Parent Involvement: What to Expect

Some parents, but by no means all, want to become actively involved in their children's preschools. There is good research linking parent involvement at home in your own child's education to student learning. But despite all the time and effort put into recruiting and organizing parents to become involved in schools generally, there is little evidence that parent volunteerism at this level helps children's cognitive learning at school, once the starting levels of attainment are factored out. To the best of our knowledge, there is no good research about volunteer effects on other aspects of child development. So it's really all about your values, your social needs and your time constraints. If both parents work outside the home in your family or if you have multiple children, you may have serious constraints on how much you can volunteer, even if you wish that you could do more. Other parents find that they really want a preschool where many, most or all parents are very involved. Some prefer a cooperative preschool because of the strong parent community and increased influence of parents over school activities. The parent relationships that arise from volunteering satisfy very important social needs for some parents.

There are three major roles parent volunteers typically play in preschools:

• Helping with school's daily life: volunteering in the classroom, chaperoning field trips and the like.
• Decision-making: volunteering as a member of a preschool advisory or governing board and similarly empowered roles.
• Fundraising: organizing or participating in fundraising activities, such as preschool carnivals, book fairs, candy and wrapping paper sales, and so forth.

Parent Involvement and The Preschool Search