Charter schools are market-driven by design. Each charter school is a school
of choice and in order to survive, the school must be successful in attracting
educators and families. Although charter schools are accountable to the state to
uphold academic rigor and demonstrate that effort though periodic standardized
performance evaluations, the true arbiter of the schools success or failure is their
ability to attract “consumers” (Wohlstetter, 1995). Dissatisfied parents are free to
remove their children from the school and transfer them to another school. In
addition, since schools have short-term performance contracts with government
authorizers, charter schools can be closed down for failure to meet standards of
academic excellence.
Charter schools are destinations of choice (Brewer, 2005). Parents make the
choice to enroll their children in a charter school. While charter schools, like their
public counterparts are required by law to accept all students who apply, parents and
students agree to the principles and rules of the school as set forth in its charter.
Parents and students are often asked to contribute a level of involvement not
generally found in district run public schools. Parents reported that they were more
12
involved with their charter school than they were with their previous school (Center
for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 1998).
As laboratories of innovation, charter schools are free to try new ideas that
would be difficult in the large, bureaucratic public school system. Charter schools
have control over decisions regarding budgets, staffing and the educational program.
If something is not working, the school has the power to change without asking
permission from “higher ups” (Wohlstetter, 1995).
Charter schools also have the inherent freedom to experiment with innovative
programs such as providing laptop leasing programs to students (Zardoya, 2001). For
instance, one researcher studied charter schools that provided computers to families
and developed innovative and engaging lesson plans that assisted both students and
parents in using the technology. Technology training in the schools studied was not
isolated as a separate period in the computer lab, but rather was incorporated into the
general classroom learning process. Technology became a means of managing
information rather than an end unto itself. Because of the relatively smaller size of
most charter schools, such programs may be implemented at lower cost than in larger
urban public schools. In addition, it is arguably easier to pilot innovations in charter
schools, where they may be implemented and refined before being disseminated
more broadly, to whole schools and beyond.
Charter schools have been found to have large numbers of minority and
lower SES students than would be suggested from the demographics of their
surrounding communities (Anderson, 2005; Brewer, 2005; Brouillette, 2002). For
13
example, African-American students comprise 8% the total school population in
California yet makes up 12% of charter school enrollment in the state (Crane, 2007).
This is especially important given the discouraging performance of minority and low
SES students in traditional public schools. Charter schools provide a viable
alternative to parents whose students are struggling and who want better educational
opportunities.
Many charter schools are founded by concerned parents who want a better
educational experience for their children. Researcher Joyce Epstein recognizes that
parents’ feelings of access and input into school governance and autonomy lead to
greater levels of parent involvement (Desimone, 1999; Epstein, 1985; Jeynes, 2005;
Marschall, 2006). As parents develop a greater sense of empowerment, their levels of
parent involvement will correspondingly increase.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study was to uncover promising practices that increase
parent involvement through the use of technology in charter schools. The promising
practices identified in the study will be added to the USC Compendium and will be
broadly disseminated to educators and other interested parties. The study is being
conducted as part of an eight member research cohort, as part of USC’s Ed.D.
program. The study topics of the research cohort were:
• Adult mentoring of at-risk students
• Increasing re-designation rates for English-language learners
• Integrating academics into career/technical education
14
• School leaders use of data for planning and school improvement
• Teacher evaluation
• Uses of school time
• Use of technology to increase parent involvement
• Writing across the curriculum
Findings from these studies will add scholarship and contribute to the content of
USC’s Compendium of Promising Practices. The value of the compendium will
broaden with the addition of these new topics (Wohlstetter, 2006). Many promising
practices found in charter schools affect only those individuals at a single school site.
The USC Compendium of Promising Practices is a means whereby effective
strategies may be shared and disseminated among a broader group of educators and
others interested in school reform.
Significance of the Study
To date, research consistently reports on achievement gaps between affluent
students and poor, minority students. Students who fail to perform in school tend to
have more dismal later life outcomes than those students who are successful. These
later life outcomes extend from failure to complete high school to unemployment,
under-employment and a greater likelihood of incarceration. If the problem is not
addressed now, the negative implications will only increase in the future.
The achievement gap between poor and affluent students has been also
associated with a number of factors amongst which are lower levels of parent
involvement. Findings further reveal that affluent parents have a distinct advantage
15
in terms of expertise; their knowledge and familiarity with technology is far greater
(Desimone, 1999). The discrepancy in technology-based expertise between affluent
and minority parents erects barriers to involvement in school activities for the less
affluent parents. The theory of action suggests that by increasing poor, minority
parent’s expertise and comfort with appropriate, technology based home-school
communications there is a strong likelihood that parents will become more involved,
and with increased parent involvement, student achievement is also likely to
increase. Charter schools by their very nature provide a less restrictive, innovative
environment where new strategies that address the problem can be locally developed,
piloted and implemented.
The findings of this study will be important to policymakers as well as
practitioners as new strategies are investigated to involve parents and increase
student achievement. It will investigate and document promising practices that
employ technology to increase parent involvement. Previous research has found
parents who receive technology training become more self-efficacious and
consequently more involved in school activities (Marschall, 2006). This study
describes the implementation of practices and policies that appear to be especially
effective with low-income and minority parent populations.
Organization of the Dissertation
The present study is organized into five chapters. Chapter One provided an
overview of the achievement gap between affluent and poor students, and possible
causes were highlighted. Variances in the level of parent involvement were also
16
assessed with a focus on resource differences among urban poor and minority
students. A review of the characteristics of charter schools as laboratories of
innovation was presented.
Chapter Two synthesizes research relevant to technology education and
parent involvement, and examines promising practices that effectively combine the
two. In Chapter Three, the research methods employed during the conduct of the
study are described. In Chapter Four, the case study findings from visits to two high-
performing California charter schools are presented. Finally, Chapter Five discusses
the study conclusions placing its findings in the context of the literature and also
offers program implications for practitioners in the field and policymakers.
17
CHAPTER TWO: A REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURE
Introduction
As noted in Chapter One, the purpose of this study was to investigate
promising practices that focus on the use of technology to increase parent
involvement in California charter schools. Chapter Two examines existing research
to identify factors that facilitate or inhibit the use of technology to encourage parent
involvement in K-12 public schools. In order to identify the relevant research, a
variety of electronic resources were searched. Some of the resources were education
specific, while others were of general interest.
Electronic data bases searched included: Education Resources Information
Center (ERIC); Journal Storage (JSTOR); Wilson’s Educational Full Text; and
Google Scholar. Keyword pairs used in the searches included parent involvement
and technology, parent involvement and barriers, and parent technology use and
barriers. Material reviewed included published research (e.g., technical reports and
journal articles) as well as conference presentations and unpublished manuscripts.
Chapter Two begins by defining the key terms relevant to the present study:
parent involvement and technology. Then the literature regarding barriers to parent
involvement, and various technology-based strategies identified in the literature as
being effective in overcoming those barriers in K-12 education, is discussed. The
chapter concludes with a discussion of both school-based strategies and home-based
strategies identified in the literature as promising practices facilitating parent
involvement.
18
Definition of parent involvement
This study utilizes the framework developed by Dr. Joyce Epstein, Director
of the Center on School, Family and Community Partnerships at the Johns Hopkins
University, which organizes parent involvement into six primary types: parenting,
communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making, and collaborating
with the community (Epstein, 1991).
The first type of parent involvement, parenting, is bounded by parents’
concerns for their children’s health and safety. According to psychologist Abraham
Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, basic survival needs such as the provision of
food, clothing and shelter for the family, are the very first conditions requiring
attention (Epstein, 1986; Maslow, 1977). Parent involvement in school is strongly
influenced by parent’s primary interest in securing the health and safety needs of
their children. For example, a mother who must work double shifts in order to
provide for her children’s basic survival needs may not have the time or the energy
to participate in traditionally recognized parent involvement activities, such as
volunteering at school or attendance at mid-day parent-teacher conferences
(Coleman & Wallinga, 2000).
The second type of parent involvement, communicating, refers to the
obligations of the school. This includes establishing, monitoring, maintaining, and
gauging the effectiveness of various communication mechanisms between the school
and the home regarding the student’s progress and activities at school. Examples
include notification of student performances, parent-teacher conferences, class trips,
19
on-campus evening and weekend adult education classes, vocational interest classes,
and personal improvement seminars. According to Dr. Epstein, it is the school’s
responsibility to establish and maintain accessible channels of communication
between the home and school and to ensure a wide dissemination of information
regarding access protocols. In other words, it is not enough for the school to simply
distribute information about activities and other events of interest, efforts must be
undertaken to ensure that parents are sufficiently well versed in whatever mode of
communication that is being used, to allow them unfettered access to the
information.
Volunteering, the third type of involvement in Dr. Epstein’s framework, also
focuses on parent involvement at school. Volunteering includes parent attendance at
school events and activities that occur at the school premises or on field trips. In
addition, volunteering includes parents assisting teachers and administrators in the
classrooms or with support activities. Examples include working in the school
library, monitoring the halls after the tardy bell, or assisting with playground
management.
The fourth type of involvement reflects parents’ involvement with learning
activities in the home, and consists of activities undertaken by parents and
encouraged and supported by teachers, to assist children with their learning
endeavors. Examples include parents assisting their children with daily homework
assignments, monitoring the completion and submission of work assignments,
assisting with the gathering of research materials for projects, working with students
20
in the completion of class projects, and providing material from family cultural
stores that may be relevant to school work assignments. For example, a routine
assignment on voting rights can be imbued with personal significance when parents
can relate their own perspective of and possible participation in the past with the
assignment topic (Leonard, 2005).
Parent involvement can also take the form of school governance and
advocacy. Parents may demonstrate this type of involvement by serving on school-
based decision making councils, participating in leadership training, or working for
school reform efforts. Parents must be actively recruited, trained and involved in
school-level decision making. Efficacy in decision making and governance occurs,
according to John Dewey, only when one has a voice in making those decisions.
Only then is one likely to be an enthusiastic participant in the implementation of
those decisions. (Deubel, 2005).
Collaborating with the community is the final piece of the Epstein
framework. Collaboration and exchanges with community organizations include the
establishment of connections with community businesses, agencies and other groups
that could share the responsibility for their local children’s educational progress
(Epstein, 1991). Examples of this type of collaboration are apprentice programs with
local businesses, evening and week-end computer training classes for adults, and
English literacy classes for community English Language Learners.
21
Definition of Technology
“Technology” as used in this study, extends beyond the sphere of personal
computers. Technology is the vehicle whereby raw data is converted into useful
information and the role of the user in the conversion and interpretation of that data.
Further, it is the ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance
by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources.
These technological processes and resources may include the use of, access to, and
knowledge of computers, facsimile machines, automated telephone dialing and
answering systems, locally accessible telephones for teachers, web sites, electronic
bulletin boards, and collaborative on-line and real-time learning environments
(Division reports from the 2005 AECT convention, 2005).
Wanda J. Olikowski, an Associate Professor of Information Technologies at
the MIT Sloan School of Management, defines technology by highlighting two
important technology mechanisms (Orlikowski, 1992). First she distinguishes the
scope of technology as the vehicle(s) through which data is gathered, processed,
converted into information, manipulated, stored, transmitted, shared and interpreted
(i.e. computers, facsimiles, cellular phones, PDAs, answering machines, telephone
auto-dialers). Second, Olikowski considers the role or the interaction between
technology and the users/organizations. According to this perspective, the uses of
technology are to expand resources, enhance skills, simplify work, manipulate data
and foster collaboration.
22
Barriers to parent involvement
A substantial body of research has demonstrated that most parents want a
positive educational experience and would be willing to assist to make that
experience as rewarding as possible (Hoover-Dempsey, 2005). This is equally true
among high-poverty parents as it is among the more affluent. Previous research has
consistently found that poor, minority parents tend to want to be able to provide the
same level of academic support for their children as more affluent parents but tend to
feel limited in their ability to do such. Research has also demonstrated that high-
poverty parents, as a group, tend to participate in traditionally-defined school
involvement activities at a lower level than do more affluent parents. There are class
barriers, educational barriers and socio-economic barriers to participation
confronting high-poverty parents and the teachers in their children’s schools (Barton,
2004).
An increasingly large percentage of school age children, especially in urban
areas, come from families that are minority and/or lower income (Marschall, 2006).
The academic performance of this diverse group of children tends to fall below that
of children of more affluent families. Substantial prior research has demonstrated
that the level of parent involvement is a significant contributor to student
achievement yet minority and lower income parents face greater barriers to
involvement (Hoover-Dempsey, 2005). Among the barriers to involvement that are
addressed in this study are:
23
1. Lack of time and other resources
2. Lack of information and training for parents, teachers and staff
3. School organization and practices
4. Family and school culture differences
5. Lack of external support for family-school partnerships
6. Lack of technology access
These and other factors present impediments to high-poverty, minority and
immigrant families becoming actively involved in school activities.
Lack of Time and Other Resources
Each day teachers are confronted with a host of demands on their time
(Samaras, 1999). Often they feel inundated with responsibilities for creating lesson
plans, grading assignments, delivering classroom instruction, and completing the
paperwork required by district, state and federal law. In most instances, there is not a
school culture that values the contributions of parents to the educational process
(Yap, 1995). One consequence of this is that many teachers believe either that they
do not have the time to work to involve parents in the classroom or that the benefits
of such a collaboration would be minimal (Swap as cited in Smrekar, 2001 pg. 78).
At the same time, parents feel overwhelmed by work responsibilities, family
demands, healthcare needs and addressing basic survival needs (Coleman &
Wallinga, 2000). Many parents do not become involved in school simply because
they believe there is insufficient time to devote to this activity. Parents arrive at this
24
belief even though they are very concerned about their children’s academic
endeavors. (Smrekar, 2001)
Surveys of parents identified a lack of available, reliable transportation to
school for before school and after school meetings as a significant time factor to be
considered. In many urban areas, public transportation ceases at some point in the
evening, often before the end of school functions. Another factor contributing to time
constraints experienced by high-poverty parents is the lack of available, affordable
local and safe childcare facilities (Policy Studies Associates, Inc., 1997). Often
parents must take public transportation to and from childcare facilities which further
limits their available time.
Finally, past research suggests that high-poverty households’ efforts directed
at securing basic survival needs often supplant participation in school activities
(Epstein, 1991). So for example, parents prioritize work which generates money for
food and shelter over attending a parent-teacher conference scheduled during the
work day. A parent’s failure to attend a teacher conference may not reflect a lack of
concern on the part of the parents but rather a prioritization of needs (Coleman &
Wallinga, 2005). This follows Maslow’s needs hierarchy which posits that survival
needs will monopolize one’s attention at the expense of any of the higher order
needs. This is especially true when the survival needs of children are confronting
parents (Epstein, 1986; Maslow, 1977).
25
Lack of Information and Training for Parents and Teachers
A second set of barriers to parent involvement is the lack of training in
effective involvement strategies for parents and teachers. Past research suggests that
often school staff do not receive adequate training in how to work with parents to
promote partnership (Policy Studies Associates, Inc., 1997). Compounding the
problem is the fact that many high-poverty parents do not have a formal education
and so believe that they do not possess the skills or knowledge to become involved to
help their children (Daniel-White, 2002; Smrekar, 2001). Lacking a sense of efficacy
in the school domain, parents tend to avoid active participation in school activities
even though they may be quite interested in promoting their children’s education. In
other words, parent’s feeling of a lack of effectiveness in the formal academic setting
creates a barrier to their involvement.
Lack of training on the part of school staff in the critical area of parent-school
interpersonal relations, may promote beliefs that the only types parent involvement
that are meaningful are limited to traditional activities such as attendance at school
events, volunteering in the classroom, or volunteering as chaperons and that any
other type of involvement is not welcomed. These attitudes tend to promote a
devaluation of the cultural capital that many ethnic minority or immigrant parents
bring to school (Marschall, 2006).
In addition, to a school’s failure to provide adequate time for the
development of positive relationships between teachers and parents, research
suggests that schools often do not offer the support, in the form of professional
26
development programs and allotted practice time, needed to forge and maintain a
solid working partnership between parents and the school. As stated by Dr. Epstein,
“it is the schools responsibility to establish and maintain accessible channels of
communication between the home and school and to ensure a wide dissemination of
information regarding access protocols” (Epstein, 1991).
School Organization and Practices
Many parents who did want to get involved in school activities were left out
simply because they did not have the knowledge or skills to navigate the school
organization (Hoover-Dempsey, 2005). This is especially true among high-poverty
and recent immigrant families who do have within their social capital, a history of
formal educational involvement (Marschall, 2006). This knowledge deficit problem
is amplified once the student leaves elementary school.
According to Dr. Epstein’s framework of involvement, it is the school’s
responsibility to create and maintain an inviting climate conducive to promoting
clear and effective communications between the school and home. Included in these
communications should be strong signals that inform parents that they are welcome
in the school and that their input is valued. Often based upon erroneous beliefs,
school staff makes invalid assumptions about the educational and social status of the
parent and the parent’s perceived level of concern about their children’s education
(Daniel-White, 2002). For example, some immigrant parents unfamiliar with the
social culture of American schools, may not be knowledgeable about the school’s
expectations for parent involvement (Smrekar, 2001). This tends to compound the
27
parent’s perception of barriers to involvement as they come to view school as an
alienating and unfriendly place (Hoover-Dempsey, 2005).
The generally larger size of middle and high school often poses an additional
challenge to parents seeking to participate in school activities. The sheer size of the
school tends to depersonalize the organization. This, in turn, often has the effect of
alienating parents seeking to become involved with their children’s education.
Research has concluded that when parents felt the school had not designated a single
resource person to whom the parent might turn for guidance, they often felt at a loss
for direction (Policy Studies Associates, Inc., 1997).
Attewell (1999) further concluded that without policy guidelines for parent
involvement, implementation is spotty at best. To combat this issue, charter schools
have developed the idea that parent contracts, which spell out expectations for parent
involvement, including responsibilities and time commitments, can be instrumental
in providing a clear policy basis for even implementation. “Technology does not
educate by itself; only if there is a conducive social environment does learning
occur” (Attewell, 1999). Simply by placing the technology resources in a local
community does not guarantee their effective utilization. In fact, without a cohesive
and comprehensive plan and trained educational support, most of the resources will
remain underutilized (Coleman, 1991).
Family-School Culture Differences
School environments and practices can seem foreign and uncomfortable to
parents, especially those from other cultures, those from a lower SES background,
28
and those with limited education. Parents with little formal education or an
unsatisfactory school experience tend to not volunteer to participate in school related
activities (Overstreet, 2005). Many poor, minority or English Language Learner
parent’s perceive their own competencies as being at odds with the school’s
expectations regarding appropriate forms of expressions of parent involvement
(Attewell, 1999; Hoover-Dempsey, 2005).
Studies have suggested that Latino parents participate at lower rates in school
related activities because culturally, teachers are held in a relatively high standing
and parents often view behaviors such as asking questions as being disrespectful
(Marschall, 2006). The view of teacher as expert seems to deflect participation by
non-expert parents. Teachers are viewed as responsible for the academics of the
child’s education while the parent’s role is to provide a moral compass in the child’s
personal development.
Furthermore, most teachers are not trained to be responsive to the cultural
differences in communications styles among parents. In many instances, teachers
have attempted to educate immigrant and language minority children in the same
manner in which cultural majority children were educated. This has presented a
barrier to parents of language minority children as the parents are confronted with a
style of parent-teacher interaction that, in many cases, is quite foreign to that to
which they were accustomed (Daniel-White, 2002).
Often teachers are not trained to approach their teaching and interactions
from a multi-cultural perspective. Instead, many teachers, especially the new and
29
inexperienced, tend to take a universalistic, majority culture approach that ignores
cultural differences and conforms to the demands and expectations of the dominant
culture. Because the dominant culture emphasizes individual academic success over
collaborative learning efforts, teachers typically do the same, often to the detriment
of parents and students. Furthermore, the research concludes that little training is
offered to help teachers overcome this bias (Attewell, 1999; Manning, 2001;
Marschall, 2006; Welsch, 2002).
Lack of External Support for Family-School Partnerships
Although Epstein’s framework identified community collaboration as a form
of parent involvement, few external supports exist for such collaboration. Of critical
importance in the support of such collaborative efforts is the existence of a safe
environment in order for parents and students to fully utilize these resources. In
many high-poverty neighborhoods, the high-crime levels makes safety a tenuous
state at best. Many neighborhoods and households lack easy and safe access to near-
home or community-based resources that parents could use to help their children
academically. In addition, past research suggests disparities in supplying books and
technologies in school and community libraries and study centers between high-
poverty and middle income neighborhoods. Even when resources are present, it is
often unsafe for students to use those facilities after school (Clements, 2004;
Sanders, 2001).
30
Lack of Technology Access
High-poverty neighborhoods have much lower technology penetration than
more affluent neighborhoods (Calvert, 2005). Such neighborhoods tend to have
fewer technology resources overall and far fewer people trained in their effective
use. The presence of a working personal computer in the home occurs at a far lower
rate in high-poverty households than in more affluent families. Blue collar and lower
wage earner parents are much less likely to use or have access to computers at their
level of employment. Additionally, Internet access, especially broadband service, is
still a luxury for many high-poverty families.
