Parent Input Through School Councils

The majority of public elementary schools (79 percent) reported that they have an advisory group or policy council that includes parents (Table 4) Inclusion of parents in such an advisory group appears to be related to the size of the school and the percent of minority students enrolled in the school. Specifically, small schools are less likely than moderately sized or large schools to include parents on such councils, whereas schools with minority enrollments of 20 percent or more are more likely to include parents than are schools with minority enrollments of under 5 percent. Schools in the West are also more likely to include parents in an advisory group than are schools in the Northeast and Central regions of the country. These data on advisory groups were used to determine whether a relationship existed between schools providing a formal group in which parents had more of a say in school matters, and the extent to which schools reported actually considering parent input in school decisionmaking. With the exception of decisions about monitoring or evaluating teachers, schools with advisory groups or policy councils that included parents were significantly more likely to consider parent input to a great or moderate extent when compared with schools without these kinds of groups (Table 5).

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