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Article Excerpt
Abstract
This paper describes the evolution, activity, and student outcomes of a three year project which focused on parental involvement to address student needs of middle grade students in a school district in Kent County Delaware. Along with these reports, some recommendations are offered for future projects to consider. The remarkable success of the students who participated in this project lead the project administrators to hope that similar projects might be developed nationwide.
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Through a three year programmatic evolution, a project was developed to assist middle grades students in the Caesar Rodney School District in Kent County Delaware. The underlying rationale, the evolution, and the final results of this project are presented in this report. It is hoped, since this project was successful, variations of it will be replicated nationally and a greater number of students served.
Program History and Background
Background Literature Mentoring is commonly promoted as an effective tool in the realm of education for both students and their parents (Kram, 1985; Mitstifer, Wenberg and Schatz, 1994; O'Neill, Wagner and Gomez, 1996; Phillips-Jones,1982; Weigel and Martin, 1996). Mentoring which is intended to support parents can take place in many different locales (Olds, Henderson, Tatelbaum, & Chamberlin, 1988; Ware, Osofsky, Eberhart-Wright, & Leichman, 1987). Parental involvement in their children's education has been promoted by educators and the federal government for decades (Merenda, 1989; Rutherford, Anderson and Billing, 1997) and has proven extremely effective (Berger, 1991; Finn, 1993; Lueder, 1989; Masten, 1994; Nuckolls, 1991; Peng and Lee, 1992; Pipher in Scherer, 1996 and 1998; Rosow, 1991; Vandegrift and Greene, 1992). Historically successful programs promoting parental involvement include: the Parents as Teachers Program (developed in Missouri); Head Start; HOPE (Home-Oriented Preschool Education); the National Network of Partnership-2000 Schools at Johns Hopkins University; the Arizona At-Risk Pilot Project, at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy; and the Tennessee Learning Is Homegrown/MegaSkills Program.
Program Formulation In an overly simplistic description, the projects created collaborative efforts between university faculty (mathematics, language arts, family and consumer sciences, and counseling), K-12 public school educators (mathematics, language arts, and science), university student tutors, and school and district administrators to support parent and their children in the learning of mathematics and language arts and in student preparation for the Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) standardized testing. The primary product created by this project were Saturday and Afternoon Prep Academies, in which participating students, and parents would attend for tutorial assistance in academic subjects (mathematics, reading, writing, and science). These tutorial sessions were staffed by university and middle grade faculty and students from the university. Through the collaboration of the middle grade teachers and the university faculty, the content of the tutorial assistance was individualized for each student according to his or her respective needs.
Year 1
In 1998, two professors at Delaware State University began to develop a program incorporating a unique paradigm to assist middle school students with academic needs. Because of the large number of middle school students at risk of failing mathematics and language arts and potentially scoring poorly on the Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP), it was believed that the students needed additional support structures in order to strengthen their academic skills. It was also believed that a significant component for the most effective and efficient means of assisting these students would be to simultaneously assist their respective parents with the same subject matter. Thus, students could receive continual academic support provided by parents at home. This program would enlist university faculty and students to respectively teach mathematics, language arts, and parenting and coping skills to parents and middle grade students. Integrated into this program was a concern for developing mentoring relationships between university student tutors and middle grade students. Simultaneous to this program, the Principal of Fifer Middle School in Caesar Rodney School District in Kent County Delaware was in the throws of developing a program to assist academically at-risk students at her school. When she contacted Delaware State University regarding instructional support for her funded project, serendipity struck and a trio of like-minded educators was formed.
Through collaboration among the university faculty and the principal, a small pilot program...
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