Where Internet and computer access is present, most often these services are
provided in an English language framework. ELL students and their parents have far
fewer resources in their native languages (Daniel-White, 2002). The lack of access to
enabling technologies is a barrier to involvement for parents when schools are using
technology to involve and inform parents in and about school activities.
In sum, the research has identified a wide range of barriers to parent
involvement. While many of these barriers are beyond the control of the school, such
as high-poverty neighborhoods, limited parent education, recent immigrant and ELL
parents and students, there are barriers that can be ameliorated through the
implementation of school policies of inclusion. Parents made to feel welcomed and
valued will have a far greater rate of participation than if not (Byers, 1993).
31
School-Based Technology Strategies to Increase Parent Involvement
Barriers to parent involvement can be mitigated through the use of
technology strategies that expand channels of communication, enhance parent’s
sense of efficacy in school operations through relevant knowledge transfer activities,
and the provision of meaningful opportunities for interaction between and among
parents and school. Innovative technology-based solutions can be used to tear down
the walls that are perceived to separate the school from the parents by providing a
transparency to school operations and opportunities to participate in school
governance. Carol Ames (1993) found that when communications between the
school and parents present positive information about their children as learners,
parents develop a sense of efficacy and parent involvement is increased.
Internet strategies
The steady, albeit slow, expansion of computers and Internet access into
high-poverty schools and neighborhoods, has created a wealth of new opportunities
to build upon existing infrastructure, and where needed, create totally new
mechanisms for parent involvement. Some of the strategies include web-based
communications forums and student work portfolio presentations, web-based student
homework assignments, student attendance and tardy notifications.
Borrowing from an old African proverb that “it takes an entire village to raise
a child”, the Internet has the potential to serve as a modern electronic village. The
village square, where villagers once gathered for communication exchanges, has
evolved into the electronic bulletin board and synchronous chat session. The
32
technology allows for the creation of specific shared interest groups for parents
which give them a reason and a means to interact. As pointed out by James Coleman,
merely bringing people together without a specific reason will generally be
ineffective. Groupings around similar needs or interests tend to provide an impetus
for parents to maintain effective working associations (Coleman, 1991).
Epstein’s second component of involvement, that of the school’s obligation
to parents and students, may be addressed through the use of a school-based, teacher-
parent email communications systems. Such a system provides parents, who happen
to have access to the Internet, a means to communicate with teachers as their own
time schedules allow which can reduce the time barrier to involvement (Beghetto,
2001; Bernstein, 1998). Email systems also allow teachers to send individualized
messages to parents on an as needed basis. Communication programs are available
with pre-designed templates containing a series of customizable responses
individualized to each parent’s child. The program facilitates the ease of
communicating with parents and addresses the limiting time constraints facing many
teachers. An example of a school’s engagement in this type of parent involvement
outreach activity might be efforts to translate all home-school correspondence into
the parent’s native language for households in which English was not the primary
language (Bernstein, 1998).
Parent and teacher time and resource barriers to involvement may be
addressed through the installation and use of a student performance web-based,
monitoring system. Student performance may be monitored by parents, who through
33
their Internet connection, access web-based resources such as on-line report cards,
periodic grade reports, student work portfolios. Studies have found that timely and
convenient availability of student progress data promotes increased parent-teacher
collaboration (Bauch, 1994). Parents who are actively encouraged to participate in
the decision making operations of the school through the frequent, multi-level
dissemination of information and notification of pertinent school events tend to be
generally more involved (Overstreet, 2002).
Studies have also found that parents stayed informed and intervened when
necessary, when schools utilized Web-based student attendance records (Hudson,
2005). When schools provided convenient and timely communication, parents tended
to be more involved (Ames, 1993; Lopez, 2005). An effective Internet strategy to
increase parent involvement has been found to be the use of web-based student work
portfolio presentations which afford parents a convenient overview of their student’s
achievement in time to assess the student’s performance and if required, formulate
and implement an appropriate intervention. A critical aspect for the success of this
strategy as a mechanism for overcoming barriers to involvement, is the use of
language and education level appropriate access instructions.
Stephanie Hewitt, an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at The
Citadel, offered three types of portfolios. In the first type, referred to as a
‘documentation portfolio’, student work results reflecting the student’s achievement
as measured against specific markers or standards, was exhibited. The second
portfolio type or ‘process portfolio’ documents the progress the student has made as
34
they move along the path towards mastery of the required standards. The third
portfolio type, the ‘showcase portfolio’ highlighted the student’s accomplishments
and included examples of the student’s best work (Harrison, 2001; Hewett, 2000).
Web-based student homework assignments allow parents to actively
participate in monitoring student’s assignments from their own home and on their
own time which can address both the time and efficacy barriers to involvement.
Parent monitoring can encourage the student as an active expression of interest in the
student’s work. Knowing that one’s parent is aware of current homework
assignments can help students who may lack the discipline to complete assignments
on their own without an external system of checks and balances (Hewett, 2000).
On-line, web-based communications forums, such as chat rooms or electronic
bulletin boards, afford parents with a means to openly express their opinions in a
non-threatening, digital environment. Such open communications allow parents to
realize that they are not alone in their concerns for their children’s education. The
ensuing sense of solidarity can lead to an increase in involvement among parents.
Volunteering, identified by Epstein (1991) as a component of parent
involvement, has been found to be enhanced by providing such forums for open
exchanges of ideas and concerns. Many high-poverty parents find participating in
such activities difficult or intimidating. Web-based parent forums can afford time-
constrained parents with a means of establishing and maintaining contact with one
another and sharing ideas and concerns about their children’s education and activities
in the school. Such forums tend to lead to enhanced parental self-efficacy in the
35
academic domain as the parent’s opinions appear to be valued (Abdal-Haqq, 2002;
Bandura, 2001; Lopez, 2005; Yan, 1999). If parents believe that what they can
contribute is of value to enhancing their children’s education, they will be less likely
to be discouraged from participating in school activities.
Involvement in activities such as school governance issues and taking
advocacy position may be enhanced when training in exactly how to participate is
made available to parents. The offering of web-based forums for discussion may
provide a convenient information delivery system that serves to eliminate yet another
barrier to involvement, that of inadequate access.
Telephone strategies
Limited school-home communication has been identified as a barrier to
involvement. School-parent event announcements made through automated
telephone delivery systems can be an especially important feature for high-poverty
parents, many of whom do not have Internet access (Lopez, 2005). Telephone-based
communications systems allow for dissemination of class, grade or school specific
announcements. Standard tardy or absence messages may be automatically sent to
parents (Bauch, 1994; Harrison, 2001; Sonak, 2002). Culturally sensitive automatic
voice notification system that leaves messages in language of parent choice was
found to be more enthusiastically received by parents (Kasprowicz, 2002). Another
benefit of an automated telephone voice messaging system is that it facilitated
communication between teachers and parents as personalized messages and
36
responses could be left for and by both parties for after hours retrieval (Bauch,
1994).
Further addressing the time and resource barrier to involvement, outgoing
automatic attendance reporting can expedite the transfer of information regarding
student attendance to parents at their homes with central, single input by teachers
(Bauch, 1994). The time barrier to involvement reported by teachers may be
somewhat mitigated by this solution. Blue collar and lower wage working parents
often have constraints on when they are able to answer the phone and take messages.
This is especially true of lower SES parents who often work in the most inflexible,
low level job categories. Outgoing automatic parent notification, scheduled to parent
availability, is a mechanism to address one aspect of the time barrier to parent
involvement (Bauch, 1994).
Access to student homework assignment made available to parents based
upon the parent’s time availability is another technology feature that helps to remove
barriers to communication between the parent and the school. As time has been listed
as a significant barrier especially to working parents, the flexibility of retrieving a
student’s daily school assignments whenever the parent has the time makes this
option a very appealing choice especially to high-poverty parents (Bauch, 1994).
Teachers report that essential logistical components that could foster better
home-school communication include an outside dial-tone when telephones are
available in the classroom, accessible telephones in teacher’s classrooms, and
Internet connected classroom computers for teachers to send and receive email. Each
37
of these components could facilitate a more efficient use of the teacher’s limited time
by making communication resource more accessible to the teachers (Policy Studies
Associates, Inc., 1997).
In a number of instances, schools use a combination of technology strategies
to increase parent involvement. For example, telephone dialing software, maintained
on a school-side server, may serve as the communications hub for school-home-
school communications. This software may be customized to fit the particular school
environment and tailored to highlight individual student characteristics. An example
of this type of technology is Apple Computer’s local school server-based
Powerschool program.
Hybrid strategies
An example of a hybrid strategy is the use of digital study groups. Digital
study groups can address distance barriers created among students whose schools are
not geographically proximal to their home community. Many students arrive at
school from disparate geographical locations. This presents logistical difficulties
when attempting to plan after school study and collaborative work activities. These
logistical barriers may be overcome however through the use of shared, web-based
whiteboards and other collaborative on-line work technologies (Clark, 2005). By
facilitating non-local student interaction without any added time cost to parents, this
technology strategy addresses Epstein’s school responsibility component supporting
parent involvement.
38
Home Based Technology Strategies
Technology education for parents has been found as a means of increasing
parent self efficacy. Self efficacy is an essential component for parent involvement
as the parent who does not feel competent within the education domain will be less
likely to participate. Personally relevant parent education programs that offer on-line
or weekend GED, reading and writing assistance and general computer basics have
been shown to positively impact parent’s self-efficacy and sense of empowerment
(A. Bandura, 2001; Beliavsky, 2006; Coleman, 1991; Ogbu, 1994, 1998; Snyder,
2000). Self-efficacy theory suggests that parents make decisions about involvement
in part by thinking about the probable outcomes of their actions (Bandura, 1997). As
parents assess circumstances in which they have an option to become involved, they
appraise their own abilities and talents and evaluate their likelihood for success in the
endeavor. If they feel that they have a strong likelihood for success, they will be
more inclined to participate in the activity (Bandura, 1997). Successful completion of
computer training or education in general, can allow parents to deem themselves
efficacious in a domain, in this case academics, and likely promote greater
involvement.
Surveys of parents found that the use of a home computer with their children
offered a ‘face saving’ and modern way to learn to read and write (Askov, p157 as
cited in Caskey, 2003). The parent had a dual incentive to work with the computer,
that of enhancing their own reading and writing skills in a non-threatening, self-
paced manner as well as working with their children in a forum that the student
39
found to be not so old fashioned (Caskey, 2003). These learning activities will
increase parent’s sense of efficacy and reduce barriers to involvement. Parent
efficacy is enhanced as the amount of time that parents and children spent
productively working together on computer tasks increased.
In many instances, the educational level of the parents is not taken into
account when assignments are sent home. More often than not, the student’s
homework assignments are written in English, irrespective of whether the parents are
English proficient or not. The assignments are also often decontextualized, which
does not take into account the possible lack of American educational background of
the parents. Auerbach (1989) suggests that schools may implement family literacy
programs to help parents develop their own literacy. These literacy programs may be
web-based hosted by the school and culturally relevant.
When the cultural relevance of available home assistance is taken into
account, teacher expectations for level and type of parent involvement activities are
adjusted accordingly (Leonard, 2005; Malloy, 1998). For instance, research has
demonstrated that low-income children, who are more likely to be children of color,
have difficulty processing decontextualized language in mathematics (Malloy, 1998).
Culturally relevant teaching, defined as “a pedagogy that empowers knowledge,
skills and attitudes” (Ladson-Billings, 1994, p. 17-18 as cited in Leonard, 2005) can
address these barriers. When acknowledgement of parent education level is
incorporated into program design, levels of engagement are likely to increase.
40
A study of students at a Bronx New York public school who received take
home laptops found that collaborative parent-student on-line research and other joint
study time increased as a result of the presence of the technology. Teachers reported
a significant level of increase in parent involvement and student achievement. The
laptops were not viewed as a distraction but rather as a useful tool in supplementing
the educational process. (Zardoya, 2001)
Parent-student drill and rehearsal using home licensed school educational
software was found to increase the amount of time parents spent involved and
engaged with their children in school work (Malloy & Jones, 1998). The increased
time spent together with the parent doing school work had a positive effect on the
students academic performance.
Conclusion
As explained in this chapter, the existing research on the use of technology to
increase parent involvement has emphasized the identification of effective strategies.
Little is known or has been written about the implementation of those strategies or
promising practices. This study helps fill the knowledge gap by investigating the
implementation of promising practices in charter schools that effectively use
technology to increase parent involvement. In the next chapter, the study’s research
design and data collection instruments are described.
41
CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODS
Introduction
As presented in Chapter One, the purpose of this study was to uncover
promising practices that increase parent involvement through the use of technology
in high-performing California charter schools. This chapter describes the specific
mechanisms through which data were collected to support the identified promising
practices.
Items presented in this chapter include a detailed description of the study
design, an account of the sample nomination process and eventual composition of the
study sample, and a narrative of the process by which the data were collected. In
addition, a detailed description of the various instruments used in the data collection
process is provided with specific documents included in the appendices. Finally, a
description of and justification for the data analysis procedures used in the study is
provided.
Research Design and Study Questions
This study was conducted as an investigation of promising practices at two
high-performing California charter schools that used technology to increase parent
involvement. Although the topic of inquiry was broadly defined as technology use to
increase parent involvement, the mechanisms, environments and practices
themselves were unique and highly context based. According to Merriam (1998),
such an environment lends itself to a qualitative case study approach in order to fully
explore the richness of relevant information to be uncovered at the school sites.
42
The following research questions guided this study:
1. How did high-performing charter schools use technology to increase
parent involvement?
2. How were the charter school’s resources allocated to use technology to
increase parent involvement?
3. What challenges did the high-performing charter school face in using
technology to increase parent involvement and how were these challenges
successfully addressed?
4. What evidence exists that using technology to increase parent
involvement resulted in positive educational outcomes?
The unit of analysis in this qualitative case study is the promising practice,
charter school’s use of technology to increase parent involvement. The promising
practice was selected as the unit of analysis because it is the lowest common
denominator of the phenomena being studied. The case study, therefore, is an
investigation of the promising practice, not a study of the school as a whole.
There are both advantages and disadvantages in using a qualitative case study
approach. According to Meriman (1998) “a case study design is employed to gain an
in-depth understanding of the situation and meaning for those involved.” Descriptive
case studies provide a means whereby the participating individuals are free to
express their personal and unique perspectives on a situation. The researcher
recounts these stories without embellishment in a richly descriptive and vibrant
43
manner such that the reader may vicariously experience the context in which the
phenomena are occurring.
As compared with quantitative research which seeks to disassemble, measure
and understand component parts, qualitative research is more interested in
uncovering how all of the parts work together to form a whole (Merriman, 1997).
This approach is especially well suited for examining events that are unique in
setting and context. Often in a case study the researcher is presented with large
amounts of sometimes dissimilar data which, due to researcher bias, may appear to
either support or refute the researcher’s initial theory. Searching for alternative
explanations, rival theories and anomalies to observed patterns serves to enhance
credibility. As stated by Yin (cited in Patton, 1987 pg. 553), analysis of rival
explanations in case studies constitutes a form of rigor in qualitative analysis parallel
to the rigor of experimental designs aimed at eliminating rival explanations.
Credibility is and has been an issue regarding qualitative case studies. Patton
(1987) states that the issue of credibility may be addressed from three distinct but
related inquiry elements. These areas are rigorous methods for doing fieldwork, the
credibility of the researcher and a philosophical belief in the value of qualitative
research. All of these were addressed in the present study.
The rigorous research methods employed in this study including interviews,
observations and document review, afforded the researcher with a broad
understanding of the promising practices being studied. According to Patton, field
work is more than a single method or technique (Patton, 1987 pg.306). Patton further
44
states that “the creative and judicious use of technology can greatly increase the
quality of field observations and utility of the observational record to others” (Patton,
1987 pg. 308). Towards this end, each of the on-site interviews were tape recorded.
Another disadvantage of the qualitative case study approach, cited by Patton
(1987), is the potential for researcher bias. In the case study approach, unlike
quantitative research that typically collects data through surveys and questionnaires,
the researcher is the primary data collector. In an effort to counter the potential
confounding effect that researcher bias might have on the results of qualitative case
studies, triangulation of data collection methods was employed. Data are collected
from multiple sources such as interviews, observations and reviews of archival
documents. The data from these various sources are then compared and triangulated
for consistency.
The researcher as data collector presents its own set of problems. Two
researchers reporting on the same case may very well provide two very dissimilar
renditions of what was occurring. Triangulating data across various sources is one
approach for addressing the potential for misinterpreting the details of the case. Not
addressed by that approach is the intuitive sensitivity and skill of the researcher. A
researcher may ask all of the right questions, observe all of the proper activities and
review all of the proper documents, yet still lack the insight to uncover the truly
relevant factors that make a practice succeed or fail.
Case studies, by their very nature, are loaded with richly detailed narrative.
Given the large amount of data that must be conveyed in order to fully construct the
45
context of the study in the mind of the reader, case studies are often too lengthy and
detailed for the average consumer of information to read. An abridged version of the
promising practices uncovered by this study will be included in the USC
Compendium of Promising Practices to facilitate consumer access and utility.
The issue of reliability is often cited as a shortcoming of the qualitative case
study approach. The concept holds that if the same set of circumstances are
presented to a statistically identical sample, that second sample will experience
statistically similar results. This is applicable when an instrument such as a test or
survey is presented to a randomly selected sample. As a qualitative case study is a
recording of events and activities of a purposefully selected population, the construct
of reliability is inapplicable.
Qualitative case studies are not reliable in the quantitative sense of research.
Case studies are intensive descriptions of a single, bounded system and as such tend
to be defined by that system. The magnitude, frequency, intensity of participants’
actions and attitudes are greatly determined by the demographics and specific
characteristics of the subject site. An often cited disadvantage of qualitative case
studies is the lack of generalizability. Phenomena that occur within the subject case
locale may often not be replicable in another similar, although non-identical, site.
Validity affirms that an instrument used to measure a phenomenon is in fact
measuring that phenomenon. The accuracy of the measurement in assessing the
phenomenon is also a component of validity. A qualitative case study records, rather
than measures, germane events from a holistic perspective and is bounded by the
46
specific environment of the study site. The accuracy and consequent validity of the
researcher’s record of observed events may be enhanced with the use of tape
recordings and other recording devices during research sessions, as was done in the
present study.
Data Collection Process and Procedures
This study was part of an Ed.D. thematic dissertation group effort to
investigate eight promising practices in high-performing California charter schools.
The effort was a collaborative process with shared instruments and data collection
processes. The instruments used in the data collection process were originally
developed by an earlier dissertation group and refined and updated by current group
members. The specific questions to be addressed by the refined instruments were
compiled using the Content of Compendium: Types of Data to be Collected form
(see Appendix M).
In keeping with the spirit of collaboration, members of the dissertation group
used the same data collection instruments although not every member used all of the
instruments. In the present study, the following instruments were used: Charter
School Profile Form (see Appendix K), Scheduling Grid (see Appendix I),
Document Checklist (see Appendix H), Nomination Form (see Appendix A), Pre-
Site Principal Telephone Interview Form (see Appendix B), On-Site Principal
Interview Form (see Appendix C), Promising Practice Lead Interview Form (see
Appendix D), On-Site Parent Interview Form (see Appendix E), On-Site Teacher
47
Interview Form (see Appendix F) and the Professional Development Observation
Form (see Appendix G).
As mentioned earlier, the data collected from the case studies will be
incorporated into the USC’s Promising Practices Compendium hosted at the Center
for Educational Governance (CEG) web site. The Compendium has been designed to
facilitate the dissemination of knowledge about promising practices in charter
schools to public schools-both charter and district run schools.
Selection of Study Participants
Nomination Process
The first step in the process of nominating charter schools that were using
one or more of the targeted promising practices was to identify likely candidates
across the state of California. In the process of identifying high-performing
California charter schools that had established promising practices in the areas under
study, the dissertation group engaged in several outreach activities. A one page
advertisement was developed and refined which listed the areas of interest and
solicited nominations of schools that had evidence of one or more of the targeted
practices (see Appendix A). A link on the advertisement provided interested parties
with access to an on-line nomination form. Visitors to the CEG web site could self-
nominate or nominate another high-performing charter school.
The advertisement was disseminated through several list servers. The
California Charter School Association (CCSA), a membership and professional
organization whose “mission is to increase student achievement by supporting and
48
expanding California's quality charter public school movement", distributed the
advertisement through their list server. Another dissemination source was the list
server at the Charter School Development Center at California State University,
Sacramento. Their mission is to help public education change from a highly
regulated, process-based system to one that allows and encourages schools to be
more creative, performance-based centers of effective teaching and learning. They
aim to achieve this by providing technical assistance to the charter school reform
movement in California, nationally, and internationally.
