PARENT INVOLVEMENT PROGRAM INCLUDING COMMUNICATION TO PARENTS INTEGRATED WITH A PARENT EDUCATION PROGRAM AND ITS EFFECT ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT, CLASSROOM CONDUCT, STUDY HABITS AND ATTITUDES

The purpose of this study was to determine if a parent involvement program entitled Parent Communication Plus Program (PCPP) would significantly influence student academic achievement (GPA and achievement scores), conduct, and study habits and attitudes. The design of the fourteen week study was a Randomized Control Group Pretest Posttest Design. The experiment site was Boca Raton Christian School, a college preparatory private school with an enrollment of 475 students in grades K-12. Ninety students, selected from the population in grades 6-12 who fell in the lower fortieth percentile based on grade point average (GPA), were randomly assigned to three groups of thirty each. Each study group consisted of students and their parents. Two of the three study groups received the PCPP treatment with the third group serving as the control. The unique feature of the PCPP treatment was that in addition to reporting the students' recent progress, the treatment included a parent education component. Group A received communication twice a week in the form of a phone call and a mailed progress report. Group B received a call one week and a mailed report the next. Each phone call was structured to cover four essential points: parent curriculum designed to help parents be more effective in helping their youngster in school, rapport building, progress reporting, and task assignment. Pretest and posttest data were collected on the four major dependent variables. Study instruments included the California Achievement Test, the Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes, and the students' report cards for conduct and GPA values. Analysis of the data included a one-way analysis of variance, a posteriori contrasts, and analysis of covariance with a multiple classification analysis. At the end of the study, completion of a feedback questionnaire was requested from parents who received a PCPP treatment. The conclusion supported the hypothesis that the PCPP variable had a significant effect on GPA. Conduct, achievement scores, and study habits and attitudes were not significantly affected.