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Families are indispensible partners with educators in the schooling of children with disabilities.
When educators and families work together, children with disabilities are more likely to
experience success in school and achieve their goals. The role that families play in partnering
with educators to support increased achievement and better results for children with
disabilities is well documented (Christenson, 2004; de Carvallo, 2001; Epstein, 2001).
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 2004 establishes a method of accountability for states and local school systems that requires measurement on indicators of performance. The indicators are intended to reflect performance in the implementation of IDEA. Measures of each indicator are reported in a state’s State Performance Plans (SPP) and
Annual Performance Reports (APR). One of the 20 indicators is parent involvement (Indicator B‐8) which is defined as: “the percent of parents with a child receiving special education services who report that schools facilitated parent involvement as a means of improving
services and results for children with disabilities.” The definition of parent involvement
specifically targets the efforts of schools to involve families in ways that improve student
results. School efforts to facilitate parent involvement, under this indicator, are evaluated by
measuring families’ perception of how those efforts improved their child’s performance and
results. States report annually to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) using
measures, such as the NCSEAM Schools Efforts to Partner with Parents Scale
, that address the indicator, B‐8. Each state’s SPP requires
improvement activities that will increase measured performance on B‐8, the parent
involvement indicator.
The intent of this series of modules, “Improving Relationships & Results: Building Family School
Partnerships,” is for school personnel to provide evidence‐based interventions (Kratochwill,
2001) to improve their relationships with families in ways that may result in measured
improvement on Indicator B‐8. School efforts to increase parent involvement as defined in B‐8
are fundamentally linked to the relationships that schools maintain with families of children
with disabilities. In particular, these efforts at parent involvement should be connected to
improvement in student results (i.e. achievement, etc.). These modules were developed in
close cooperation with the Future of School Psychology Task Force on Family School
Partnerships. It is our expectation that schools will actively use the modules as part of an
overall coordinated effort to build and enhance effective practices that improve relationships
and results and have an effect upon the measured performance on Indicator B‐8.
The development of these materials was supported, in part, by a grant (H326Y02001) from the
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Office of
Special Education Programs, to the Human Development Center, LSU‐Health Science Center.
The HDC is AUCED. The content does not necessarily reflect the position or opinions of the U.S.
Department of Education or offices within it.