Charter school experts in the state who had familiarity with high-performing
charter schools were also contacted to solicit nominations of charter schools that
demonstrated one or more of the targeted promising practices. The California
Department of Education’s Charter School Division was also contacted for
nominations. Finally, the researcher’s personal experience and knowledge of charter
schools, based on the literature review, was tapped to secure names of additional
nominees.
A total of 5 nominations for high-performing California charter schools with
evidence of successful implementation of promising practices in the area of using
technology to increase parent involvement, were received. From this initial batch, the
field was narrowed to the final 2 schools for site visits. The criteria used to make this
determination included evidence of success and longevity of the promising practice,
the school demographics, and academic performance as obtained from the completed
nomination form.
49
Selection Process
In an effort to obtain background information for all of the nominated
schools, such as student performance data and school demographics, the researcher
completed the Charter School Profile form (see Appendix K). The information
needed to complete this form was obtained from a number of sources most
prominent of which was the school’s web site. Additional information was obtained
from other on-site resources.
The entire thematic group met to discuss the nominated schools. The
information contained within the nomination form was reviewed and after arriving at
group consensus, a decision was made regarding the two schools for each promising
practice that would be visited as part of this study. As a courtesy, non-selected
schools were contacted and thanked for their interest in participating in the study and
encouraged to use the Compendium as a source for innovative ideas in their school
planning.
Site Visits
Once the schools were selected from the pool of nominated applicants, pre-
site visit telephone interviews were conducted. This telephone interview was
conducted with the school principal using the Pre-Site Telephone Interview-School
Principal form (see Appendix B). The interview lasted approximately fifteen minutes
and was used to confirm information obtained from the Internet regarding the
school’s profile. In addition, the researcher confirmed the existence and duration of
50
the specific promising practice and verified the school’s interest in participating in
the study.
Also during the pre-site visit interview, the scheduling and logistics for the
two-day site visit were discussed. The principal was asked for his preferred means of
contact and the name and contact information for the main contact person at the
school. During the course of this fifteen minute call, the researcher arranged for a
two day site visit to the school in the Winter, 2008. A Scheduling Grid was provided
to the principal to facilitate data collection over the course of the site visit. (see
Appendix I) The names and titles or positions of people most directly involved with
the promising practice were requested from the principal. These persons were added
to the scheduling grid as interview subjects during the course of the visit. Relevant
archival documents, listed in the Document Checklist form, were requested from the
principal to be available at the time of the site visit (see Appendix H).
Site visits during winter, 2008 to each of the selected charter schools were
conducted by the researcher. The 2 day visit to Ivy Academia Charter School was
conducted in December, 2007 and January, 2008. The two day site visit to Literacy
First Charter School was conducted in March, 2008.
Principal Interview
The principal was the first school official interviewed during the two day site
visit. The interview lasted approximately one and one-half hours and followed the
On-Site Principal Interview protocol (see Appendix C). The principal provided a
sense of history for both the school and the promising practice. The focus of the on-
51
site interview with the principal concerned budgetary issues, the long-term impact of
the promising practice on academic achievement, overall promising practice
receptiveness, challenges that confronted implementation and maintenance of the
promising practice and the methods by which these challenges were overcome. As
noted earlier, the on-site principal interview was tape recorded with the principal’s
permission and awareness.
Lead Teacher Interview
The promising practice lead individual as identified by the principal was the
person who knew most about the history and implementation details of the promising
practice. In both schools this individual was a teacher. However, others were
involved in various technology strategies. For example, a promising practice
involving automated homework notifications was maintained by the technology
contractor who serviced the school’s computers and telecommunications system. He,
as a parent of a student at the school, was the lead implementer for the program.
The promising practice lead was interviewed following the protocol set forth
in the On-Site Promising Practice Lead Interview Form (see Appendix D). The
purpose of this interview was to systematically collect information about exactly
what technology strategies were used to increase parent involvement and the process
by which implementation occurred. Additionally challenges to the promising
practice’s implementation were best answered by the individual most involved with
the practice. This interview, which lasted approximately one hour, was tape recorded
with the permission of the interviewee.
52
Teacher Interviews
School teachers were interviewed following the protocol set forth in the On-
Site Teacher Interview Form (see Appendix F). Teachers are among the first school
employees to experience the impact of technology backed efforts to increase parent
involvement. The impact may be reflected in changes in student behavior and
academic performance. As such, teachers were interviewed to obtain their input
regarding observed changes in student behavior, academic performance and levels of
parent involvement.
Staff Development Meeting Observations
The researcher observed professional development sessions at each school
that were specifically devoted to enhancing teacher awareness and familiarity with
the existing technology being implemented in the promising practice. These sessions
were recorded using the Professional Development Observation Protocol (see
Appendix G). Research has shown that lack of teacher education as being a potential
factor in resistance to adoption of technology-based initiatives. The professional
development observations were used to triangulate what was reported and what was
observed. Indicators of promising practice sustainability were sought.
Parent Interviews
In order to obtain a balanced perspective on the receptiveness and perceived
value of the promising practice, select parents were interviewed using the On-Site
Parent Interview Protocol (see Appendix E). Information pertaining to the length of
time the parent had been affiliated with the school, the number of children enrolled
53
in the school, the children’s ages, the extent to which the parent used the promising
practice, the parent’s perception of the strengths and weaknesses of the practice were
gathered during these tape recorded sessions. During the parent interviews, evidence
of impact of the promising practice on both students and parents was sought.
Document Analysis
Merriman states that “many documents are easily accessible, free and contain
information that would take the investigator and enormous amount of time and effort
to gather otherwise” (Merriman, 1998 pg. 125). Documents can add another piece to
the puzzle in constructing meaning from all the data that the researcher collects
during field visits. A Document Checklist Form was used to organize the collection
of documents during the site visit (see Appendix H). Among the relevant documents
reviewed were the parent handbook and the school’s charter petition.
Data Analysis
The four research questions were addressed through the collection of data
from a variety of sources. According to Mathison (as cited in Merriman, 1998 pg
204), the data analysis process in the qualitative case study is focused on a “holistic
understanding of the situation to construct a plausible explanation about the
phenomena being studied.” The use of multiple means of data collection is brought
together in the triangulation table set forth as Table A1. As noted previously,
reliability may be more readily confirmed when data is triangulated. Table A1 also
explains the relationship between individual data collection instruments and the
corresponding research questions, and study themes and topics.
54
Each of the interview sessions were, as noted earlier, tape recorded. The
information was first transcribed by the researcher and then the information was
coded by research question and by theme, as guided by the content of the
compendium.
Summary
This chapter provided an overview of the method by which the selected case
study schools were chosen, a description of the data collection instruments, a
description of the interview and observation sessions with the key players and a
review of the data analysis procedures used to evaluate the data.
The next chapter will describe and summarize the findings of the study,
organized around each of the two case study charter schools.
55
CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS
Introduction
The purpose of this study was to investigate the implementation of promising
practices at two high performing, California charter schools that use technology to
increase parent involvement. The importance of this study stems from research
demonstrating a strong correlation between increased levels of parent involvement
and improved student academic achievement, (See Chapter 2, pg. 7).
The main goal of this study was to track implementation of how schools
effectively use technology to increase parent involvement. A concerted effort was
made to select charter schools with high-minority, high-poverty student populations
since poverty and the level of parent education were thought to have a bearing upon
parent’s access to and familiarity with technology, which could impact the
effectiveness of parent involvement strategies that rely on technology.
As explained in the previous chapter, the study was a qualitative case study
conducted at two California charter schools. The sources of data collected in this
study were drawn primarily from on-site interviews with school level educators
(teachers and administrators) and parents. In addition, a review of archival records
was conducted on documents such as the school charter petition, material from
relevant professional development sessions and the school’s web site. Data from the
California Department of Education, the California Charter Schools Association and
Great Schools.net were also collected, to provide context for the study.
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In this chapter, strategies using technology designed to increase parent
involvement with the schools are presented. Both of the schools employed a
combination of strategies to achieve their main goals of increasing parent
involvement or reducing barriers to that involvement. The chapter provides
implementation details including the history, resources, benefits and challenges
encountered by the two charter schools prior, during and after their efforts to
implement parent involvement strategies that relied upon technology.
The two California charter schools visited during the course of this study
were Ivy Academia, located in Woodland Hills California and Literacy First Charter
School, located in El Cajon California. The participating schools were visited during
the months of December 2007, January and March, 2008 for a total of three days.
Additional and clarifying data was collected via email and telephone interviews
subsequent to the site visits. The chapter will present the findings from the two
schools organized by the specific technology strategies employed. The individual
technology strategies will be presented highlighted by a discussion of the benefits
that each of the strategies affords particular stakeholder groups. The order of
presentation will be the findings at Ivy Academia and then the findings at Literacy
First Charter School.
Ivy Academia
History
Ivy Academia was co-founded in 2004 as an independent startup charter
school by educational entrepreneurs Tatyana Berkovich and Eugene Selivanov. The
57
school is authorized by Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), operated by
Alternative Schools Inc. and received its charter on February 10, 2004. Ivy initially
offered grades K-6 but has since expanded to include K-10. Plans are to continue
expansion through the 12
th
grade. Ivy is a Western Association of Schools and
Colleges (WASC) certified charter school and has received academic honors as the
highest performing independent charter school in LAUSD. The school’s current
enrollment is more than 1000 students, more than a quarter of whom are African
American or Hispanic.
The data in Table 1, Ivy Academia’s School Profile, summarizes pertinent
demographic and historical information about the school.
Ivy’s total student population is 1060 K-10 students. The school has a
somewhat diverse student population with approximately 34% of the student body
classified as non-white. (See Table 2) 10% of the students receive free or reduced
meals while 2.8% of students are classified as English Language Learners. In
contrast, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has an average of 38%
English Language Learners and 73% are free and reduced lunch recipients.
Ivy employs 48 full time teachers all of whom are fully credentialed. In
addition, the school employs 3 university interns. The ethnicity of Ivy’s teachers are
82.6% white as compared to 45.4% of the district’s teachers classified as white. Ivy
has a classroom average of 23.4 students compared to the district average of 27
students per classroom (Ed-Data website, accessed October 19, 2007).
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Table 1. Profile of Ivy Academia Charter School: Summary of School Demographics
and Charter Status
Variable Values
Charter Status Start-up
Charter authorizer Los Angeles Unified School District
Year chartered 2004
Year opened for operation with students 2004
Grades served: current K-10
Grades served: projected K-12
Students served: current 1060
Students served: projected 1060
Student population
Ethnicity African American:6.7% (34)
Asian: 4.4% (22)
Hispanic: 18.6% (94)
White: 65.9% (333)
Native American: 1.2% (6)
Pacific Islander: 0.2% (1)
Filipino: 2.0% (10)
Multiple/No Response: 1.0% (5)
Special populations Free/Reduced-Price Lunch: 10.0% (50)
Students with disabilities: 0.0% (0)
English Language Learners: 2.8% (14)
Number of full-time administrators 8 (+ 7 office staff)
Number of teachers 48 full-time, 12 part-time
Teachers in a collective bargaining unit No
Per-pupil spending $ 8,113
School address 6051 Desoto Avenue
Woodland Hills, CA 91367
Type of school Site-based
Contact information President and Founder: Tatyana
Berkovich
(818) 348-8190
Email: tatyana@ivyacademia.com
Web site www.ivyacademia.com
59
When Ivy first opened, it operated from several temporary locations. With the
support of California Department of Education development funds and other
funding, Ivy converted 35,000 feet of warehouse space into classrooms and areas for
extracurricular activities. The extracurricular space includes a gymnasium, a library,
a cafeteria, a computer lab and student lockers.
The school currently provides instruction at four campuses. The main
campus, located at the converted warehouse facility located at 6051 De Soto Avenue,
provides instruction for grades 4-7 and houses the school administrative offices.
Instruction for grades K-1 is conducted also in West Hills, 2-3 in Winnetka, and 8-10
in Chatsworth. All of the interviews for this study were conducted at the main
campus site.
Ivy is a fully Internet enabled school with wireless access available
throughout the campus. The technology present at the school is a result of a
$360,000 federal charter school implementation grant received. “If it were not for the
grant, it would be hard to imagine that we would have been able to invest as
significantly in technology as we have” (Director-Finance, personal
communications, December 12, 2007). According to information provided by Ed-
Data, the school has over 120 computers for academic and administrative use and
has a ratio of 8.1 students per computer. (Ed-Data Website, accessed January 20,
2008)
Each teacher receives a laptop computer and professional development
training in the use of Powerschool, Outlook, Excel, Power Point, web site
60
development, and the teleparent system. Throughout the year additional support for
technical or operational challenges is available from the lead technology teacher and
the technology support company school with whom Ivy is contracted.. More
experienced teachers work as mentors and grade level chairs to provide new teachers
all around support. (PP Lead, personal communication, December 12, 2007).
Ivy’s focus on technology is also reflected in the school’s mission statement:
The mission of Ivy is to help each child from K to 12
th
grade to reach his/her
fullest potential by cultivating an active village of parents, community
members, and stakeholders involved in providing an individual, personal, and
conceptual learning environment for each student. Further Ivy Academia
aims at educating individuals for the 21st century by enabling students to
think critically, understand and internalize the responsibilities of living in a
diverse society, and to utilize technological tools that are constantly changing
and integral to the functioning of this society; with the ultimate goal of
enabling pupils to become self-motivated, competent, lifelong learners (Ivy
Academia Charter Petition January, 2007).
Ivy offers an entrepreneurial based academic environment in which teachers
incorporate lessons based on California standards into entrepreneurial projects
(Principal, personal communication, January 12, 2008). The Annual Entrepreneurial
Youth Convention (E-Convention) at Ivy is run in conjunction with National
Entrepreneurial Week (Observation, site visit December 12, 2007). Ivy Academia
has been chosen as a California State Leader for Entrepreneurial Week USA 2007
and 2008. (Web page, Ivy Academia).
Description of the Use of Technology to Increase Parent Involvement
The promising practice investigated in this study was the use of technology to
increase or enhance parent involvement. During the course of the study, it was found
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that the promising practices were actually implemented through a variety of
strategies. Furthermore, those interviewed used an expanded definition of technology
beyond computers to include new practices, such as web accessible security cameras,
not normally associated with technological innovation in an educational
environment. The following matrix offers a visual overview of how the various
parent involvement types, as discussed in Chapter 2, are addressed by the different
technology strategies employed.
Table 2. Ivy Parent Involvement Type and Technology Strategy Matrix
INVOLVEMENT
Parenting
Communications
Volunteer
In-home
Decisions
Collaboration
STRATEGY
Cameras X X X
E-Blast-Email X X X X X
E-Newsletter X X X X X X
Powerschool X X X X
Teleparent X X X
Website X X X X X
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A more detailed discussion of the various strategies used by Ivy to
accomplish the six components of parent involvement follows. This discussion of the
six strategies outlined in Table 2 will be highlighted by the specific benefits of the
strategies to the various stakeholder groups.
At Ivy it was found that for a variety of reasons, a significant number of
parents did not possess the means to participate in school activities that required their
physical presence at the school on a regular basis. Many of these parents also were
not adequately informed of school events in which they might have been able to
participate had they been made aware of the event in a timely manner. English
language learners, single parents, high-poverty and lower parental education level
households tend to participate at a significant lower level than their more affluent
counterparts. This large but diverse group of parents experience considerable barriers
to participation when they seek to become involved in and informed about their
children’s education. Following are descriptions of the technology based strategies
employed by Ivy to address these concerns.
Cameras
Security cameras, strategically installed throughout Ivy, provide parents with
an increased sense of comfort regarding the safety of their children while they are
attending school. In today’s climate of random school violence, parents seek
environments for their children where safety is emphasized. The prominently
displayed security cameras can allay some of the fears that parents may have for
their children’s safety while attending school. “Unfortunately parents are no longer
63
parenting and we’re seeing students who are not prepared to be good citizens here
and you have to watch them very closely” (Parent, personal communication,
December 12, 2007).
For example, Ivy’s installation of remote controlled security cameras
throughout the school site allows parents to monitor the safety and well-being of
their children. The cameras were placed at strategic locations where students tended
to congregate: the school playground, the library, the computer lab, the cafeteria and
along the main hallways. Activities in the school were monitored and recorded, and
could be viewed by parents, teachers and administrators. The cameras helped address
a naturally occurring parent concern for their child’s safety and security.
The school cameras extend the reach of staff by providing a greater level of
documented information about student behavior. A case in point occurred when a
student was accused of vandalism in the school cafeteria but denied being the culprit.
The student’s parent, wanting to believe their child, demanded proof that it was her
daughter who committed the offense. Video from the camera taken on the day of the
incident clearly revealed her daughter to actually be the offender (Principal, personal
communications, January 12, 2008).
E-blast and Email
As a school of choice, it is in Ivy’s best interest to develop and maintain
accessible channels of communication between the school and parents. Using the E-
blast system, Ivy is able to disseminate pertinent school information in a timely
fashion. If, for example, a special or unusual event concerning the school, parents or
64
students arises, Ivy administrators are able to send an E-blast highlighting that
specific event or topic. E-blasts are short and to the point and used to convey a sense
of urgency.
During the initial technology planning, consideration was not given for the
presence of non-PC based communication technology. As such, all of the electronic
communications were created and disseminated in the PC format which rendered
many messages unreadable by parents who embraced an alternate platform such as
the Apple operating system. The email messaging system was recently upgraded to
accommodate those parents using non-PC based systems. Electronic flyers and other
announcements are now sent out in non-platform dependent format. The upgrade
addressed previous issues with some parents being able to receive but not view
school announcements.
All parents are required to provide an email address as well as a physical land
address and telephone number at the time of registration. This email address is input
into the school database from which the E-blast as well as the email systems draws
its contact information.
One of the major ways that school events are publicized and volunteers
solicited to chaperone those events is through E-blasts. If an event has lower than
required parent sign-on, an E-blast can be sent soliciting parent response for that
particular event. Parents who have not met their volunteer time commitment are able
to quickly determine the compatibility of the announced event with their other
previously scheduled activities. E-blasts, while primarily directed at parents, are also
65
sent to the school’s community and business partners so that these key stakeholders
remain well informed about the school process. School administrators also find value
in the program’s ability to send out announcements and corrections in time for
parents to make adjustments to their calendars (PP support, personal
communications, December 12, 2007).
E-newsletter and Constant Contact
Ivy has implemented a strategy of disseminating news about school events on
a weekly basis and then tracking the readership of and reactions to specific
components of the electronic communication. Regular school news is distributed to
parents through the weekly E-newsletter, Ivy Update. School news, opinion pieces,
information about ongoing, upcoming and reviews of past school events are all
included in Ivy Update. Archived copies of the newsletter are found on the school
web site and hardcopies are sent home to parents with the students. The Ivy Update
is likewise distributed to key community and business partners. Distribution of
information about business and community events is an important purpose of the
newsletter.
Ivy Update, the E-newsletter, is used to announce school activities and events
that will be occurring over several days, weeks or months. Working in conjunction
with the school calendar as posted on the Ivy website, parents are able to more
efficiently plan for volunteer activities and to attend school events.
Early electronic communication efforts tended to favor a shotgun approach
with little emphasis placed on identifying individual response to the messages. Part
66
of the problem lay in the lack of an easily implemented means to track the
effectiveness of the distribution. The very low cost nature of this communication also
played a part in minimizing the perceived need to track individual responsiveness.
A recent addition to the electronic communication system has been the
program Constant Contact. The program allows administrators to extract very precise
usage data from electronic transmission sent out. For example, “If I send out a
newsletter that contains three items, I can find out the number of parents who clicked
through to view the gala event compared to the number who clicked through to the
basketball game” (PP support, personal communication, December 12, 2007). The
program affords Ivy administrators with a greater ability to tailor the newsletter to
the information preferences of its readers.
Constant Contact benefits the system administrator in its ability to record
very specific details about the school’s electronic transmission efforts. Items such as
hard bounces, soft bounces and click-throughs can be recorded and analyzed so that
the newsletter can better conform to the information needs of the parents. Topics and
events of greater interest to parents may be featured while those of less interest can
be moved to a less prominent position in the newsletter. The program also affords the
system administrator with a mechanism to monitor the accuracy of parent’s email
addresses based upon the type of response received from a particular message.
There are several types of responses that the sender of an e-message may
receive. Hard bounces occur because the recipients email address is invalid. There
are several possible causes for this type of failure but one of the most common is a
67
misspelled email address. Soft bounces occur when an email message arrives at the
recipient’s mail server but does not reach the recipient. A common cause for this
type of bounce is a full mailbox. Click-throughs measure the percentage of times that
a visitor to a web page or link actually clicks on a banner or announcement. This is a
good way to measure the effectiveness of an announcement in reaching a target
audience.
Another important aspect of the e-communications supplement is the ability
to create question and answer forums. While the web site will remain an important
vehicle for parent and school interactions, Constant Contact affords Ivy Update
recipients and email users the capability to ask questions and receive rapid responses.
