Brief texts can help schools build a stronger partnership with parents of middle school students.

Early adolescence brings with it the perfect conditions for students to become disengaged with academics. For many students, this period coincides with the transition from elementary school into middle school, which offers a more complex academic environment than elementary school: Teachers tend to face different kinds of time and resource constraints, and students tend to experience stricter discipline, less robust teacher-student relationships, and fewer opportunities for autonomous decision making (Anderman & Maehr, 1994; Duchesne et al., 2009). Further, this transition occurs alongside a series of physical, cognitive, and emotional changes that result, for students, in increased desires for autonomy (Anderman & Maehr, 1994; Sanders, 2013) and changes in the parent-child relationship (Eccles et al., 1993).

Although parental engagement in the middle school years remains an important influence on student achievement (Hill & Tyson, 2009), it tends to be weaker than during the elementary years (Smith et al., 2019). Often, parents come to realize that the ways they connected with the elementary school have become less effective (Hill & Tyson, 2009). Levels of trust between teachers and parents declines (Adams & Christenson, 2000), and parents and teachers are left uncertain about how they can work together to support students during this time of transition.

Effective parent engagement for middle school

Two high-impact parent engagement strategies at the middle school level have emerged from the research. First, evidence suggests that parents and teachers should support students’ autonomy and developing sense of independence by collaboratively setting behavioral guidelines (Bronstein, Ginsburg, & Herrera, 2005). Such guidelines are most successful when adults seek adolescents’ input, communicate confidence in their abilities, and provide empathy and the chance to reflect when mistakes occur (Grolnick et al., 2014).

Second, parents of middle school students should stay involved by communicating their belief in the value of education, linking schoolwork to current events, supporting their children’s educational and occupational goals, and discussing learning and study strategies with students. This type of engagement, sometimes referred to as academic socialization, consistently demonstrates the most significant positive effects on all students, from all backgrounds (Hill & Tyson, 2009; Jeynes, 2016, 2017). For their part, teachers should communicate essential information about academic content and learning strategies, so that parents are empowered to emphasize academic socialization in conversations with their children.

Researchers have highlighted the vital role of parent-teacher trust in supporting student achievement.

Researchers have also highlighted the vital role of parent-teacher trust in supporting student achievement. In comparisons among schools that are similar on a range of other factors (such as student backgrounds, school size, and neighborhood wealth), those where teacher-parent trust is stronger have students who attend school more regularly, demonstrate more perseverance in learning, and show more academic growth over time (Bryk & Schneider, 2002). And when teachers trust parents, they are more likely to experiment with new instructional techniques and hold their students to high standards (Hoy, Tarter, & Hoy, 2006).

In our own recent research, we’ve explored whether feelings of trust between teachers and parents can be strengthened through the use of brief communications about student autonomy and academic socialization. Specifically in the winter and early spring of 2021, our team conducted a pilot study with a small, urban public charter school in a midwestern U.S. city, focusing on how teachers and other school staff might better engage parents as partners at the middle school level. In addition to providing 20 teachers with two professional development sessions about developmentally appropriate parent engagement practices for early adolescents, we supplied the teachers with a series of short messages to send by text to parents of their homeroom students twice per week for six consecutive weeks. The messages described research-based strategies parents could use to spark conversations with their children about the value of education, to connect schoolwork to current events and future goals, and to support students’ self-regulation and autonomy. As shown in Table 1, each message contained one strategy and asked parents to respond to the message with a thumbs up if they tried that strategy with their child. They were designed to place a minimal burden on teachers to send and to be easy for parents to use in everyday conversations with their children.

How brief messages affected engagement

We collected several types of survey data from students, parents, and teachers. Although our study was too small to test for statistical significance, we observed some encouraging trends, suggesting the text messages had a positive effect.

For one thing, the students reported that their parents encouraged them to express their feelings more often during family conversations, and they said they had more frequent family talks about their future plans, which suggests that communications from teachers may have prompted a greater frequency and higher quality of family conversations related to students’ education.

