Date of Award
2004
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Fischler Graduate School of Education and Human Services
Advisor
Karen Kimball
Committee Member
Lucille Beisner
Committee Member
Barbara Packer
Keywords
academic achievement, at-home activities, elementary school students, I Care Positive Parenting and Mentoring Curriculum, intervention programs, mentoring, parent influence, parent participation, parent school relationship, parent-teacher conferences, parental involvement, parents as teachers, positive parenting, reading achievement, reading comprehension, school-family partnerships, student achievement, TAAS, Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, fourth-grade students, Texas schools
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to raise the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills reading achievement scores of Pease Elementary School’s 4th-grade students. This would be done by positive parenting and mentoring as an effective intervention that would influence the performance of elementary students.
In the past, parental involvement was measured by the number of parents who attended school programs and collected picture money. According to Pease School’s parental involvement data, I saw a low level of direct parental involvement. Only 16% of the 4th-grade students’ parents said that they often read to or with their children daily, 6% said they allowed their children to read to them daily, and 91% said that their children had trouble understanding what they read sometimes. It became evident that low direct parental involvement and low TAAS reading achievement scores went hand in hand.
The I Care Positive Parenting and Mentoring Curriculum was an intervention solution that could increase student achievement. This study involved two fourth-grade teachers and 32 students.
The student preintervention survey showed that before the intervention, 59% of parents did not participate in at-home activities with their children, and 97% of the parents did attend parent-teacher conferences concerning their children. All of the teachers (100%) and 78% of students agreed that the students had trouble understanding what they read.
After the intervention, 75% of the parents participated in at-home activities with their children, and 100% of parents continued to attend parent-teacher conferences. Both teachers said 100% of their students read the recommended books and 94% of students said that they and their parents read all of the recommended books together.