Accordingly same day responses to emails are the goal and that is accomplished in
the majority of cases (Personal communication, PP support, December 12, 2007).
Constant Contact’s survey function provides parents with a direct means of
being heard in expressing their concerns regarding proposed administrative and
operational decisions at Ivy. Survey questions regarding pending school operational
decisions are sent out electronically and the results are posted in subsequent
newsletters. The results are used by the school administration to assessing support
for operational changes. The decision making involvement type is addressed by this
program feature.
PowerSchool
PowerSchool is a web-based student information system whose external
interface gives parents and students access to real-time information like grades,
68
attendance and assignments. In addition, the program provides a secure way for
parents to communicate with teachers from home (PowerSchool Program Overview,
accessed February 25, 2008).
PowerSchool facilitates home-school communication by allowing teachers to
post individual student performance data on an Internet accessible secure web site.
Parent access is further facilitated by PowerSchool’s incorporation of a user friendly
interface. All of the pertinent controls are presented on the top level menu
eliminating the need to drill down several levels in order to access pertinent student
performance information.
In order to make the information relevant and encourage parents to visit the
site, teachers have to constantly update student data. In addition, teachers are able to
generated personalized emails to easily communicate pertinent student information
to parents from within the program.
PowerSchool provides secure access to student performance information
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Parents are able to monitor their
student’s grades, attendance, and completion of homework assignments. The
program facilitates communication with the teacher from within the platform via
email. (PP Lead, Personal communication, December 12, 2007) Armed with this
information about their student’s strengths and weaknesses, parents can more
effectively assist their children in their school work. The assistance can take the form
of monitoring assignment completion to suggesting addition resources. With regular
communication from the teacher, parents do feel like they are part of a team not like
69
they are alone (Ivy Academia web site-Parent comments). The program also helps to
extend the child’s education experience beyond school to home.
Teachers find value in programs such as PowerSchool in its ability to
facilitate communication directly with parents from their classroom desktops.
Parents likewise find value in the program through their ability to respond with
questions about their student’s progress from a blank email response form located on
the student information page. “I think the PowerSchool is great. I can go there
(PowerSchool) and be able to find out grades and homework assignments” (Parent,
personal communications, December 12, 2007).
Teleparent
Teleparent is an automated parental notification system that allows both
school teachers and administrators to send student specific and general messages
home whenever necessary over the telephone or the Internet (Teleparent Program
Overview, accessed February 24, 2008). Teleparent addresses both the
communications and parenting components of parent involvement.
First and foremost, Teleparent is an attendance reporting system that keeps
parents informed of their student’s school attendance and tardiness. Frequent and
timely information can help parents monitor truancy behavior and hopefully
intervene at the very earliest stages. Teleparent is a great backup tool, with its pre-
recorded messages, to inform parents about their student’s attendance (Parent,
personal communications, December 12, 2007).
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In addition to informing parents of student attendance, Teleparent is
customizable to deliver friendly messages regarding a particular student’s positive or
negative school experience. The application may be set up to deliver the messages in
the teacher’s own voice. The diverse nature of today’s school population is reflected
in the large number of households in which English is not the primary language
spoken at home. LAUSD estimates that upwards of 35% of its student population
reside in households in which English is not the primary language (Ed-Data, LAUSD
District Profile, 2006-2007). This communication barrier is addressed by the multi-
language capability of Teleparent. The embedded feature of the application extends
parent contact by providing telephone communications with parents based upon the
family’s preferred language.
Teleparent addresses parenting, the second type of parent involvement, by
providing an expedient method of communicating with parents in an emergency
situation. While in a true emergency, each student’s parent would be contacted
individually, a school wide event would be more efficiently handled through the
automated calling facilities of Teleparent. Knowledge that such a communication
system exists allows the parent to feel secure that their child is safe and secure.
According to psychologist Abraham Maslow, one of the most basic needs that a
parent has towards their child is that of providing for and protecting them.
Teleparent’s automated notification system provides a mechanism whereby
parents are provided pertinent information concerning their child’s attendance in a
timely fashion. Parents are aware of the dangers inherent in school truancy behavior
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and wish to be informed when their children are exhibiting this maladaptive
behavior. The timeliness of the communication increases the likelihood that an
appropriate intervention may be applied early.
School Website
Ivy hosts a very informative, interactive website at
http://www.ivyacademia.com. The website provides instant access to pertinent
school information, forms and documents, (e.g. archived newsletters), a calendar of
events, the ability to pre-order lunch from a list of menu options, information about
school activities such as athletics and the arts, a picture gallery of past school events,
a forum for parent volunteers to select events to fulfill their time commitment to the
school and a mechanism to keep track of volunteer hours. The website also includes
a prominently placed link to PowerSchool.
As with many school web sites, Ivy’s contains a current calendar of events
and news about the school. Ticket purchases for school events and job opportunities
are posted on the website. Group specific tabs, such as Admissions, Parents,
Calendars, Student Life, Athletics and About Us simplifies navigation to pertinent
information.
The original school website was designed and maintained by Ivy’s founder,
Tatyana Berkovich. Ms. Berkovich, who had no prior web design background or
training, learned on the job as the website emerged. “If you look at our website, it is
pretty good looking and I have absolutely no web design background at all” (Ivy
founder and webmaster, Personal communication, December 12, 2007). The lack of
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web management experience, when coupled with all of her other administrative
responsibilities, presented a major time management challenge to Ivy’s founder.
Ivy recently purchased a professionally designed website template program
from School World that allows greater individual control over the management of
the site. This purchase will relieve much of the pressure currently felt by the founder
Ms. Berkovich, who had up until now, been the sole point of contact for any website
design changes, content updates or corrections. Specific editing rights may be
granted to individuals or departments so that they may manage their own portions of
the website (Executive Director-Finance, personal communications, December 12,
2007). For example, “I just gave our catering department the administrative code
and password to the lunch menu so that they are able to maintain that area of the
website on their own. I did the same for the athletic director so he is able to maintain
the sport page.” (Ivy founder and webmaster, Personal communication, December
12, 2007) The website currently on display reflects the new template program.
The Ivy web site offers parents a direct link to the PowerSchool information
system. In addition, major school events are posted on the site. Some teachers have
individual class websites that target a specific class. (Personal communication,
parent, December 12, 2007) Class assignments and group project work tends to be
posted on these sites. Parents can monitor their student’s assignments and provide
assistance, if needed to students in the completion of their assignments. There are
also grade websites for all of the classes in a particular grade level. These sites
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provide more specific information than the general data available on the main school
site such as individual class projects.
The community forum and bulletin board function of the Ivy website,
eCorner, facilitates parents sharing of ideas and concerns and informs them of
upcoming entrepreneurial school events. The site also provides a link to the formal
parent organization website where parents may continue to voice their opinions
regarding the operation of the school (Founder, personal communication, December
12, 2007).
Goal of the Use of Technology to Increase Parent Involvement
According to Ivy’s principal, a primary goal of the school is to create
partnerships between parents and the school. The theory of action represented by this
premise is that as channels of communication between the school and parents are
opened and nurtured, the level of parent involvement will increase. As discussed in
Chapter 2, a substantial body of research indicates that concomitant with a rise in
parent involvement is an improvement in student achievement (Yan, 1999; Fan,
2001; Marschall, 2006; Desimone, 1999; Boberg, 1999). The research also suggests
that in some instances, schools are not perceived as friendly, welcoming places by
many parents (Ogbu, 1998; Manning, 2001; Clements, 2004). Either due to parent’s
previous negative school experiences or their lack of access to communication,
parents feel excluded from the educational process. Traditional measures of
involvement, volunteering and attendance at parent teacher conferences, may not be
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suitable for parents whose work or transportation status makes participation in such
activities very difficult.
The formation of partnerships begins with and thrives on open and valuable
communications. Open, clear and readily accessible channels of communications
facilitate the creation and maintenance of these working partnerships. Technology, in
its various forms and manifestations can be a mechanism to promote ever greater and
wider channels of communication and thereby foster increased parental involvement
(Principal, personal communication, January 12, 2008).
Ivy’s goal of creating partnerships between parents and the school is reflected
in the school’ mission statement “by cultivating an active village of parents,
community members and stakeholders involved in providing an individual, personal
and conceptual learning environment for each student” (Ivy mission statement,
charter petition). This goal was accomplished through the implementation of a series
of technology based strategies each addressing one or more of the parent
involvement types as defined in Joyce Epstein’s framework. As 40% of the school
governing board consists of parents, their ideas are critical to the successful
operation of the school (Charter Petition, January, 2007, pg. 4).
Ivy’s educational goal is to use entrepreneurial activities to reinforce
standards based education within and outside of the classroom. “Ivy employs a
curricular approach to encourage entrepreneurial thinking and focuses on the core
attributes of real entrepreneurship” (Charter petition, January, 2007, pg. 8). While
parents are technically obligated to a certain level of participation as laid out in the
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Shared Support Agreement, the technological initiatives installed at Ivy facilitates
parents in meeting their commitment goals.
Implementation of the Use of Technology to Increase Parent Involvement
History
At the very outset, Ivy Academia’s founders were committed to a creating a
state of the art, rich learning environment and so sought the federal charter school
implementation grant to support technology at the school. As part of Ivy’s mission,
its founders recognized the importance of fully leveraging affordable and available
relevant technology to achieve the widest ranging effect (Ivy Charter Petition, pg.
11). They incorporated the assistance of a committee of parents and teachers to
create a technology plan that addressed current as well as projected needs.
Challenges to Using Technology to Increase Parent Involvement
According to Ivy’s Executive Director-Finance, the greatest challenge to
implementing the various strategies that comprised the promising practice of using
technology to increase parent involvement was resolved by the receipt of the federal
implementation grant. “Without that grant, we would not been able to implement
nearly as many of the technology strategies that we now have in place” (Executive
Director-Finance, personal communications, December 12, 2007).
Once the challenge of securing funds to acquire the equipment and software
was overcome, the next biggest hurdle was determining exactly what technology was
most appropriate for the school’s needs and growth plans. There is a myriad of
technology options available today. Many of the options claim to do very similar
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things with varying degrees of success. Therefore it was difficult to know whom to
believe as they all claim that their product is the greatest. “Many of our technology
acquisition decisions were made through trial and error. We also looked at other
similar schools and institutions to see what they were using. We found out however
that in many instances they were trying out various solutions themselves. There did
not appear to be a central, independent technology guru to whom we could turn to
get an unbiased opinion as to what would be best for our particular situation, our
budget, student demographics and our growth plans” (Executive Director-Finance,
personal communication, December 12, 2007).
We found that most of the solutions presented assumed a certain level of
technological sophistication among the end-users, teachers, parents and staff,
that was not guaranteed to be there. While most parents listed an email
address at the time of registering their children for school, according to
records of PowerSchool usage, only 60-70% actually uses that technology.
“Some parents are completely computer phobic and prefer telephone, regular
mail or hardcopy flyers for their communications with the school (PP Lead,
personal communication, December 12, 2007).
Once the technology was acquired, in many instances the implementation and
maintenance was more complex than when presented during the sales demonstration.
For example, one teacher who was technologically inclined stepped forward to
receive training on PowerSchool and by default became the PowerSchool go-to guy
at the school. As the program was expanded in its implementation, its management
began to assume a life of its own to the point where it requires a full time technology
person to manage the technology maintenance, upgrade, and repair and training
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needs of the teachers, parents and staff. (PP Lead, personal communications,
December 12, 2007).
Lessons Learned in Using Technology to Increase Parent Involvement
The lessons learned at Ivy were both budgetary and operational in nature.
Costs and revenue streams must be anticipated for projected as well as unexpected
items. Technology is an ever moving entity and as such, change should be
anticipated. The stakeholders will approach the technology from varying
perspectives, interests and existing skills sets. The technology plan must be flexible
enough to accommodate these sometimes divergent interests.
In addition to the sizable amount of money needed to institute a functioning
technology plan, funds for on-going maintenance, research and upgrades must be
secured. According to Ivy’s Finance Director, a bare minimum of $200,000 would be
needed to design and rollout a functioning educational technology system. Another
$2000-$5,000 per month should be anticipated for on-going maintenance,
replacement of obsolesced equipment and software, staff training and needed
upgrades. While this amount varies from month to month depending upon the actual
parts replacement costs, the monthly labor costs for computer maintenance are fixed
through a service contract at $1,500 per month. Extraordinary costs can occur but
with an effective preventative maintenance program in place, these events are rare.
Best practices suggest that all software modifications, upgrades and
replacements should be documented in writing. All operating system patches, fixes
and service patches should be routinely downloaded and installed on a pre-
78
determined schedule. All anti-virus, spyware and anti-spam software should be kept
current. The Internet access filter, that was selected by the technology committee,
should be regularly updated (Principal, personal conversation, January 12, 2008).
Key technology projects such as the school website should be developed and
maintained by professionals (Founder-Webmaster, personal communication,
December 12, 2007). These projects tend to require a significant amount of time to
maintain without which, they quickly fall into disrepair and irrelevance. It is
essential that the technology be relevant to the parents if a high level of buy-in is
expected. Timeliness and accuracy of the data are key components to relevancy. If
parents feel that they are receiving something of value each time they visit the
website, PowerSchool or the E-Blasts they will more likely be consumers of that
material. In order for these resources to be kept current and thereby valuable, a
person or team must be able to dedicate a sufficient amount of time to the task.
The universe of technology consumers, of which parents are a part, consists
of a myriad of platforms in addition to the dominant PC/Windows system.
Communications with parents must at least address the major platform alternatives
be it operating system or language. Ivy found that a number of their parents were
using Macs and as such were unable to read some communications from the school
that were sent out from a PC platform. The administrators also discovered that a few
parents were English Language Learners and as such would benefit from material
distributed in their native language. Finally recognizing that not all parents were able
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to read at a high level, Ivy’s communications person sought to bring the level of
writing down to a more easily comprehended yet not condescending level.
While all parents were required to provide an email address at the time of
registration, it was found that some parents failed to do so, intentionally or
inadvertently gave invalid email addresses, did not have in-home email or Internet
capability, did not know how or chose not to use their existing email capabilities, had
difficulty with electronic communications distributed in English, were technology
phobic, or were unskilled in the operation of the technology or navigation on the
Internet. It was further discovered that not all teachers and administrators were of the
same technology skill level and that even after attending mandated professional
development technology training, were ill equipped or disinterested in fully using the
technology at hand.
Teachers were initially not inputting the information into PowerSchool on a
timely basis. As a result of the stale information, many parents elected not to use the
program to obtain pertinent student information. The school appears to have secured
compliance from the majority of teachers as now most update their student
information on a regular basis. According to the technology lead at Ivy, some of the
teachers were not using the system because they were afraid that they might lose all
of their information. “I think that the training that I gave to the teachers makes the
technology successful along with the level of tech support that I am able to provide.
This makes the information more relevant to the parents who will in turn be more
likely to use PowerSchool to communicate with the teacher” (PP Lead, personal
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communications, December 12, 2007). The demonstrated ease with which report
cards could be produced from within the on-line grading system also helps induce
greater compliance among the teachers.
Evidence of Impact at Ivy Academia
The use of technology to increase parent involvement at Ivy benefited
multiple stakeholders. Teachers, parents and students reported increased levels of
participation due to the various available technologies. Parents were more involved
with school activities and were more aware of available opportunities for
involvement due to the multi-channel dissemination of information.
Parents found PowerSchool as an easy to use and very informative tool to
monitor their children’s progress in school. Some parents initially had a little
difficulty navigating the program but the available technical support provided by Ivy
quickly remedied those problems. “For instance, if parents were having problems
with PowerSchool, they simply emailed me and I responded right away and resolved
the problem” (PP Lead, personal communications, December 12, 2007).
A significant finding was that E-blasts were more likely to catch a parent’s
attention than traditional forms of school to home communications. In contrast,
flyers announcing school activities that go home in students’ backpacks, often don’t
get seen by parents. A parent declared that, “If the parent knows about an event in
sufficient time, which is more likely with the multiple forms of non-student
dependent delivery options such as E-blasts, there is a greater likelihood that the
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parent can arrange their schedule to participate in the event” (Parent, personal
communications, December 12, 2007).
Student home work and assignment completion rates were notably improved
with the advent of an in-home monitoring system such as PowerSchool. A parent
when interviewed stated that, “Students are more likely to be diligent in doing their
homework and turning in assignments on time if they know that there is a system
whereby their parents can see what they have assigned” (Parent, personal
communications, December 12, 2007).
Teachers reported that the ability to communicate with a parent through a
simple email from within PowerSchool or with a whole group of parents through
AllCall, allowed them more time to more frequently communicate with more
parents. The increased level of parent-teacher communication fostered better
working relationships focused on improving student achievement.
While enrollment at Ivy has increased several fold, the school’s consistent
academic performance, as measured by their API scores of 854, 851 and 846 for
years 2005 through 2007, has not been adversely affected by this increase. In each of
those years, Ivy met its AYP growth goals as well. According to discussions with
faculty and parents, the school’s emphasis on parent involvement created and
maintained a school culture that was conducive to academic excellence. Students
were made aware that they were accountable for their actions and that the entire
school family was committed to their success.
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Resource Requirements
Budget
The hardware and much of the software used by Ivy in their technology based
parent involvement initiatives was purchased after the receipt of a $360,000 federal
charter school implementation grant in 2004 (Ivy Academia Charter Petition,
reviewed January, 2007, pg. 4). “We got all of the technology from the grant. We
probably would not have been able to implement our level of technology without the
receipt of that grant” (Executive Director-Finance, personal communication,
December 12, 2007). “At the very minimum, a school would need to budget at least
$200,000 to implement an adequate technology infrastructure. This would include
communications, computers, software, installation, configuration and initial training.
According to Ivy’s Executive Director for Finance, “Ongoing maintenance and
upgrade costs can easily run another $5,000.00 per month” (Executive Director-
Finance, personal communication, December 12, 2007). Due to a successful fiscal
management practice, Ivy has been able to meet its ongoing technology maintenance
needs through revenue generated from operations.
The security cameras are maintained by an outside maintenance firm while
the telephone and data networks are maintained by an outside, hourly-rate contractor
(Executive Director-Finance, personal communications, December 12, 2007). Ivy
leases PowerSchool at a cost of approximately $500 per month. The program is
currently hosted on a remote server but could be brought in-house which, while
reducing the monthly lease cost, would incur a personnel cost for a full-time person
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to maintain the system which would probably exceed $50,000 per year. Ivy is also
currently paying School World as their professional web-site designer and
webmaster.
Staffing
A lead support and training person for PowerSchool would be essential. As
the school has grown and the program come to play a more integral part in the
communications and academic recordkeeping function of the school, the training and
maintenance duties have morphed into a full-time position. This person’s salary with
benefits could easily exceed $50,000 per annum. The lead teacher currently
responsible for supporting PowerSchool and general hardware first tier support, who
was already technologically inclined upon arriving at Ivy, receives a stipend to
compensate him for the extra time required.
Another person working quarter-time could maintain the technology aspects
of E-Blasts, Ivy Update, flyers, Teleparent and email. The cost for such a position
could exceed $20,000 per annum. Currently, the promising practice support person,
who is responsible for the E-blasts, flyers and general email communications, came
from a corporate and non-profit marketing background and brought a strong
communications expertise with her. As such she is able to fulfill both the technology
as well as editorial components of the job. The current Teleparent support person
works in the school office and reports that she learned the program on the job. She
further reported that the web based program was not that difficult to learn or
maintain (PP support, personal communications, December 12, 2007).
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Facilities
Ivy maintains approximately 120 computers including those in the computer
lab, teacher notebooks, and administrative systems. The school uses a hosted
PowerSchool system but is considering acquiring an in-house server. This would cut
the monthly lease cost for the hosted program but would require a full-time staff
person to maintain both the hardware and software.
The school is wired for high speed voice and data communication and is set
up as a Wi-Fi site. Classrooms are equipped with Smartboards that are Internet
connected. Ivy recently acquired a high-speed network printer and copier for teacher
and administration use. Ivy has a digital telephone system with individual teacher
voicemail capability. There are telephones in each classroom for in-bound
communications and emergency outbound calls. All of the initial technology
equipment, infrastructure design and build-out were paid with funds received
through the 2004 federal charter school implementation grant.
Professional Development
Ivy conducts professional development sessions related to the school
technology two weeks before the start of the fall semester and throughout the school
year. According to the promising practice lead, teachers are expected to serve as
resources to one another on a daily basis with simple technology issues. The
promising practice lead teacher, who also has classroom responsibilities, is available
for personal one on one tech support if needed. Another professional development
session scheduled during the Winter break has a refresher component for technology
85
updates. Parents are informed of the technology in an introduction letter that they
receive with their registration package. They also receive a follow-up email to
establish their PowerSchool access username and password. Instructions on the use
of PowerSchool and general email are included.