Students also reported decreased feelings of conflict between their homes and school and an increased sense of belonging to their school community, which is an important indicator of school engagement (Juvonen, 2006, Pope & Miles, 2022). This would seem to support the idea that parents’ promotion of academic socialization can affect children’s feelings of belonging and subsequent efforts in school. Further, our data suggest that students’ overall sense of belonging at school increased as the study went on.

Educators sent messages to parents inviting them to engage in age-appropriate, supportive conversations with their children in ways and at times that could easily fit into the family’s routine.

Over the intervention period, data from teachers suggested that they felt more confident overall in promoting positive academic engagement with students and parents. They also felt more adept at engaging students with low motivation levels and at helping students value education and believe that they can do well in school. Teachers also felt more confident in assisting parents in discussing learning strategies and educational goals with their middle schoolers, and they felt increased trust in parents by the end of the intervention, indicating that the intervention practices may have encouraged them to view parents as helpful partners in boosting students’ educational outcomes. Notably, of the 20 teachers who participated, 13 sent all communications to parents, and 17 sent more than 80% of the messages, suggesting that the brief duration of this intervention and the relatively small time investment made this a feasible strategy for teachers who already have a heavy workload.

Our data also suggest that parents recognized the school’s effort to keep them informed and felt more trust in school staff throughout the intervention. Parent reports also showed an overall increase in their confidence in teaching their children to enjoy school, a finding that is especially promising given the importance of parents in promoting students’ academic engagement and outcomes (Mo & Singh, 2008). Because students’ interest in school generally declines during adolescence and over the school year (Eccles et al., 1993; Ryan & Deci, 2020), an intervention that can increase students’ interest and enjoyment in school is especially important during these years.

Another important takeaway from our work is that parents indicated a preference for communicating with teachers via email, Remind (a messaging system that de-identifies phone numbers), and text over other forms of communication. Although our sample was small, our selected modes of teacher messaging seemed to match parents’ communication preferences, which may have contributed to its success. Other schools and communities should consider their parents’ preferred modes of communication if they try to implement this strategy.

Implications and recommendations

The dual pandemics of COVID-19 and violence experienced by communities of color have eroded the trust between communities and schools (Horsford et al., 2021; Mapp & Bergman, 2021). Therefore, building trust is a critical priority for schools. In our small pilot study, educators sent messages to parents inviting them to engage in age-appropriate, supportive conversations with their children in ways and at times that could easily fit into the family’s routine. This brief intervention suggests that even small efforts at positive partnership may have the potential to build trust and increase confidence. Further, when parents responded with a simple “like” or “thumbs up,” teachers were able to see that their message was received and implemented and to imagine these interactions between parents and students, cementing their belief in parents’ willingness to be partners in supporting the children’s education.

School leaders should consider putting consistent and straightforward systems in place that promote brief two-way communication between schools and parents as a way to build collective trust (Bachman et al., 2021). Messages that emphasize the importance of home-based parent engagement in education should be prioritized, as this is the most impactful and developmentally appropriate form of parent engagement (Hill & Tyson, 2009). Finally, communication is more effective when established early and sent regularly, solidifying the connection between school and home.

Local education agencies (LEAs) also have a role to play in building effective partnerships with parents of middle schoolers. First, they should adopt a streamlined home-school communication policy for middle schools and provide the tools and resources needed to implement it, including apps for sending brief messages and guidance on how to use them. Communication policies should be clear and reasonable for educators and parents and incorporate efficient and effective communications sent from a consistent platform based on family preferences, allowing for the communication of impactful, easy to use, and developmentally appropriate strategies families can enact at home (Kraft & Rodgers, 2015; Smythe-Leistico & Page, 2018).

Finally, district and school communication policies should go hand in hand with professional learning opportunities on strategies for partnering with families to support middle school students. Such strategies should be aligned with the district’s overall instructional program (Newmann et al., 2001), and the district’s academic policy should support the developmental needs of middle schoolers (Bachman et al., 2021). By adapting parental engagement practices of the school and home to the changing needs of the student and the more complex environment of middle school, parents, teachers, and especially their students can all benefit from a coordinated, trusting, and reciprocal partnership.

References

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This article appears in the April 2022 issue of Kappan, Vol. 103, No. 7, pp. 18-22.