What Research Says About...
The Role that Parents Can
Play in Postsecondary Planning
Parents’ roles in their children’s schooling begin to change as students enter middle school. Activities such as helping with homework, attending school meetings, and volunteering at schools decline as students leave the elementary grades (U.S. Department of Education, 2001). This change has been attributed partly to parents’ belief that they can no longer assist their children with more challenging subject matter and with adolescents seeking greater independence from the home (Eccles and Harold, 1993). However, the fact that parents’ involvement is less visible at school does not necessarily imply that they have stopped caring about their children’s academic progress. Instead, once children reach middle and high school, parent involvement takes on different forms. It often includes activities such as discussions between parents and school personnel and parents and adolescents about school and plans for the future (Hill and Taylor, 2004). Epstein and Sanders (2002) found that strong academic outcomes among middle and high school students were associated with parents and school personnel discussing the child’s schooling and future plans.
Since postsecondary planning often involves discussions about future plans and options, it provides a natural mechanism for parents to be involved in their children’s education in middle and high school. Tornatzky et al. (2002) point to four ways in which Latino parents and students can take an active role in preparing for college, long before the final year of high school. These include choosing to stay in school, taking a demanding curriculum, learning about colleges and college life, and finding a way to pay for college. Wimberly and Noeth (2004) specifically recommend that parents should be involved in course selection, interpretation of test information, college admissions discussion, college visits, and financial aid planning. Additionally, Plank and Jordan (1996) showed that such measures as parent-school communication, parent communication with other parents, and parental encouragement to take the SAT or ACT have strong positive effects on students’ postsecondary enrollment.