Recommended Resources
The co-founders of Ivy Academia found the following websites to be helpful
in developing and supporting their technology efforts:
PowerSchool
Published by Pearson Education, Inc. 877.873.1550 www.powerschool.com
Teleparent
Published by Teleparent Educational Systems, LLC. 800.688.6077
www.teleparent.net
School World
Published by SchoolWorld, Inc. 800.554.2991 www.schoolworld.com
Constant Contact
Published by Constant Contact, Inc. 866.876.8464 www.constantcontact.com
Literacy First Charter School
History
Literacy First Charter School (LFCS), located in El Cajon, California, was
founded in 2001 as an independent start-up charter school by its current Primary
Academy principal, Debbie Beyer. The school received its initial charter from the
86
San Diego County Board of Education on June 13, 2001. LFCS subsequently
received a 5-year renewal in 2006. Upon approval of its initial charter, LFCS began
operations with 114 students on a single campus. The students were in grades K-3.
LFCS has since expanded to grades K-8 and provides instruction on 2 campuses. The
school operates a Primary Academy, for grades K-3, located at 799 East Washington
Avenue, El Cajon, California. This site is in a church complex leased from St.
Michael’s Chaldean Catholic Church. The Junior Academy, serving grades 4-8, is
located at 1012 East Bradley Avenue, El Cajon, California and also operates from a
church facility, Heartland Community Church. Jerry Keough is the principal at the
Junior Academy.
The primary focus of LFCS’s academic efforts is in the area of literacy. The
mission of the school is to develop within students a lifelong passion and ability to
learn. According to statements found in the school’s charter petition, LFCS defines
“superior literacy” as the ability to develop perceptive listening skills, to articulate
and speak fluently, to demonstrate comprehensive and efficient reading skills, and to
exhibit powerful writing skills (Literacy First Charter Petition, p. 10). According to
the Literacy First Charter Petition (2001),
The broad mission of the Literacy First Charter School is to equip students
age K-8
th
grades with two kinds of literacy necessary in the 21st century - the
ability to read, write, speak, and calculate with clarity and precision and the
ability to participate passionately and responsibly in the life of the
community. The Literacy First Charter School enables students to become
literate, self-motivated, lifelong learners by providing a multicultural,
student-centered environment, in which all students are held to high academic
and behavioral standards, work in collaborative relationships, and perform
service to the greater community. (p. 10)
87
LFCS was founded on principles that recognized the importance of building a
collaborative learning environment, consisting of family and community that
nurtured the whole child and supported the overall educational venture. Furthermore,
the founders recognized that technology was an invaluable tool that could be used to
assist in the development of completely competent citizens in the 21st century
(LFCS Web Site, Philosophy of Education, accessed March 18, 2008).
As stated earlier, the initial cost of the technology initiative at LFCS was
funded by a 3 year $400,000 federal charter school implementation grant. Additional
implementation and maintenance costs were funded through the general revenue
budget. Subsequent technology acquisitions were funded through revenue generated
by ongoing operations. As the initial technology team consisted of teachers, parents
and department of education employees, startup personnel costs were kept at a
minimum. As the duties and responsibilities of the team grew, corresponding to an
ever increasing reliance on technology for school operations, the technology
maintenance functions transitioned into a paid position.
LFCS’s goal of increasing parent involvement was focused in three primary
areas. These were the identification and reduction of barriers to involvement by
parents, the establishment of regular and accessible channels of communication for
parents and, the creation of multiple and varied opportunities for parent involvement.
The Epstein (1998) parent involvement model identified six parent
involvement types. The researcher found that in many instances, the technology
88
strategies employed by LFCS to increase parent involvement often simultaneously
addressed more than one parent involvement type. As an example, while the teacher
web site was paramount in addressing the communication parent involvement type,
email, the electronic newsletter, Gradebook, the LFCS website and AllCall also
addressed that involvement type.
Following the principles set forth in LFCS’ mission statement, parents were
integrally involved in every stage of the technology plan development (Principal,
personal communication, May 2, 2008). In fact, parents, teachers and administrators
worked with representatives from the San Diego County Department of Education’s
technology department. The LFCS plan development also followed the guidelines
contained in the California State Board of Education’s Education Technology
Planning: A Guide for School Districts (Literacy First Charter Petition, p. 8).
Since becoming updated and certified by the San Diego County Board of
Education on June 2, 2007, the LFCS’s Technology Plan has been monitored and
maintained by a technology team consisting of parents and teachers. The team’s
primary attention was to determine content and site filtering levels for student
Internet access. Recommendations for types, subjects and participants in teacher
professional development also arose from the technology team (Promising Practice
Lead Teacher, personal communications, March 18, 2008).
LFCS currently has approximately 200 academic computers divided between
the two campuses. This equates to a student to computer ratio of approximately 2.9
students per computer (Ed-Data Web site, accesses March 18, 2008). The school
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uses a mobile, secure computer wagon to share laptops between classes. Each
classroom has at least 4 computers for student use and is equipped with an
interactive, electronic white board known as a Smartboard. All classrooms are
Internet ready. Each teacher at LFCS is provided with an Apple iPod to store
relevant content media and all classrooms are equipped with high-fidelity sound
systems to enhance microphone-outfitted teacher’s classroom communication.
Table 3, Literacy First Charter School’s Profile, summarizes significant
demographic data pertaining to the school.
LFCS has a co-ed student population of 693 boys and girls. The
overwhelming majority of those students, 76.8%, are classified as white which
compares to the district average of 31.1% (Ed-Data Website, accessed March 18,
2008). This percentage is somewhat misleading however as the school has a very
high immigrant Iraqi Chaldean population. These students comprise almost 40% of
those classified as white (Principal, personal communication, March 18, 2008).
Many of these students tend to be English Language Learners (ELL) with English
only spoken as the secondary home language (Parent translator, personal
communication, March 18, 2008). Often the parents in these families speak little or
no English and rely upon the children for translation (Principal, personal
communication, March 18, 2008). . Due to the large number of Arabic language
speaking, Iraqi Chaldean students who were enrolled at LFCS, attention to cultural
differences was incorporated into all aspects of the implementation of the technology
strategies aimed at increasing parent involvement.
90
Table 3. Profile of Literacy First Charter School: Summary of School Demographics
and Charter Status
Variable Values
Charter Status Start-up
Charter authorizer San Diego County Office of Education
Year chartered 2001
Year opened for oper with students 2001
Grades served: current K-8
Grades served: projected K-8
Students served: current 693
Students served: projected 693
Student population
Ethnicity African American: 3.8% (26)
Asian: 0.7% (5)
Hispanic: 12.1% (84)
White: 76.8% (532)
Other: 6.6% (46)
Special populations Free/Reduced-Price Lunch: 31.0% (215)
Special needs: 9.0% (62)
English Language Learners: 22.0%
(134)
Number of full-time administrators 2 (+ 4 volunteer office staff)
Number of teachers 36 full-time, 0 part-time
Teachers in a col bargaining unit No
Per-pupil spending $5,900
School address 799 East Washington Avenue
El Cajon, CA 92020
Type of school Site-based
Contact information Principal: Debbie Beyer
(619) 579-7232
Email: dbeyer@literacyfirstcs.org
Web site www.literacyfirstcs.org
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Other notable student population groups are Hispanic students, who make up
12.1% of the student population, and African American students, comprising 3.8% of
the total population. The district averages for these groups are 47.5% and 15%
respectively. Students requiring free and reduced lunch comprise 31% of the total
student population which is less than half of the district average of 64%.
Description of the Use of Technology to Increase Parent Involvement
The promising practice investigated in this study was the use of technology to
increase or enhance parent involvement. During the course of the study, it was found
that the promising practices were implemented through a variety of strategies at
LFCS. Furthermore, those interviewed expressed an expanded definition of
technology that extended beyond computers and included practices, such as the use
of an Arabic language specific keyboard, not normally associated with technological
innovation in an educational environment. The following matrix offers a summary of
how the various types of parent involvement are linked to different technology
strategies.
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Table 4. LFCS Parent Involvement Type and Technology Strategy Matrix
INVOLVEMENT
Parenting
Communications
Volunteer
In-home
Decisions
Collaboration
TECHNOLOGY
Teacher webpages X X X
Email X X X
Multi-lingual E-Newsletter X X X X
Gradebook X X
AllCall X X
School website X X X X
A more detailed discussion of the various strategies used by LFCS to enhance
parent involvement follows. The six strategies outlined in Table 4 will be discussed
highlighting the specific benefits that each offers to parents, teachers and students.
Teacher Web Page
Each teacher maintains his or her own web page which is updated weekly
with homework assignments, learning objectives, reference web sites visited in class
and news of upcoming class events. These teacher web pages are accessed through
the Staff/Faculty tab on LFCS’ school web page. “Students, well aware of the
accessibility of their assignments by their parents, are more likely to complete their
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homework and turn it in on time” (Parent, personal communication, March 18,
2008).
Teachers and parents benefit from the easy two-way communication features
inherent to the individual teacher web pages. Current homework assignments,
learning objectives for the week and Gradebook are all available at this site. In order
to provide maximum utility for parents, the school strives to ensure that the
information contained within the pages was both current and accurate.
In an effort to keep parents current with changes to the teacher’s website,
parents have the ability to automatically receive those updates by adding a feed to
their Rich Site Summary (RSS) reader
1
. Many popular RSS readers such as Yahoo,
AOL, Google, Windows Live, Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox already have
links posted at www.teacherweb.com. LFCS subscribes to a teacher web publishing
service at Teacherweb.com that offers this feature. The link for parents to sign up for
this service is located on the school web site under newsletters. Technical
instructions needed by parents to complete the sign-up process are included within
the link. Class collaboration opportunities, such as team projects, members and due
dates, are also posted on individual teacher webpages.
Email
Teachers are able to easily communicate with parents from within the teacher
web sites. Teachers like the ability to be able to individually communicate with
parents via email. When short messages are needed, they can be delivered much
1
RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as
personal web pages, blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format.
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more efficiently than by telephone. “When I have to call a parent, a 2 minute phone
call turns into a 10 minute conversation on everything except the subject of my
original reason for calling” (Teacher, personal communication, March 18, 2008).
Emails may be sent out with greater frequency in a fraction of the time. The time
savings of this function fosters better teacher-parent communications.
According to those interviewed, a well functioning email system is essential
to supporting parent involvement in the governance of the school. Communication
between the various local school governing bodies, the Board of Trustees, School
Site Advisory Council, English Learners Advisory Committee and Parent Teams is
conducted primarily through email. Scheduling of meetings and events is generally
conducted through emails between team leaders and their constituent members.
Electronic communication, such as email, helps overcome some key barriers to
involvement, distance and travel. These virtual forums for collaboration, empower
stakeholders with a voice and enable them to express his or her opinion. According
to the Team Council President, some decisions are arrived at through on-line
communications (Parent, personal communication, March 18, 2008).
Multi-lingual e-Newsletter
A technology strategy at LFCS to enhance parent involvement was the
publication and dissemination of an electronic newsletter. During the Fall
registration process, parents were asked to complete a registration form in which
their language of preference is selected along with their email address, and primary
and backup telephone numbers. This information is used to send copies of the
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school’s weekly electronic newsletter, that lists upcoming activities as well as a
report on recent activities. Photos of student and parent participation in past events
are also included in the newsletter. In addition information relating to involvement
opportunities for parents are disseminated through the LFCS electronic newsletter.
Recognizing the barrier to parent involvement that limited English language
abilities presents, LFCS sought to bridge that gap by implementing a program to
provide information in multiple languages. Given the large percentage of LFCS’s
children whose parents speak Arabic at home, the school hired a translator and
purchased an Arabic letter keyboard to produce versions of the school newsletter in
Arabic (Principal, personal communication, March 19, 2008). Information obtained
at the time parents initially registered at the school indicated which parents wanted to
receive the translated version of the newsletter. According to the LFCS technology
lead, the translated version of the newsletter generated interest among the previously
uninvolved Arabic speaking parents (Technology lead, personal communication,
March 18, 2008).
Gradebook
Gradebook provides digital report cards and on-line student progress reports.
Teachers love the program because it makes the tedious process of filling out report
cards much easier (Principal, personal communication, March 19, 2008). The time
saving efficiencies of the program allow teachers more time to communicate with
parents (Teacher, personal communication, March 18, 2008). As not all parents have
or use email, Gradebook is primarily used for the computation of grades rather than
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their distribution. Paper report cards are still printed and sent home with students for
parent review and signature. At some point in the future it is anticipated that grades
and other student assessments will be posted on-line (Principal, personal
communication, May 2, 2008).
AllCall
As highlighted in Epstein’s parent involvement model which was described
in Chapter 2, a primary concern of parents is the well being of their children. The
AllCall telephone notification system helps allay parent’s fears that they will not be
informed in a timely manner in the event of an emergency. As one parent declared,
“The AllCall system was very helpful and informative during the hectic days around
the San Diego wild fires, which forced the school to be closed for several days”
(Parent, personal communication, March 18, 2008). The AllCall system can be
programmed to deliver messages to parents when necessary in one of several
languages. Depending upon the language of choice selected by the parent at the
initial school registration, messages are delivered in English, Spanish, Arabic or
some other preferred language. The AllCall program has an embedded translation
feature included within the subscription. The notification system was used to keep
parents informed of news regarding the status of the school and updates to the
projected date that the school would reopen (Principal, personal communication,
March 18, 2008).
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LFCS Website
The overall management of parent involvement activities falls under the
purview of the Team Leader Council. When accessing the parent involvement tab on
LFCS’s website, visitors can link to ”Volunteers” which directs the visitor to a page
that describes current volunteer needs of LFCS. In addition to a description of the
activity, there is mention of the expected level of time commitment. This allows
parents to better manage their schedule by selecting volunteer activities that best fit
their available time. The system also expands the range of involvement opportunities
by making parents aware of all of the choices that are available. To monitor parents’
volunteer hours, the system tracks parent volunteer time against their school
commitment.
The school web site is also used to offer parents links to helpful websites they
can visit with their children. By collecting and vetting the published sites, LFCS
encourage parents to work with their children in completing their homework and
class projects. While working with their children at home, parents are able to monitor
the child’s web activity and help dissuade unsafe practices. Parent education classes
are offered by LFCS to inform parents of safe Internet practices and ways in which
they might monitor and become involved with their child’s Internet use for school
assignment completion. Students benefit by having parent support when using the
computer to complete school assignments and by being able to avoid potentially
dangerous sites.
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Goal of the Use of Technology to Increase Parent Involvement
The primary goal of the promising practice is to increase the level of all types
of involvement by parents with the school and with their children’s education. The
school founders believed that technology could be used to facilitate an increase in
parent involvement. This in turn, would contribute to the achievement of the
overarching school goal, “to equip students with the kind of literacy necessary to be
productive in the 21st century” (Literacy First Charter School mission statement).
As stated in the school’s charter petition, LFCS’s definition of literacy encompasses
the ability to read, write, speak, and calculate with clarity and precision and the
ability to participate passionately and responsibly in the life of the community
(Literacy First Charter Petition, 2001), LFCS chose to employ the technology
strategies, discussed earlier, to facilitate the goal of improving literacy by increasing
the levels and quality of parent involvement.
The selected strategies, as highlighted in Table 4, concentrated on increasing
the frequency and quality of communication between parents and the school by
facilitating access to various means of communication for parents and teachers.
“Close relationships are established between parents and teachers when an effort is
made to let parents know what is going on in the classroom” (Parent, personal
communications, March 18, 2007). The strategies, such as the teacher web pages
with integrated email, focused on enabling channels of communication, and support
LFCS’s efforts to connect student actions in the classroom to their parents. Open
parent-teacher communications also convey a sense of student accountability when
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students believe that their parents are aware of their classroom behavior and the
completion of assignments (Parent, personal communications, March 18, 2008).
LFCS’s theory of action rests upon a considerable body of research that
suggests increased parent involvement is tied to improved student academic
performance. By incorporating parents into various aspects of their child’s schooling,
LFCS has been better able to educate parents in how they can help students at home.
By letting students know that their parents are aware of their classroom activities,
students have a greater sense of accountability about their academic responsibilities
(Principal, personal communication, March 18, 2008).
LFCS operates from the perspective that the education of a child is an effort
that requires close interaction among the stakeholders at home, in school and in the
community (Principal, personal communication, March 18, 2008). The success of
this coalition is reliant on effective channels of communication between the school
and parents. According to the school’s charter, “The objective is to redefine
historical boundaries between professional educators, families and members of the
community. Parents are actively recruited to function in the classroom as an
indispensable component of the educational process” (Literacy First Charter School
Petition, pg. 7). The LFCS education process is designed to be student centered; thus,
the availability of timely and accurate information about the activities and progress
of students is crucial to engaging and sustaining parent interest (Principal, personal
communications, March 18,2008).
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Challenges to the Use of Technology to Increase Parent Involvement
According to the president of the team leader council, “Less than 75% of the
parents have computers in the home and 50% of those are not technically proficient”
(Parent, personal communication, March 18, 2008). Whereas the administration had
believed that 100% of the student homes had working, connected computers.
However, based upon a recent computer give-away of retired computers, hosted by
LFCS for families of students at the school, that belief appeared to have been an
overly optimistic assessment (Principal, March 18, 2008).
LFCS learned from the giveaway that not all student households were
technology enabled. The lack of computer access at home limited the school-wide
effectiveness of using technology for communications and in-home student support.
As part of the revised technology plan, LFCS scheduled retirement and replacement
of computers in the school on a 3-4 year cycle. Parents were surveyed about their
home computer needs and those families without working computers were given
fully refurbished units with all needed application software installed from the retired
inventory (Principal, personal communication, May 2, 2008).
Another hurdle encountered was the difficulty in training parents to use the
technology. This process was made even more challenging by parents who were
struggling with English. Many parents were more than willing to allow their children
to continue to interpret for them in academic as well as in technology-related matters
(Parent-SIS coordinator, personal communication, March 18, 2008). To help address
this problem, increased numbers of professional days were planned for parents, as
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well as teachers, in technology training. The time and place of these training sessions
was to be widely broadcast to all LFCS families.
Another problem related to incentives for teachers to keep their webpages
current. Initially some teachers were lax in the web page updates. Closer
administrative oversight appears to have effectively resolved that issue. Individual
teacher web pages were reviewed each Friday to determine whether or not they had
been updated. When non-current pages were found, an email was sent to the
respective teacher. A second occurrence of failure to update resulted in a second
email being sent to the teacher with a cc: to the principal. In the rare instance that a
third incidence of outdated webpages the matter was handed off to the principal for
resolution (Technology lead teacher, personal communication, March 18, 2008).
As the technology infrastructure expanded, the school required the services of
a paid technician. The position of technician was moved from a team council
function to a paid line item in the school budget although the same parent performed
the function. The evolution of technical support from volunteer status to a paid
position reflected LFCS’ commitment to maintaining a high quality technology
program (Technology lead teacher, personal communication, March 18, 2008).
When LFCS first opened, email services were provided through the San
Diego Department of Education mail server. This service proved to be slow and
unreliable; mail delivery was sometime delayed or not delivered at all. Further, since
the system was managed externally, the LFCS administration had no way of
addressing problems with mail delivery. Since then, the school domain name was
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registered in October, 2001 and the email management function was brought in-
house in conjunction with the construction and launching of a locally-hosted school
web site. School administrators, teachers and parents saw an immediate and
noticeable benefit with the transition of the email management function to internal
management. Problems in communications were reduced and when they occurred,
could be addressed in a far more timely manner (Principal, personal communication,
March 18, 2008).
As reported by the LFCS principal, the changing educational technology
landscape makes the search for funding sources and the evaluation of the new
technology, an on-going activity. When technology problems and solutions are
identified, funding must be found (Principal, personal communication, March 18,
2008). Further, assessments are needed to determine whether an application is
suitable to the environment and demographics of LFCS. The school has found that
relying solely upon external product reviews may not yield relevant information on
the effectiveness of a technology program at LFCS (Principal, personal
communications. May 2, 2008).
Lessons Learned in the Use of Technology to Increase Parent Involvement
One important lesson learned was that the assumption that parents owned or
had access to a home computer, was not in fact realistic. In the future, the school is
committed to evaluating parents’ access to computers at the time they register their
child for school.
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Parents are valued as an integral part of the “team." According to LFCS’s
Philosophy of Education, the school strives to be a community of family members
drawn into an educational environment where parents are recognized as invaluable
resources to not only their own children, but to the school family at large (LFCS
Web Page, Philosophy of Education, accessed March 28, 2008). It was found that
while it was good to state that parents are valued as members of the education team,
it was only through the establishment of greater levels of effective communication
that this construct became a reality. The use of technology tools, such as the e-
Newsletter and the school website, helped facilitate effective communication (Parent,
personal communication, March 18, 2008). By being able to check homework
assignments and grades on-line, parents are able to effectively intervene, when
necessary, in a timely manner (Parent, personal communication, March 18, 2008).
