Giving Compass' Take:

• Michael Petrilli explains how schools can communicate more effectively with parents through report cards and conferences to improve student outcomes. 

• Do the stresses of teaching - including low pay, large classes, and lack of support - make communication more difficult? How can funders help schools better serve families? 

• Learn more about grade inflation. 

“Parental engagement” is one of those self-evidently appealing ideas for improving education. Who doesn’t want to engage parents? What child isn’t well served by more of it? Yet doing it well is hard, because it means shooting straight with parents about how their daughters and sons are performing, and committing to making hard changes and expending real resources to help those children do better. It’s not a program. It’s a promise: to be honest and do right by all kids.

Schools that take parental engagement seriously first look at how they are communicating to parents about their children. What most requires clear communication is student performance, for which there are two time-honored means of sharing news — good or bad — with moms and dads: report cards and parent-teacher conferences. Every school, then, should ask itself: Are we maximizing the impact of these communications vehicles? The honest answer in many communities? Probably not.

Start with report cards. A new study by American University professor Seth Gershenson for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a think tank I lead, examined the relationship between scores on a high school end-of-course algebra exam and student grades. While test scores and grades are certainly meant to measure different aspects of a student’s academic performance, we might be concerned if students regularly receive glowing report cards while not demonstrating proficiency on external assessments of their content knowledge.

Schools should look hard at the report cards they send home. Are they truthful? Candid? When kids are not on track for college or career success, do they say so? And do they provide ideas to parents on what they should do, and what the school will do, to help a student get back on track?

None of that is easy, which is why genuine parental engagement is hard. It means being honest when kids are off track — and doing something to fix the problem.

Read the full article about how schools can communicate more effectively with parents by Michael Petrilli The 74.