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NCES: 98032 February 1998 |
Individual schools may be limited by their financial and staff resources in engaging parents in their programs and activities. While many states have recently passed laws on different aspects of family involvement in education, some have developed family partnership programs with schools that include small grants for new activities, home/school coordinators, family resource rooms, and other innovations (Epstein 1991). In this survey, schools were asked if they receive assistance on parent involvement activities from either their district or state in the following ways: setting parent involvement policies, providing technical assistance to staff through workshops and other forms of training, providing staff to assist in implementing programs, and funding parent programs. Thirty-eight percent of elementary schools reported receiving financial support from their school districts; 57 to 65 percent reported receiving each of the other types of assistance from the district (Figure 11).
It may be difficult for schools to distinguish state assistance from district-level support. About one-third of schools reported receiving state assistance in setting parent involvement policies and providing technical assistance for parent programs to school staff. About one fifth of schools reported that the state provides staff or funding to assist in parent programs. However, about one-third of schools did not know whether they received any assistance from the state.
With respect to district support, large and moderately sized schools, city schools, and schools with poverty concentrations and minority enrollments of at least 50 percent generally were more likely to report receiving aid for parent involvement activities than were small schools, rural schools, schools with poverty concentrations of less than 25 percent, and schools with minority enrollments of less than 20 percent (Table 11). In general, state support was more likely to be reported by schools with poverty concentrations and minority enrollments of at least 50 percent than by schools with poverty concentrations of less than 25 percent, and schools with minority enrollments of less than 5 percent (Table 12).