Team leaders and room parents like to use email to share information among
parents and team members who have widely differing work schedules (Parent,
personal communication, March 18, 2008). LFCS uses a number of technology
strategies to promote collaboration between parents and teachers, parents and students
and among parents. Chief among these tools is email which allows messages to be sent
informing stakeholders of upcoming activities.
The electronic newsletter, translated in several languages, opens new
channels of communication to a large segment of the LFCS parent population. The
school obtains parent email addresses when students are registered. At the same
time, parents who are likely to be aided by weekly e-newsletters in Arabic are
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identified. In order to implement this practice, a staff person who can provide
translation services for each campus was retained. Finally, the school purchased the
hardware and software to allow for the creation and transmission of special Arabic
characters (Principal, personal communication, May 2, 2008).
By posting parent volunteer opportunities on the school web site, the pool of
informed parents expanded beyond those who were able to visit the school on a
regular basis. The dissemination of information through the web also allowed parents
greater choice in volunteering opportunities and presented options that parents had
not previously considered or were not aware existed.
Evidence of Impact at Literacy First Charter School
The API scores for LFCS have improved over the last 4 years with the
following scores: 786 in 2003, 835 in 2004, 837 in 2005, and 876 in 2006, with a
target growth of 879 in 2007. While LFCS has consistently increased their API
scores, the evidence of impact of the use of technology to increase parent
involvement is reflected more in the growth and maturation of the school culture.
“Participants evolved from embracing the technology to enjoying it” (Principal,
personal communication, May 2, 2008). The expansion of communication channels
between teachers and parents have allowed teachers to more efficiently manage their
time and parents to more closely monitor their children’s progress and behavior
(Principal, personal communication, March 18, 2008). Parents report a greater sense
of well-being and family connectedness. Parents understand that they can learn from
their children as well as be a guide for them. They find more opportunities to
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positively interact with their children on school-related matters. Students know that
parents are involved and that making bad choices is not “cool” (Parent, personal
communication, March 18, 2008).
Homework completion rates among students have increased and the number
of late or missing assignments have decreased (Teacher, personal communication,
March 18, 2008). In fact one teacher reported that the school culture has evolved to
the point where students who engage in disruptive behavior are not looked up to but
rather encouraged to “get with the program.” She attributes this change in attitude to
the level of parent involvement in every aspect of the school experience (Teacher,
personal communication, March 18, 2008). In addition, as a result of the frequency
of parent-teacher communication, parents reported that they felt more connected to
teachers and the school, and more knowledgeable of their children’s performance in
the classroom (Parent, personal communication, March 18, 2008).
Resource Requirements
Budget
The initial technology costs for LFCS were funded by a three-year federal
implementation grant of $ 400,000 awarded in 2002. The funds were disbursed in the
amounts of $200,000, $180,000 and $20,000 over the three years. Subsequent
purchases which totaled another $250,000 over the past few years have been funded
through general revenues. LFCS budgets $90,000 per year for technology hardware
purchases and upgrades. The actual expenditures have ranged from as low as
$40,000 to as high as $140,000 per year. As a fiscal management tool, LFCS
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purchases 3-5 year extended warranty contracts from their major hardware vendors
such as Dell and Cisco. These contracts offer next day, on-site service and parts
(Principal, personal communication, May 2, 2008).
As a result of having a certified technology plan, LFCS qualifies for E-rate
purchasing which allows the school to obtain T-1 and Frame relay service for as little
as 10% of the normal retail cost. To supplement revenues, LFCS also solicits
donations through its web site. Finally, LFCS seeks to establish local business
relationships whereby the businesses can advertise and sponsor various school
activities.
Staffing
At the outset, the founders of LFCS were committed to incorporating
technology into the learning community and sought to involve parents at every stage
of the planning and development process. Consultants from the San Diego
Department of Education lent their expertise to assist in developing the school’s
original technology plan. Since then an on-going technology team composed of
teachers and parents was created (Technology lead teacher, personal
communications, March 18, 2007).
The function of the technology team was twofold. The team’s first task was
to obtain the existing technology and to assure adherence to standards of practice for
its use. The team’s second function was to ensure currency in LFCS’s technology. It
was the team’s responsibility to identify trends in educational technology and assess
the relevance of the new technology to LFCS’ educational mission and then report its
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findings to the school administration (Principal, personal communications, March
18, 2007).
The promising practice of using technology to increase parent involvement
was initially performed by volunteers on team councils. As the scope and complexity
of the technology increased, the function was removed from the council and
converted into a paid position. The same individual, a parent, who was doing the
work on the team council is now employed on a part-time basis. The cost of his
services is approximately $20,000 per year.
Facilities
LFCS rents space for its primary and junior academy campuses from two
local churches. Mobile computing is provided through the use of computers on
wheels (COWs), which are wheeled between classrooms to allow full student
participation on select projects. All classrooms have wireless Internet and have at
least 4 desktop computers for student use. Each classroom is wired for stereophonic
sound which allows microphone enabled teachers to clearly project their voices
regardless of their physical position in the room. Each classroom is also equipped
with a Smartboard. In addition, all teachers are provided with laptop computers and
iPods. The iPods are used to record and playback music to signal transition points
between regularly scheduled class activities.
Professional Development
Most professional development is conducted during one week, prior to the
beginning of the Fall semester. New teachers are brought up to speed on LFCS
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practices and procedures. Monthly professional development sessions throughout the
school year are conducted for teachers and parents. The technology lead is offered
factory training on new equipment and then expected to bring that training back to
the rest of the staff at LFCS.
Recommended Resources
The San Diego Department of Education provided invaluable, on the ground
technical assistance in the development, refinement and implementation of the
school technology plan. The technical support staff, available from hardware vendors
with the purchase of extended warranties, were invaluable in their assistance
(Principal, personal communication, May 2, 2008). Some useful contacts are as
follows:
Dell Computers 800.915.3355 www.dell.com
Cisco Systems 800.553.6387 www.cisco.com
Gradebook 866.878.3799 www.rvs101.com
AllCall 800.695.7788 www.usnetcomcorp.com
SchoolWorld, Inc. 800.554.2991 www.schoolworld.com
Another helpful website for LFCS’ electronic publication needs was Scribus found at
www.scribus.net, an open source desktop publishing solution.
Summary
Chapter 4 reviewed the findings obtained by the researcher during site visits
to Ivy Academia and Literacy First Charter Schools to investigate their
implementation of strategies in the use of technology to increase parent involvement.
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In both instances, the schools used various forms of technology to increase and
expand the level and scope of parent involvement at their respective schools. At both
schools the definition of technology was expanded beyond traditional computers,
although more so at Ivy Academia. While Literacy First provided a more
technologically advanced classroom environment with the use of Smartboards and
teacher microphones, Ivy’s provision of laptop computers for each teacher allowed
teachers to take the technology home and in so doing expanded the school day and
parent communications beyond normal school hours. Both Ivy and LFCS operated
from two campuses and maintained technology support personnel at each site. Both
schools contracted their computer maintenance to outside vendors although at LFCS,
the vendor was a parent who had been involved in the original design and
implementation of the school’s original technology plan.
A noticeable difference between the two schools was the technology plan. At
LFCS their technology plan, included future acquisitions, as well as impact
evaluation and maintenance strategies. Ivy, on the other hand, developed their
technology plan internally and relied on more of an ad-hoc approach. A consequence
of this approach may have been that Ivy does not appear to be as advanced as LFCS
in the scope of their technology infrastructure. Ivy is however, a Wi-Fi enabled
campus that provides a great deal of flexibility for teachers and students wishing to
work away from the classroom.
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Both schools appear to have made great strides in extending the reach of their
schools in actively recruiting parents by expanding and widely publicizing
opportunities for varied forms of parent involvement activities.
In Chapter Five conclusions from the study will be presented. In addition,
comparisons of the findings will be made with the existing literature. Finally,
implications for policy and practice and recommendations for future study will be
presented.
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CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS
Introduction
The purpose of this study was to examine the promising practices associated
with the use of technology to increase parent involvement in California charter
schools. Findings for this study were obtained from site visits to Ivy Academia and
Literacy First Charter School. The two schools approached the task from somewhat
different perspectives and consequentially, applied different technologies to arrive at
the same ultimate goal of increasing parent involvement. Findings obtained during
the course of this study at both Ivy Academia (Ivy) and Literacy First Charter School
(LFCS) were generally consistent with those from previous research as cited in
Chapter Two of this dissertation.
This chapter is organized in sections beginning with a discussion of findings
within the context of the four research questions. Following this discussion are
conclusions drawn from the study data. The final section presents implications for
policy and practice followed by suggestions for future research.
Discussion of Findings
Research Question 1. How did high-performing charter schools use
technology to increase parent involvement?
From the study, data emerged indicating that Ivy and LFCS introduced a
number of strategies that used technology to increase parent involvement. The
research cited in Chapter Two of this dissertation identified six specific areas in
which barriers to involvement might appear. The areas indentified were:
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1. An overall lack of available time by teachers and parents. (Samaras,
1999; Yap, 1995)
2. A lack of information and training for parents, teachers and staff (Daniel-
White, 2002; Smrekar, 2001)
3. Inhospitable school climate and practices (Smrekar, 2001, Epstein, 1991;
Hoover-Dempsey, 2005; Attewell, 1999; Byers, 1993)
4. Cultural differences between family and school (Marschall, 2006;
Overstreet, 2005; Attewell, 1999; Hoover-Dempsey, 2005)
5. A lack of external support for family-school partnerships (Clements,
2004; Sanders, 2001)
6. A lack of access to technology (Calvert, 2005; Daniel-White, 2002)
Ivy and LFCS were confronted with some or all of these barriers to parent
involvement at their respective campuses. Table 5 illustrates how each school
employed technology strategies to tackle the barriers to parent involvement that
emerged from the literature.
The next section explores the methods employed by each school to overcome
barriers to parent involvement. The two schools, Ivy and LFCS, each employed
different technology strategies.
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Table 5. Relationship of Strategies to Barriers to Parent Involvement
Barriers to
Parent
Involvement
Ivy Technology Strategies LFCS Technology Strategies
Lack of Time Powerschool, Telaparent, e-
Blasts
Gradebook, email, AllCall,
Information and
training
Pre-school year and mid-
year professional
development, parent training
Teacher websites, parent
training
School culture School charter mandates
parent involvement in
decision making,
Entrepreneur week
Technology planning team,
transparency through electronic
communication
Family-school
culture clash
School website Arabic language translation,
teacher websites
Family-school
partnerships
e-Corner, PTSA website link
on school website, security
cameras, e-Newsletter
Team leader council, volunteer
opportunities publicized with e-
Newsletter
Technology
Access
Teacher laptops, technology
questionnaire at registration
Computer giveaways, family
technology survey, technology
questionnaire at registration
Lack of time
The administration at both Ivy and LFCS sought to overcome the barrier of
limited time by employing strategies that brought parents closer to the school
without them having to be physically present. This was accomplished by establishing
multiple channels of communication for parents to more easily obtain information
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about daily school activities and student assignments. The schools expanded
channels by extending email capabilities, by making accessible on-line grades and
assignments, and by automating the telephone notification systems.
According to Hoover-Dempsey (2005), many parents lack the time to
adequately engage in parent involvement activities at their children’s schools such as
attendance at midday parent conferences or serving as a class parent. The majority of
parents at both Ivy and LFCS reported that they worked during the day and as such
were unavailable for on-site parent involvement activities that were scheduled during
work hours. To meet the challenge of limited time, Ivy used the on-line student
progress feature of PowerSchool to give parents access to their children’s school
records 24/7. LFCS used Gradebook to accomplish the same goal.
Similarly, teachers at both Ivy and LFCS reported they did not have the time
to involve parents in the classroom or, to a lesser degree, that there were few benefits
to be accrued from such collaboration. According to Samaras (1999), teachers are
each day confronted with a host of demands on their time. Often teachers feel
inundated with responsibilities for creating lesson plans, grading assignments,
delivering classroom instruction, and completing the paperwork required by district,
state and federal law (Swap as cited in Smrekar, 2001 pg. 78). As one teacher stated,
“By the time I finish all of the required paperwork, grading and lesson plans, I have
little or no time for meaningful parent contact” (Parent, personal communication,
March 18, 2008).
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To address the time limitations experienced by teachers, Ivy employed
PowerSchool, which allowed teachers to quickly communicate with parents via
email from within the program. This feature saved time. “I can send out multiple
emails in the time that one parent phone call might absorb” (Teacher, personal
communication, December 12, 2007).
In another effort, LFCS teachers used individual teacher websites to
communicate with parents. Posted on these websites were weekly homework
assignments, individual and group projects as well as their expected completion
dates. Parents were able to stay informed about their child’s assignments without the
need to be physically present in the classroom each day. The website also provided
material for parents to use as they assisted their children in the completion of
assignments and projects.
In an additional endeavor to overcome the time barrier, both schools
employed programs to provide individual and group telephone messaging to parents.
Ivy used a program called Teleparent, while LFCS used AllCall. The messages were
delivered in the preferred home language of the parents, identified during the
family’s initial school registration. The translator at LFCS reported that parents were
more likely to respond and to get involved when communicated with in their
language of choice. Time savings accrued to teachers who were able to send out pre-
recorded batch telephone messages to all of their students with a single command.
Messages were personalized and recorded in the teacher’s voice. Ivy parents reported
that they felt more connected to the school when messages were delivered in the
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voice of their child’s teacher which according to Hoover-Dempsey (2005) was
critical in making communication with the school seem more accessible to parents.
Lack of information and training
According to the literature, a lack of information and training for parents and
school staff presented a barrier to parent involvement (Daniel-White, 2002).
Both Ivy and LFCS used technology to keep parents informed about school
activities. Administrators and teachers alike reported in interviews the importance of
making parents aware of opportunities for involvement. Employing emails,
electronic newsletters, and school websites, the schools sought to ensure that all
parents were adequately informed about school events in a timely manner.
Both schools published electronic newsletters designed to highlight
upcoming events as well as provide interesting content from recent past events. The
newsletters were delivered to every parent who provided a working email address.
LFCS takes the newsletter delivery a step further by providing an Arabic language
translation for those parents who, at the time of school registration, indicated that
their home language was Arabic. Archived copies of past newsletters are stored on
the two schools respective websites which provides a sense of history for parents.
The data obtained in this study suggested that an information deficit on the
part of school faculty and teachers and parents contributed to reduced parent
involvement. This finding is in line with past research which indicates that often
school staff does not receive adequate training in how to work with parents to
promote partnerships (Policy Studies Associates, Inc., 1997). Compounding the
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problem is the fact that many high-poverty parents do not have a formal education
and so believe that they do not possess the skills or knowledge to help their children
(Daniel-White, 2002; Smrekar, 2001). Lacking the knowledge to better navigate
within the school domain, some parents tend to avoid participation in school
activities even though they may be quite interested in promoting their children’s
education. The principals at Ivy and LFCS asserted that a significant amount of time
during professional development sessions was devoted to enabling teachers to reach
out and encourage parents to participate.
Highly interactive, colorful and easy to navigate websites at both Ivy and
LFCS were offered to parents. In addition, helpful links were plainly labeled on the
school site to help parents research an upcoming event for additional information and
to volunteer on-line. LFCS has a “Parent Involvement” link which leads to
involvement opportunities that included volunteering in the classroom, taking
minutes at team leader meetings, working in the garden and at the school book fair.
Ivy’s parent tab on the school web site links to the booster club, the newsletter and to
photos of the Ivy pride picnic, a recent school-wide event.
Another component of Ivy’s effort to communicate with parents is
PowerSchool. PowerSchool is geared to the individual student as it allows parents to
log in and view their child’s actual performance. This program also provides
information to parents who wish to be more involved with their children’s learning at
home.
118
LFCS relied on individual teacher websites to communicate about school
activities. The classroom lessons feature of the teacher web pages were especially
beneficial to parents who felt confused or inadequate in helping their children.
Useful information about current lessons is present on the website. The teacher web
pages allowed those parents, who may also have a culturally-anchored deference to
teachers and the school as the education experts to become more involved while still
remaining respectful.
Both Ivy and LFCS offer limited parent technology training although neither
school has a formal ongoing training program specifically tailored for parents. For
example, according to the technology lead teacher at Ivy, the current training which
is incorporated in a letter sent to all parents after Fall registration, provides parents
with instructions in the use of computers to access student information, school email,
the school website, posted documents and the school calendar (Technology lead,
personal communication, December 12, 2007). Plans to expand their present parent
training offerings were underway at both schools for as was pointed out by the
principal at LFCS, many parents did not respond to technology based outreach
activities simply because they did not possess the technical know-how or have the
requisite access to the technology medium (Principal, personal communication,
March 18, 2008).
School organization and practices
Ivy and LFCS endorsed the value of parent involvement, as evidenced by its
prominence in their charter petitions. Ivy’s commitment to parent involvement was
119
presented in the form of a parent contract. The charter documents of both schools
highlighted school activities designed to aid in publicizing opportunities for parent
involvement. In addition, schools have significant parent representation on their
respective governing boards. Ivy uses Constant Contact’s survey function to solicit
opinions from parents concerning school governance issues. LFCS parents are and
have been deeply involved in the school’s technology committee which created its
technology plan. Recently the committee voted to institute a web-filtering program
to restrict content flow and site access mostly to the school community.
As stated earlier, both schools used multiple means of communication to
deliver timely information about school events in which parent involvement was
encouraged. The Teleparent program at Ivy and the AllCall program at LFCS
allowed teachers to routinely communicate with parents by telephone. These
communications were as general as, “Johnny had a good day today”. This feature
helped to foster a belief in parents that communications from the school were not
always about something bad and that the school actually cared about their child.
Several parents interviewed reported that more frequent positive communications
from teachers encouraged them to more actively participate in their children’s
education (Parent, personal communication, March 18, 2008).
Family-school culture differences
Past research has demonstrated that language minority parents are faced with
more of a challenge in becoming involved with their children’s schooling than do
non-language minority parents (Marschall, 2006). LFCS faced just such a challenge
120
with its large population of first generation Arabic-speaking parents. The school
allocated resources to hire an Arabic language translator and to purchase an Arabic
language keyboard. These resources were used to create an Arabic language version
of the school electronic newsletter. The school’s translator, who also happens to be a
parent, reported that Arab parents were more inclined to become interested and
involved when receiving communications from the school in their native language.
Family-school partnerships
This study found that Ivy and LFCS employed a number of strategies to
encourage family-school partnerships. The Ivy charter petition states that it will form
“a strong family partnership”. Similarly, LFCS’ charter petition states that “The best
way to educate children is to form a learning partnership between parents and the
school”. Both schools implemented strategies to create and maintain these
relationships. The school websites, fostered strong school-parent partnerships by
providing helpful links to make busy parent’s lives a little easier. Among the step-
savers were the daily on-line lunch menus, the availability of school forms and the
calendar of upcoming school events.
As noted earlier, the dissemination of information was accomplished through
emails and electronic newsletters. The email component allowed parents to have an
accessible, private means of communicating with their child’s teacher. Both schools
also used school websites to widely disseminate information about school activities
that offered opportunities for parent involvement. Pictures of past events were
included in the posted e-communications to add a personal touch. A parent who was
121
interviewed reported that being able to see other parents and students (some of whom
she knew) participating in school events, played a part in motivating her to become
involved in future school activities.
By expanding the available communication channels between teachers and
parents, the frequency and relevance of those communications will also likely
increase. Attwell (1999) asserted that increasing communications between school
and parents will create new and solidify existing parent-school relationships. The
incorporation of email into PowerSchool at Ivy and into the teacher webpage at
LFCS, seemed to contribute to greater levels of communication between teachers
and parents.
Access to Technology
Previous research has suggested that high-poverty parent’s lack of home or
local access to technology presented a barrier to parent involvement. According to
Calvert (2005), high-poverty neighborhoods have much lower technology
penetration than more affluent neighborhoods. At LFCS, school administrators
assumed that families either had a computer at home or had easy access to one.
“When parents registered their children for school in the fall, one of the questions
asked was for an email address” (Principal, personal communication, May 2, 2008).
It was assumed that the presence of the email address indicated the corresponding
presence of a home computer. However, this was found not to be the case.
In an effort to address the disparity in computer access, LFCS instituted a
program of recycling retired computers by donating them to families who did not
122
have computers in their homes. Parents were informed of the availability of
computers through flyers sent home with students and through the standard
electronic information distribution system of e-Newsletters and postings on the
school and teacher websites. A formal lottery was established whereby parents
without home computers could place their name in a pool where they would be
eligible to receive one of the retired computers.
Research Question 2. How were the charter school’s resources allocated to
use technology to increase parent involvement?
This section addresses the allocation of school resources to increase parent
involvement by first identifying the types of expenditures that were required for the
acquisition of the technology. Next the sources of funding for the technology
acquisitions are identified. Finally a discussion of the schools’ plans for sustaining
their respective technology initiatives is presented.
