By the time students have reached high school – particularly their crucial sophomore and junior years – they are generally familiar with the routines of active learning and assessment and they have become accustomed to and integrated into the school’s culture and community. As these students continue to near the crossroad in their life that is high school graduation, it is important that schools actively involve families in the education of their children.

Educational studies have demonstrated time and time again that students whose families are actively involved in their education are more likely to graduate high school and more likely to pursue and succeed in post-secondary studies. Many schools are well aware of the imbalance in parental involvement among elementary, middle, and high schools. Research numbers consistency solidify this claim: the older the students, the less involved the parents.

Yet, as critical as parental involvement is during a student’s elementary and middle school years, this involvement is just a crucial for the high school student. In most schools, high school grades are the only scores reflected in a student’s GPA – a critical factor in the post-secondary education search, particularly in its ability to open up doors for monetary assistance through grants and scholarships. In high school, a student is forming lifelong learning, studying, and research skills and habits as well as dealing with a continual evolution of their social skills – and all, not some, but all research shows that parental involvement means improvement in all of these categories.

Schools must make a point to involve parents, as well as attract parents who are resistant or have other priorities, to take an active role in their child’s education leading up to their high school graduation. Schools must extend their influence outside of the classroom and into the homes. Effective and consistent communication between teachers and parents, providing resources for families to have learning activities at home (and giving them the motivation to actually do it), making parents and students both accountable for illegal student absences, and building a community where volunteer opportunities in the school are seemingly endless are all key in developing a school as a positive and productive resource for a community, rather than simply a place where parents send their teenagers for the day - a hazing ritual on the way to adulthood. Developing ways to involve otherwise resistant parents while serve to foster a positive environment, give teachers and administration more influence needed to be successful in any community, and increase parental accountability in relation to their child’s success.