Technology costs related both to start-up and implementation. These costs
further included capital costs and personnel costs. At both schools, initial capital
costs included the acquisition of hardware, software and technology accessories
along with facility improvements. Both schools used support from federal charter
school implementation grants to fund their initial capital costs. On-going capital
costs at Ivy and LFCS included expenditures for hardware repair and maintenance;
hardware and software upgrades; new hardware and software acquisition; lease costs
for broadband Internet lines, software licensing, and web-site and application
hosting.
123
LFCS’ personnel costs incurred at the initial stage were associated with the
development of a technology plan which included evaluation of various software
applications. Many of these costs were absorbed by the San Diego County Office of
Education and by using parent and staff volunteers (Principal, personal
communications, March 18, 2008). Implementation costs related to personnel at Ivy
included a stipend for the lead technology teacher. This person provided training and
support to new teachers, as well as answered questions from parents as they arose
relating to technology access and usage (Principal, personal communication, January
12, 2008). Over time, duties expanded to the point where plans were underway to
hire a full-time person. Labor costs for the repair and maintenance of the computers,
cameras and classroom technology were covered by annual per-incident contracts
with outside vendors.
From the outset, Ivy hired an outside contractor to maintain its hardware and
computer network. Until this year, web design and maintenance services were
performed by the school’s founder. In 2008, Ivy employed the services of an outside
vendor, School World, to update the web design and provide on-going maintenance
of the school web site.
LFCS initially relied upon a parent volunteer from the Technology Planning
Committee to provide computer maintenance and support. As the school’s
technology expanded and became more sophisticated, the position evolved into a
budgeted staff position. The same parent who previously performed the duties gratis
was hired for this position. Software evaluation and planning functions are still
124
performed by the volunteer Technology Planning Committee which meets
approximately once a month.
Both schools relied upon federal charter school implementation grants for
their initial technology purchases. Ivy used a greater portion of their funds for
infrastructure development which included installation of security cameras,
telephone and computer data wiring. Ivy also provided laptop computers for each of
its teachers. LFCS on the other hand, purchased more classroom-based technology.
Smart boards and stereo sound to enhance teacher audibility were installed in each
classroom.
Research Question 3. What challenges did charter schools face in using
technology to increase parent involvement and how were these challenges
successfully addressed?
Ivy and LFCS sought to extend their outreach to parents through the use of
technology. In this section, a discussion of the hurdles that were encountered is
presented. Among the challenges uncovered were a lack of computers in the homes,
limited computer literacy among parents, resistance on the part of some teachers, and
the rapidity with which new technology was evolving.
One of the most significant hurdles confronting both schools was the lack of
computer access and computer literacy among their parents. While this deficit was
more pronounced at LFCS , both schools underestimated the computer penetration
and literacy among its families. According to the founder of Ivy, almost all parents
were thought to have and use home computers for school access (Ivy founder and
125
webmaster, personal communication, December 12, 2007). To the contrary, access
data collected from PowerSchool indicated a far lower percentage than previously
thought (Technology lead, December 12, 2007).
In an effort to address this problem, Ivy and LFCS instituted more stringent
data collection processes at the time of Fall student registration. At LFCS questions
regarding the presence of a computer and Internet access in the home were included
in the registration packet. The results from this informal survey were then used to
develop the lottery for the giveaways of retired computers.
The lack of computer literacy was found to be a problem among a significant
portion of parents and some staff (technology lead, personal communication,
December 18, 2007). At Ivy, professional development, including technology
training, was conducted in the summer just prior to fall registration. This training
was supplemented by a smaller training session during intercession. LFCS
incorporated technology training for staff in their periodic professional development
sessions throughout the school year.
Neither school set aside specific time for formal parent technology training,
although both schools, during the site visits indicated plans to provide such training
in the future.
Another challenge encountered at both schools was a resistance to technology
among some teachers and staff. When LFCS teachers were required to update their
web pages on at least a weekly basis, some teachers did not comply and the stale
information on their pages resulted in dissuading parents from using them. The
126
administration instituted a program whereby the teacher web pages were actively
monitored for changes and non-complying teachers were reminded to update their
pages. The technology lead reported that the monitoring and reminder program
produced one hundred percent compliance in short order.
A third challenge for the schools was the constantly evolving nature of
technology. This made it difficulty for the schools to gauge the authenticity of
vendor claims. In addition, the ability to identify technology products that supported
the core values of the school and those that addressed more tangential objectives
proved to be a daunting task. LFCS relied upon their technology contractor, along
with their junior academy principal, who served as technology support lead for that
campus, to keep abreast of emerging developments that were most in line with the
educational philosophies of the school. Ivy’s principal relied upon analyses gleaned
from his membership in several educational technology associations to assessments
of emerging technologies.
Research Question 4. What evidence exists that using technology to increase
parent involvement resulted in positive educational outcomes?
The evidence supporting the effectiveness of the use of technology to
increase parent involvement was highlighted by four significant findings: 1)
increased completion of homework and class assignment; 2) an elevated sense of
family connectedness to the school; maintenance of a high level of student academic
achievement; and 4) and a greater adherence to commitments to involve parents.
127
Related to the first finding, LFCS teachers attributed the higher level of
homework completion to the fact that students were aware that their parents knew
about their homework assignments and when they were due. In interviews, teachers
asserted that students became more responsible for their work because they were
now accountable both at home and at school (Teacher, personal communications,
March 18, 2008). In conjunction with this increased student accountability was an
increase in school attendance which according to the principal at Ivy, could also be
partly attributed to increased monitoring through the automated telephone attendance
reporting system (Principal, personal communication, January 12, 2008).
A second measure of the effectiveness of the practice was an elevated sense
of family connectedness to the school (Parent, personal communication, March 18,
2008). Parents reported during interviews that the electronic newsletters, e-Blasts
and teacher emails gave them a greater sense of involvement with their children’s
school.
Past research suggested that when parents feel welcomed into the school and
their opinions and comments are valued, they become more actively involved with
their children’s school activities and their children’s education (Hoover-Dempsey,
2005; Overstreet, 2005; Clements, 2004; Smrekar, 2001). Having a place where
one’s voice was heard and one’s opinion was valued created a good feeling,
according to a parent at LFCS (personal communication, March 18, 2008). Epstein
(1998) stated that it is the school’s responsibility to open channels of communication
to parents and to create opportunities for involvement.
128
A third measure of the effectiveness of using technology to increase parent
involvement was reported by the principal at Ivy, who stated that he observed a
greater and adherence to commitments for involvement, which he attributed to a
greater awareness among parents of the availability of opportunities for involvement.
Although non-enforceable parent contracts had been in place, the technology-based
outreach efforts to inform parents of involvement opportunities, helped remove some
barriers to increased parent involvement (Principal, personal communication,
January 12, 2008). Past research by Daniel-White (2002) and Smrekar (2001)
highlighted the importance of establishing and maintaining easily accessible and
open channels of communication between the school and parents.
The fourth measure of the effectiveness of using technology to increase
parent involvement is student achievement. A considerable body of research has
asserted that parent involvement contributes to improved student achievement
(Marschall, 2006; Daniel-White, 2002; Yan, 1999; Epstein, 1998, 1985).
Additionally research has demonstrated that technology can be used as an effective
tool in increasing parent involvement (Penuel, et.al., 2002; Zardoya, 2001; Attewell
& Battle, 1999; Samaras & Wilson, 1999). The findings in this study appear to
corroborate those found in the literature when academic achievement is measured by
school-wide API scores. Ivy’s API scores over the period between 2005 and 2007
were 854, 851 and 846 respectively. LFCS API scores over the same period were
837, 873 and 879 respectively. Both schools met their AYP growth targets for each
of the subject years.
129
Implications for Policy and Practice
Ivy and LFCS acknowledged the importance of parent involvement in
improving student achievement. The schools further recognized the impact that
technology had in aligning their practices with the educational missions of their
schools. Extrapolating from the findings of this study as well as from prior research,
technology can be an effective tool in expanding the school’s outreach and support
efforts to increase parent involvement (SRI International, 2001). The schools were
also in agreement on several important strategies deemed critical to any technology-
based, parent involvement program. In the next sections, implications of study
findings for parents and schools are offered.
Parents
Not all parents will be at the same level of technical proficiency. According
to Vygotsky (1991), parent learners should be met at their individual level of
proficiency. In other words, training should be provided to parents at a level that is
appropriate to their understanding. Parents who are non-English or limited English
speakers face an even greater challenge in learning to use technology as most
training is offered in the dominant language. This was found to be the case at LFCS
with its large Arabic speaking parent population. Training for parents will be
essential to ensure higher levels of technology use.
Attention should be paid to the differences among parents in the provision of
training and the level of support provided. Parent demographics, including such
factors as socioeconomic status, racial, cultural, or ethnic background, ELL status,
130
parent educational background, and neighborhood characteristics can all contribute
to the effectiveness of training. Installation of technology-based solutions not
accompanied by appropriate end-user education will probably have minimal
effectiveness. Finally, the primary in-home language of the parents should play an
important role in determining the specific characteristics of technology strategies
Schools
According to Epstein (1998), a school’s approach to the involvement of
parents in the education of their children, plays a critical role in the efficacy of their
educational program. Schools have the power to create an environment that is
welcoming and open. Further schools can reassure parents that their opinions and
presence, either physically or virtually, is welcomed.
Schools have an obligation to facilitate parent involvement through whatever
means they have at their disposal (Epstein, 1998). The creation of an open and
welcoming atmosphere goes a long way to promoting an environment of inclusion.
Outreach efforts that employ technology afford schools with cost effective
mechanisms such as electronic newsletters, current interactive websites and teacher-
initiated emails to expand and extend channels of communication between the
parents and the school.
Schools must also work to ensure that parents have adequate access to
technology. It does little good for the school to offer multiple means of electronic
discourse when parents have neither computers nor Internet access in their homes.
131
Conclusion
The findings of this study bring to the forefront the importance of considering
parent demographics in the use of technology to increase parent involvement. At
LFCS, the Arabic-speaking parents were not able to take full advantage of
electronically transmitted school information until the school hired a translator to
provide communication in the parent’s native language. The research also uncovered
an improved sense of family connectedness among parents that many interviewed
attributed partly to the technology-enabled outreach undertaken by the schools.
There were several issues of importance uncovered in this study that are in
need of further investigation. The most promising topic for future study would be to
investigate the effectiveness of the strategies employed at Ivy and LFCS in schools
serving less-privileged population. Past research has demonstrated that students
living in higher socioeconomic communities generally have parents who are better
educated and more likely to be familiar with technology. Such families are also more
likely to have better access to computers and Internet access at home. While this
study did not confirm this, more research is needed in lower SES schools to further
test the hypothesis.
Another promising topic for future study would be an evaluation of the
effectiveness of different technology education programs for parents. The rapidly
evolving field of educational and communication technology prompts the question of
how school administrators can stay abreast of these changes and effectively evaluate
the emerging products to determine those best suited for their particular school
132
environment. Related to this, the question of how technology can be used to reach
parents who are not in possession of and do not have access to enabling technology.
This study has taken steps toward uncovering promising practices to increase
parent involvement through technology. USC’s Compendium of Promising
Practices, which includes profiles of the effective strategies used by LFCS and Ivy,
as well as profiles of other charter schools, will help disseminate and encourage
replication beyond the original creators of the promising practices.
133
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140
APPENDIX A: NOMINATION FORM
Do you know of a charter school implementing an
innovative policy, practice or program that should be widely
disseminated
Acknowledge exemplary California charter schools by
nominating them to
USC’s Compendium of Promising USC’s Compendium of Promising
Practices Practices
The Center on Educational Governance is adding to USC’s online
Compendium of Promising Practices, recognizing high-performing charter
schools in California that demonstrate innovation and excellence in education.
CEG is requesting nominations of charter schools that have made distinct
contributions in one of the following 8 areas:
• Adult mentoring of at-risk students
• Increasing redesignation rates of English-language learners
• Integrating academics into career/technical education
• School leaders’ use of data for planning and school improvement
• Teacher evaluation
• Use of technology to increase parent involvement
• Uses of school time
• Writing across the curriculum
Nominations are Now Open
Selection Criteria
• Demonstration of innovative practice
• Evidence of positive change
• Potential to transfer and be useful to other schools
Benefits
• Recognition at annual CCSA conference
• Publicity (press releases and radio spots)
• Framed certificate for display at the school
?
141
How To Nominate
• Visit http://www.usc.edu/dept/education/cegov
o Submit your nomination online
OR
o Download a nomination form and fax to:
Priscilla Wohlstetter, Project Director
USC Center on Educational Governance
FAX: (213) 743-2707
For more information about USC’s Compendium, please visit
www.usc.edu/dept/education/cegov/
142
APPENDIX B: PRE-SITE VISIT PRINCIPAL INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
School Name: ____________________________ Date:___________________
Name of Interview Subject:_________________________________________
Researcher: ______________________________________________________
Start Time: _______ End Time: ________ Total Time (minutes): ______
[Introduction]
I am working with the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of
Education. We are studying promising practices in California charter schools.
Through a nomination process, your school was selected as having success in/with
[using technology to increase parent involvement]. The purpose of this interview is
to learn more about [using technology to increase parent involvement] at your school
and to schedule a site visit at a time this fall when it is convenient for you.
The information from this research will be incorporated into a Web-based
compendium of using technology to increase parent involvements. The website is
hosted by USC’s Center on Educational Governance. The goal of the compendium is
to spread new knowledge and innovation about using technology to increase parent
involvements to inspire educators to improve school performance.
By participating in this study, your school will get recognition at the annual
California Charter Schools Association conference; a certificate to display at your
school; and publicity in the media, including statewide and local press releases.
This preliminary interview should take only around 5-10 minutes. Is now a good
time? (If not – when would a better time be to talk with you?) Do you have any
questions for me before we begin?
A. Background- Laying the Foundation
1. How long have you been the principal at this school?
2. Would you tell me about your background and previous experience in
education?
3. How long has this school been using the [using technology to increase parent
involvement]?
143
4. Who else on campus is involved with the [using technology to increase
parent involvement]?
[Probe for lead teachers, teachers, parents]
B. Scheduling and Logistics
5. We are planning to visit schools some time this fall, in October or November.
The visit will last no more than two days and I would like to speak with you
again, along with the other people you mentioned who are involved with
[using technology to increase parent involvement]. If possible, I also would
like to observe a professional development session related to [using
technology to increase parent involvement] [and to visit a few classrooms].
a. What month and days are best to visit your school?
b. Will it be possible to attend a professional development session
related to
[using technology to increase parent involvement] during the visit?
c. [Will I be able to observe a few classrooms during my visit?]
6. Who should I speak with about arranging the visit and scheduling interviews?
I can [send, fax, or email] a list of people I would like to interview during my
visit, along with a scheduling grid.
For future contacts, is it best to communicate with you by phone, or do you prefer
fax or email?
FAX:________________________
TEL:________________________
EMAIL:_______________________
[Closing]
Thank you very much for your time. I will send the scheduling grid to [PERSON] in
the next day or two, and if it can be returned to me by [DATE], that would be very
helpful.
I look forward to visiting your school on ________, and will plan to contact you the
week before to confirm the visit and interview schedule. Again, thank you for
participating in USC’s Compendium.
144
APPENDIX C: ON-SITE PRINCIPAL INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
School Name: __________________________ Date:___________________
Name of Interview Subject:________________________________________
Researcher: _____________________________________________________
Start Time: ________ End Time: _________ Total Time (minutes): ______
[Introduction]
Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I am working with the University of
Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. We are studying using
technology to increase parent involvements in California charter schools. Through a
nomination process, your school was selected as having success in/with [using
technology to increase parent involvement]. The purpose of this interview is to learn
more about [using technology to increase parent involvement] at your school.
The information from this research will be incorporated into a Web-based
compendium of using technology to increase parent involvements. The website is
hosted by USC’s Center on Educational Governance. The goal of the compendium is
to spread new knowledge and innovation about using technology to increase parent
involvements to inspire educators to improve school performance.
By participating in this study, your school will get recognition at the annual
California Charter Schools Association conference; a certificate to display at your
school; and publicity in the media, including statewide and local press releases.
This interview should take around 60 minutes. Do you have any questions for me
before we begin?
A. Theory of Action and History
1. Can you briefly describe [using technology to increase parent involvement] at
your school?
2. What is the goal of [using technology to increase parent involvement]?
3. Please tell me about the history of [using technology to increase parent
involvement] at your school.
(Probe: How/why did it get started, who were the people initially involved in
developing the practice?)
145
4. Can you tell me a little about your role as principal with respect to [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
5. Who have been the main people involved with the planning and implementation of
[using technology to increase parent involvement]?
6. In your opinion, what factors have contributed to the successful implementation of
[using technology to increase parent involvement]?
7. How do you think that [using technology to increase parent involvement] will lead
to school improvement and higher student achievement?
B. Implementation Details
8. How long has [using technology to increase parent involvement] been in place?
9. How much start up/planning time was needed to implement [using technology to
increase parent involvement]?
10. How much planning or collaboration time on a monthly basis is needed to
maintain implementation of [using technology to increase parent involvement]?
11. What do you see as the next steps for ensuring sustainability of the [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
12. How do you know [using technology to increase parent involvement] is making a
difference? [What is the evidence of impact?]
13. What are the benefits of implementing [using technology to increase parent
involvement]?
(Probes: Benefits for students, staff, administrators, parents)
14. What are the challenges of implementing [using technology to increase parent
involvement]?
(Probes: Challenges for students, staff, administrators, parents)
15. What lessons have you learned by implementing [using technology to increase
parent involvement]?
C. Resource Requirements
16. How much of your budget is spent on [using technology to increase parent
involvement]?
146
17. What is the level of staff expertise required with respect to [using technology to
increase parent involvement]?
18. What facilities are needed to carry out [using technology to increase parent
involvement]?
19. How much professional development time has been devoted to implementing
[using technology to increase parent involvement]?
20. Do you think the training/professional development that has been conducted
meets the needs for people to implement [using technology to increase parent
involvement] effectively?
(Probe: What other types of PD do you think would be helpful to effectively
implement using technology to increase parent involvement?)
D. Recommended Resources for Additional Information
21. Are there any books that have been helpful to you in implementing [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
22. Are there any articles that have been helpful to you in implementing [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
23. Are there any websites that have been helpful to you in learning about [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
24. Are there any sources of technical assistance that have been helpful to you in
implementing [using technology to increase parent involvement]?
25. Additional comments:
[Closing]
Thank you very much for your time. Your comments and insights are invaluable for
our research.
147
APPENDIX D: ON-SITE TECHNOLOGY LEAD INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
School Name: ___________________________ Date:___________________
Name of Interview Subject:_________________________________________
Position:_________________________________________________________
Researcher: ______________________________________________________
Start Time: ________ End Time: _________ Total Time (minutes): _______
[Introduction]
Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I am working with the University of
Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. We are studying using
technology to increase parent involvements in California charter schools. Through a
nomination process, your school was selected as having success in/with [using
technology to increase parent involvement]. The purpose of this interview is to learn
more about [using technology to increase parent involvement] at your school.
The information from this research will be incorporated into a Web-based
compendium of using technology to increase parent involvements. The website is
hosted by USC’s Center on Educational Governance. The goal of the compendium is
to spread new knowledge and innovation about using technology to increase parent
involvements to inspire educators to improve school performance.
By participating in this study, your school will get recognition at the annual
California Charter Schools Association conference; a certificate to display at your
school; and publicity in the media, including statewide and local press releases.
This interview should take around 60 minutes. Do you have any questions for me
before we begin?
A. Theory of Action and History
1. Can you briefly describe [using technology to increase parent involvement] at
your school?
2. What is the goal of [using technology to increase parent involvement]?
148
3. Please tell me about the history of [using technology to increase parent
involvement] at your school.
(Probe: How/why did it get started, who were the people initially involved in
developing the practice?)
4. Can you tell me a little about your role as lead teacher with respect to [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
5. Who have been the main people involved with the planning and implementation of
[using technology to increase parent involvement]?
6. In your opinion, what factors have contributed to the successful implementation of
[using technology to increase parent involvement]?
7. How do you think that [using technology to increase parent involvement] will lead
to school improvement and higher student achievement?
B. Implementation Details
8. How long has [using technology to increase parent involvement] been in place?
9. How much start up/planning time was needed to implement [using technology to
increase parent involvement]?
10. How much planning or collaboration time on a monthly basis is needed to
maintain implementation of [using technology to increase parent involvement]?
11. What do you see as the next steps for ensuring sustainability of the [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
12. How do you know [using technology to increase parent involvement] is making a
difference? [What is the evidence of impact?]
13. What are the benefits of implementing [using technology to increase parent
involvement]?
(Probes: Benefits for students, staff, administrators, parents)
14. What are the challenges of implementing [using technology to increase parent
involvement]?
(Probes: Challenges for students, staff, administrators, parents)
15. What lessons have you learned by implementing [using technology to increase
parent involvement]?
149
C. Resource Requirements
16. How much of your budget is spent on [using technology to increase parent
involvement]?
17. What is the level of staff expertise required with respect to [using technology to
increase parent involvement]?
18. What facilities/technology are needed to carry out [using technology to increase
parent involvement]?
19. How much professional development time has been devoted to implementing
[using technology to increase parent involvement]?
20. Do you think the training/professional development that has been conducted
meets the needs for people to implement [using technology to increase parent
involvement] effectively?
(Probe: What other types of PD do you think would be helpful to implement using
technology to increase parent involvement effectively?)
D. Recommended Resources for Additional Information
21. Are there any books that have been helpful to you in implementing [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
22. Are there any articles that have been helpful to you in implementing [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
23. Are there any websites that have been helpful to you in learning about [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
24. Are there any sources of technical assistance that have been helpful to you in
implementing [using technology to increase parent involvement]?
25. Additional comments:
[Closing]
Thank you very much for your time. Your comments and insights are invaluable for
our research.
150
APPENDIX E: ON-SITE PARENT INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
School Name: ____________________________ Date:___________________
Name of Interview Subject:__________________________________________
Years at School:____________________________________________________
Researcher: _______________________________________________________
Start Time: ________ End Time: _________ Total Time (minutes): ________
[Introduction]
Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I am working with the University of
Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. We are studying using
technology to increase parent involvements in California charter schools. Through a
nomination process, your school was selected as having success in/with [using
technology to increase parent involvement]. The purpose of this interview is to learn
more about [using technology to increase parent involvement] at your school.
The information from this research will be incorporated into a Web-based
compendium of using technology to increase parent involvements. The website is
hosted by USC’s Center on Educational Governance. The goal of the compendium is
to spread new knowledge and innovation about using technology to increase parent
involvements to inspire educators to improve school performance.
By participating in this study, your school will get recognition at the annual
California Charter Schools Association conference; a certificate to display at your
school; and publicity in the media, including statewide and local press releases.
This interview should take only around 20-30 minutes. Is now a good time? (If not –
when would a better time be to talk with you?) Do you have any questions for me
before we begin?
A. Evidence of Impact
1. What has been the impact of [using technology to increase parent involvement] on
students?
(Probe: How do you know?)
2. What has been the impact of [using technology to increase parent involvement] on
parents?
(Probe: How do you know?)
151
3. What has been the impact of [using technology to increase parent involvement] on
other constituents/stakeholders (e.g. investors, community groups etc.)?
(Probe: How do you know?)
B. Lessons Learned
4. What benefits have you witnessed from the implementation of the [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
5. What challenges have you witnessed from the implementation of the [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
6. What recommendations would you make to other parents whose schools are
thinking about adopting your [using technology to increase parent involvement]?
C. Recommended Resources for Additional Information
7. Are there any books that have been helpful in learning about [using technology to
increase parent involvement]?
8. Are there any articles that have been helpful in learning about [using technology to
increase parent involvement]?
9. Are there any websites that have been helpful in learning about [using technology
to increase parent involvement]?
10. Additional comments:
[Closing]
Thank you very much for your time. Your comments and insights are invaluable for
our research.
152
APPENDIX F: ON-SITE TEACHER INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
School Name: ____________________________ Date:___________________
Name of Interview Subject:__________________________________________
Position:__________________________________________________________
Researcher: _______________________________________________________
Start Time: _______ End Time: ________ Total Time (minutes): ________
[Introduction]
Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I am working with the University of
Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. We are studying using
technology to increase parent involvements in California charter schools. Through a
nomination process, your school was selected as having success in/with [using
technology to increase parent involvement]. The purpose of this interview is to learn
more about [using technology to increase parent involvement] at your school.
The information from this research will be incorporated into a Web-based
compendium of using technology to increase parent involvements. The website is
hosted by USC’s Center on Educational Governance. The goal of the compendium is
to spread new knowledge and innovation about using technology to increase parent
involvements to inspire educators to improve school performance.
By participating in this study, your school will get recognition at the annual
California Charter Schools Association conference; a certificate to display at your
school; and publicity in the media, including statewide and local press releases.
This interview should only take 30-40 minutes. Do you have any questions for me
before we begin?
A. Evidence of Impact
1. What has been the impact of [using technology to increase parent involvement] on
students?
(Probe: How do you know?)
2. What has been the impact of [using technology to increase parent involvement] on
parents?
(Probe: How do you know?)
153
3. What has been the impact of [using technology to increase parent involvement] on
teachers?
(Probe: How do you know?)
4. What has been the impact of [using technology to increase parent involvement] on
other constituents/stakeholders (e.g., investors, community groups etc.)?
(Probe: How do you know?)
5. Was any system for measuring the success of [using technology to increase parent
involvement] adopted during the planning stages?
6. Are you aware of any research studies that confirm the impact of [using
technology to increase parent involvement] on student achievement? If yes, may we
please have copies?
B. Lessons Learned
7. What benefits have you experienced as a result of implementing [using technology
to increase parent involvement]?
(Probes: Benefits for students, staff, administrators, parents)
8. What challenges have you experienced while implementing the [using technology
to increase parent involvement]?
(Probes: Challenges for students, staff, administrators, parents)
9. Have there been any efforts to improve the effectiveness of [using technology to
increase parent involvement]? If yes, explain.
10. What efforts have been made to help sustain [using technology to increase parent
involvement] at your school?
11. What future steps are needed to ensure the sustainability of [using technology to
increase parent involvement]?
12. What recommendations would you make to other educators that are thinking
about adopting [using technology to increase parent involvement]?
C. Recommended Resources for Additional Information
13. Are there any books that have been helpful to you in implementing [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
154
14. Are there any articles that have been helpful to you in implementing [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
15. Are there any websites that have been helpful to you in learning about [using
technology to increase parent involvement]?
16. Are there any sources of technical assistance that have been helpful to you in
implementing [using technology to increase parent involvement]?
17. Additional comments:
[Closing]
Thank you very much for your time. Your comments and insights are invaluable for
our research.
155
APPENDIX G: ON-SITE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OBSERVATION
PROTOCOL
School Name: _________________________ Date: ____________________
Professional Development Topic: ___________________________________
Researcher: ______________________ Activity Location: ______________
Time Started: ______ Time Ended: _______ Total Time (minutes): ____
Number of Participants: _________
A. Professional Development Leadership
Who led training (check all that apply)?
Teacher (from the school site)
Administrator (from the school site)
Teacher from another school
Administrator from another school
University faculty member
Outside consultant (describe)
Other (describe)
1. List the names and positions of professional development session leaders:
B. Professional Development Session:
2. Describe the intended purpose of the professional development session.
3. List the agenda items for the professional development session.
(include a printed copy of the agenda, if available)
156
C. Structure of Activities during Professional Development Session
Structure
(lecture, small group, whole group, etc.)
Intended Purpose
4. Describe the content of the professional development session in detail:
(Probes: Key terms, theories and implementation issues related to using technology
to increase parent involvement)
5. List materials used for the professional development session
[Note: Collect all that are available]
Type of Material Description of Material
6. Additional comments:
157
APPENDIX H: SCHOOL DOCUMENT CHECKLIST
School Name: _________________ Date of Scheduled Site Visit: _________
Using technology to increase parent involvement:
__________________________________________________________________
Researcher: ______________________________________________________
Document Type Document
Title
Retrieval
Date
Charter (Petition):
Renewal Petition
Policy Documents Related to Using technology to
increase parent involvement
( e.g., parent handbook)
Handbook
(Faculty, Staff, Student, Parent)
Program Evaluations
(Related to Using technology to increase parent
involvement)
Other Assessment Data
(Related to Using technology to increase parent
involvement)
Other Documents
(Related to Using technology to increase parent
involvement)
158
APPENDIX I: SITE VISIT SCHEDULE
School Site Visit: Interview and Observation Schedule for Literacy
First Charter School
I would like your help in scheduling interviews for my site visit on ________,
2008. Here are a few guidelines to help with scheduling.
• I can begin as early as 10:00 AM and stay throughout the day.
• Interviews and observations can be in any order.
• Please allow for at least 15 minutes between interviews.
• Please feel free to contact Jan Vanderpool at 310.505.5961 or
jan.vanderpool@usc.edu with questions or concerns.
Position
Length of
Interview
Date &
Time
Name of Person(s) to be
Interviewed or Activity
to be Observed
Date Time
1. Interview w/Principal 60 min.
2. Interview w/
Promising Practice Lead
60 min.
3. Interview w/ Parent
#1 [Practice user]
45 min.
4. Promising Practice
Observation #1
60 min.
5. Interview w/Teacher
#1
[Practice user]
45 min.
6. Interview w/ Parent
#2 [Practice user]
45 min.
7. Interview w/Teacher
#2 [Practice user]
45 min.
8. Interview w/ Parent
#3 [Practice user]
45 min.
9. Professional
Development Session-
Technology component
159
Please send me the completed scheduling grid by 14 March 2008.
You may fax it to me at: 323.777.2669
or, you may email it to me at: jan.vanderpool@usc.edu
Thank you.
Jan Pittman Vanderpool
160
APPENDIX J: SITE VISIT CONSENT FORM
University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education
INFORMATION SHEET FOR NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH
Using Technology to Increase Parent Involvement: Exploring
Using technology to increase parent involvements in Two
California Charter Schools
Principal
You are asked to participate in a research study conducted by Jan Vanderpool and
Priscilla Wohlstetter, Ph.D., from the Rossier School of Education at the University
of Southern California. Results from this study will contribute to Jan Vanderpool’s
doctoral dissertation. You were selected as a possible participant in this study
because you are involved with the implementation of using technology to increase
parent involvement. A total of 2 subjects will be selected from principals at a
promising-practices California charter school to participate. Your participation is
voluntary. Please take as much time as you need to read the information sheet. You
may also decide to discuss it with your family or friends. You will be given a copy of
this form.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
We are asking you to take part in a research study because we are trying to learn
more about the implementation of using technology to increase parent involvements
in using technology to increase parent involvement in high-performing California
charter schools.
Completion and return of the questionnaire or response to the interview
questions will constitute consent to participate in this research project
PROCEDURES
You will be asked to participate in a one-time pre-site visit telephone interview
lasting approximately 5-10 minutes regarding the history of using technology to
increase parent involvement at this school site and the identification of personnel
involved in the implementation of the using technology to increase parent
involvement. This telephone interview will consist of approximately 6 questions.
You will subsequently be asked to participate in a one-time, one-hour interview to
discuss, in more detail, the history of writing across the curriculum at this school and
details of implementation. There are approximately twenty-six questions in the
161
interview protocol. Interviews will be conducted in your on-campus office. You
will also be asked for access to one professional development meeting for
observation.
POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS
There are no anticipated risks to your participation; you may experience some
discomfort at completing answering questions during the interview or you may be
inconvenienced from taking time out of your day to complete the interview. You
may choose not to answer any questions that make you uncomfortable or you may
end your participation at any time.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO SUBJECTS AND/OR TO SOCIETY
You may not directly benefit from your participation in this research study.
Results of this study may contribute to other schools’ improvement of their
educational practices in writing across the curriculum.
PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
You will not receive any payment for your participation in this research study.
POTENTIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The investigators of this research do not have any financial interest in the sponsor or
in the product being studied.
CONFIDENTIALITY
Any information that is obtained in connection with this study and that can be
identified with you will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your
permission or as required by law. The information collected about you will be coded
using a fake name (pseudonym) or initials and numbers, for example abc-123, etc.
The information which has your identifiable information will be kept separately from
the rest of your data.
Only members of the research team will have access to the data associated with this
study. The data will be stored in the investigator’s office in a locked file
cabinet/password protected.
The data will be stored for three years after the study has been completed and then
destroyed. Audio-tapes will be destroyed upon transcription. Identifiable
information will be coded. You may also choose not to be audio-taped and still
remain in the study.
When the results of the research are published or discussed in conferences, no
information will be included that would reveal your identity.
162
PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL
You can choose whether to be in this study or not. If you volunteer to be in this
study, you may withdraw at any time without consequences of any kind. You may
also refuse to answer any questions you don’t want to answer and still remain in the
study. The investigator may withdraw you from this research if circumstances arise
which warrant doing so.
ALTERNATIVES TO PARTICIPATION
Your alternative is to not participate.
RIGHTS OF RESEARCH SUBJECTS
You may withdraw your consent at any time and discontinue participation without
penalty. You are not waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies because of your
participation in this research study. If you have any questions about your rights as a
study subject or you would like to speak with someone independent of the research
team to obtain answers to questions about the research, or in the event the research
staff can not be reached, please contact the University Park IRB, Office of the Vice
Provost for Research Advancement, Stonier Hall, Room 224a, Los Angeles, CA
90089-1146, (213) 821-5272 or upirb@usc.edu
IDENTIFICATION OF INVESTIGATORS
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact
Dr. Priscilla Wohlstetter, USC Rossier School of Education, Los Angeles, CA
90089-4039, wohlstet@usc.edu or 213/740-0697 or name, email, phone (optional)
163
APPENDIX K: CHARTER SCHOOL PROFILE
Charter School Profile
Researcher: _____________________
Date: _____________________
School Information
School Name: ______________________________________________________
Address: ___________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Phone #: ________________________ Fax #: _________________________
Principal’s Name: __________________________________________________
Contact Information (if different from Principal): __________________________
Email Address: _____________________________________________________
School Web site: ____________________________________________________
Using technology to increase parent involvement: __________________________
Charter Information
Type of School: Conversion_______ Start up_______
Year Chartered: __________ Year Opened: _______
Charter Authorizer: _________________________________________________
Student Population Information
Student Enrollment: Current _______ Projected _______
Grades Served: Current _______ Projected _______
Enrollment by Subgroups (#/%):
Ethnicity (#) Special Populations (%)
African American _______ Free/Reduced Lunch _______
Asian _______ Special Needs ______
Hispanic _______ ELL _______
White _______ Other _______
Other _______ (Specify Other______________)
(Specify Other______________)
164
Teacher Information
Number of Full-time Administrators: _______
Number of Full-time Teachers: _______
Teacher Union Membership: Yes _______ No _______
Budget Information
Per Pupil Spending (Year): ___________________
165
APPENDIX L:
University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education
INFORMATION SHEET FOR NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH
Using Technology to Increase Parent Involvement: Exploring
Promising Practices in Two California Charter Schools
You are asked to participate in a research study conducted by Jan Vanderpool and
Priscilla Wohlstetter, Ph.D., from the Rossier School of Education at the University
of Southern California. Results from this study will contribute to Jan Vanderpool’s
doctoral dissertation. You were selected as a possible participant in this study
because you are involved with the implementation of promising practices in the area
of using technology to increase parent involvement. Parents, teachers and school
principles will be selected from a promising-practices California charter school to
participate. Your participation is voluntary. Please take as much time as you need to
read the information sheet. You may also decide to discuss it with your family or
friends. You will be given a copy of this form.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
We are asking you to take part in a research study because we are trying to learn
more about the implementation of promising practices in using technology to
increase parent involvement in high-performing California charter schools.
Completion and return of the questionnaire or response to the interview
questions will constitute consent to participate in this research project
PROCEDURES
For school principles, you will be asked to participate in a one-time pre-site visit
telephone interview lasting approximately 5-10 minutes regarding the history of
using technology to increase parent involvement at this school site and the
identification of personnel involved in the implementation of the promising practice.
This telephone interview will consist of approximately 6 questions.
All subjects will be asked to participate in a one-time, one-hour interview to discuss,
in more detail, the history of writing across the curriculum at this school and details
of implementation. There are approximately twenty-six questions in the interview
protocol. Interviews will be conducted in your on-campus office. If you meet the
criteria, you will also be asked for access to one professional development meeting
for observation.
166
POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS
There are no anticipated risks to your participation; you may experience some
discomfort at completing answering questions during the interview or you may be
inconvenienced from taking time out of your day to complete the interview. You
may choose not to answer any questions that make you uncomfortable or you may
end your participation at any time.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO SUBJECTS AND/OR TO SOCIETY
You may not directly benefit from your participation in this research study.
Results of this study may contribute to other schools’ improvement of their
educational practices in writing across the curriculum.
PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
You will not receive any payment for your participation in this research study.
POTENTIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The investigators of this research do not have any financial interest in the sponsor or
in the product being studied.
CONFIDENTIALITY
Any information that is obtained in connection with this study and that can be
identified with you will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your
permission or as required by law. The information collected about you will be coded
using a fake name (pseudonym) or initials and numbers, for example abc-123, etc.
The information which has your identifiable information will be kept separately from
the rest of your data.
Only members of the research team will have access to the data associated with this
study. The data will be stored in the investigator’s office in a locked file
cabinet/password protected.
The data will be stored for three years after the study has been completed and then
destroyed. Audio-tapes will be destroyed upon transcription. Identifiable
information will be coded. You may also choose not to be audio-taped and still
remain in the study.
When the results of the research are published or discussed in conferences, no
information will be included that would reveal your identity.
PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL
You can choose whether to be in this study or not. If you volunteer to be in this
study, you may withdraw at any time without consequences of any kind. You may
167
also refuse to answer any questions you don’t want to answer and still remain in the
study. The investigator may withdraw you from this research if circumstances arise
which warrant doing so.
ALTERNATIVES TO PARTICIPATION
Your alternative is to not participate.
RIGHTS OF RESEARCH SUBJECTS
You may withdraw your consent at any time and discontinue participation without
penalty. You are not waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies because of your
participation in this research study. If you have any questions about your rights as a
study subject or you would like to speak with someone independent of the research
team to obtain answers to questions about the research, or in the event the research
staff can not be reached, please contact the University Park IRB, Office of the Vice
Provost for Research Advancement, Stonier Hall, Room 224a, Los Angeles, CA
90089-1146, (213) 821-5272 or upirb@usc.edu
IDENTIFICATION OF INVESTIGATORS
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact
Dr. Priscilla Wohlstetter, USC Rossier School of Education, Los Angeles, CA
90089-4039, wohlstet@usc.edu or 213/740-0697.
168
APPENDIX M: CONTENT OF COMPENDIUM: TYPES OF DATA TO BE
COLLECTED
Goal of PP
Description of PP
Theory of Action for PP
Implementation Details:
History
Time (start-up/planning time; time PP has been in place)
Lessons learned (benefits, challenges, next steps for sustainability)
Evidence of impact
Resource Requirements:
Budget information
Staffing (level and type of staff expertise needed)
Facility/space
Professional development/training
Other (e.g., technology)
Supporting Documents and Materials (printable in PDF format):
Lessons plans
Parent contracts
Video to support PP
Staff development manuals
Evaluation reports (data demonstrating results of PP)
Recommended Resources for Additional Information:
Books
Articles
Web sites
Sources of technical assistance
Potential funding sources
169
Table A1. Triangulation of Information Across Data Sources
Completion Interview
Observation Review Research Questions and
Data Type
Nomination
Form
Principal
Pre-Site
Principal
On-site
Technology
Chief
Office
Administration
Parents
Teachers
Teacher
Professional
Development
Document
Archives
1-How do high-performing
charter schools use
technology to increase parent
involvement?
Description of using
technology to increase
parent involvement
X X X X
Goal X X X X
Theory of action X X X X
History X X X
2-How are the charter
school’s technology
resources allocated to
increase parent involvement?
Time X X X X
Budget X X X
Staffing X X X X
Facilities, equipment X X
Professional development X X X X
3-What challenges have the
charter schools faced in
using technology to increase
parent involvement and how
were they addressed?
Lessons learned: What not to
do
X X X X X X
What evidence exists that
using technology to increase
parent involvement has
resulted in positive
educational outcomes?
Implementation details:
evidence of impact
X X X X X
Implementation details:
Benefits-Sustainability
X X X X X
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
This study explores the promising practice of using technology to increase parent involvement in California charter schools. Charter schools, as laboratories for innovation, are viewed as a response to changes in society along political, racial, socio-economic and cultural lines and as an alternative to failing public school systems. The study was conducted with the guidance of the University of Southern California Center for Educational Governance and will add to its on-line compendium of promising practices.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Vanderpool, Jan Pittman
(author)
Core Title
A study of promising practices in two California charter schools: using technology to increase parent involvement
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Education (Psychology)
Publication Date
09/26/2008
Defense Date
08/28/2008
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
charter schools,Education,OAI-PMH Harvest,parent involvement,Technology,Urban Education
Place Name
California
(states),
educational facilities: Ivy Academia
(geographic subject),
educational facilities: Literacy First Charter School
(geographic subject),
El Cajon
(city or populated place),
Woodland Hills
(city or populated place)
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Wohlstetter, Priscilla (
committee chair
), Brewer, Dominic J. (
committee member
), Seli, Helena (
committee member
)
Creator Email
jan.vanderpool@usc.edu,janvanderpool@gmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m1615
Unique identifier
UC1168836
Identifier
etd-vanderpool-1972 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-95768 (legacy record id),usctheses-m1615 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-vanderpool-1972.pdf
Dmrecord
95768
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Vanderpool, Jan Pittman
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Repository Name
Libraries, University of Southern California
Repository Location
Los Angeles, California
Repository Email
cisadmin@lib.usc.edu
Tags
charter schools
parent involvement