Contents
- Parent involvement in schools statistics: reported school activities
- Parent involvement in schools statistics: school communication and satisfaction
- Parent involvement in schools statistics: teacher perceptions of parent involvement
- Parent involvement in schools: school opportunities offered to families
- Parent involvement in schools: participation rates by school level
- Sources
Parent involvement in schools statistics: reported school activities
In the 2022–23 school year, parents or guardians of U.S. students in kindergarten through grade 12 reported an average of 6 school-related activities. The population included students in physical or virtual schools and students homeschooled for equivalent grades. The average gives a broad picture of reported contact with school life, while the individual activity rates show which forms were most commonly reported.
| Activity reported for K–12 students | 2022–23 |
|---|---|
| Attended a general school or parent-teacher organization or association meeting | 83% |
| Attended a school or class event | 74% |
| Attended a regularly scheduled parent-teacher conference | 72% |
Organization or association meetings were the most common of these named activities. School or class events and scheduled conferences were also reported for substantial shares of students. These are parent or guardian reports about students, rather than counts of individual parents or estimates of the number of meetings attended. Source: NCES, Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2023, First Look—Summary, p. 8
The reported average of 6 activities combines a broader set of school-related activities, while the table lists three specific examples named in the summary. It should not be read as a count of unique parents: the unit in the report is students whose parents or guardians reported participation. The summary describes a nationally representative, weighted survey covering the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It reports 19,562 student cases, representing approximately 53 million students. Source: NCES, Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2023, First Look—Summary, p. 8
Parent involvement in schools statistics: school communication and satisfaction
School-wide messages were the most frequently reported communication channel in the 2022–23 school year. Parents or guardians said newsletters, memos, emails or notices addressed to all parents were reported for 90% of K–12 students. Communications focused on an individual student were less commonly reported: emails or notes about the student were reported for 66%, and phone calls about the student for 41%.
| Communication reported for K–12 students | 2022–23 |
|---|---|
| School-wide newsletters, memos, emails or notices | 90% |
| Emails or notes specifically about the student | 66% |
| Phone calls about the student | 41% |
These figures describe whether parents reported receiving types of communication, not how often messages arrived or whether families received every channel. The three measures distinguish broadly distributed school information from messages about a particular student. The data do not establish why one form was more common than another. Source: NCES, Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2023, First Look—Summary, p. 8
Parents also reported their satisfaction with different aspects of school for the 2022–23 school year. The share described as “very satisfied,” the highest point on the report’s 4-point scale, was 63% for the school overall, 62% for students’ current teachers and 55% for school staff’s interaction with parents. These are distinct assessments: satisfaction with the school overall is not interchangeable with satisfaction about a particular relationship or interaction. Source: NCES, Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2023, First Look—Summary, p. 8
The satisfaction measures and communication measures are parent-reported estimates for students, not ratings supplied by school staff. They offer a view of reported experience, but the summary does not establish that communication frequency caused any satisfaction level. The report cautions against causal inference. Source: NCES, Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2023, First Look—Summary
Parent involvement in schools statistics: teacher perceptions of parent involvement
A 2024 survey asked U.S. public K–12 teachers about parents’ involvement and interactions. On three responsibilities, majorities said parents do too little: 79% said parents do too little to hold children accountable if they misbehave at school, 68% said parents do too little to help children with schoolwork, and 63% said parents do too little to ensure children attend school.
| Teacher view of parents’ role | Teachers saying parents do too little |
|---|---|
| Hold children accountable for misbehavior at school | 79% |
| Help children with schoolwork | 68% |
| Ensure children attend school | 63% |
These percentages summarize teachers’ judgments about the level of parental support, rather than observed measures of what families did. The questions concern different responsibilities, so the figures should be read as separate responses, not as a single overall rating of parent involvement. Source: Pew Research Center, “Teachers’ Views of Parent Involvement,” April 4, 2024
Teachers also described interactions with parents. In the survey, 65% said parents showed appreciation for their efforts at least sometimes. Meanwhile, 24% said parents at least sometimes contacted them to disagree with what they taught or discussed in class, and 40% said parents at least sometimes communicated with them in a disrespectful way. “At least sometimes” is part of the measure; these percentages do not mean that the behavior was frequent or typical in every interaction. Source: Pew Research Center, “Teachers’ Views of Parent Involvement,” April 4, 2024
On physical violence, 91% of surveyed teachers said they had never experienced physical violence from a student’s parent. This figure concerns teachers’ reported experience, not a rate of incidents per school or a measure of all parent-teacher interactions. Together, the Pew figures describe perceptions and reported experiences among surveyed public K–12 teachers; they are not direct measurements of parent behavior across all schools. Source: Pew Research Center, “Teachers’ Views of Parent Involvement,” April 4, 2024
Parent involvement in schools: school opportunities offered to families
Nationally, public school principals reported whether their schools offered a range of family engagement opportunities during the 2016–17 school year. The survey was conducted in 2017–18, so these figures describe historical offerings, not current school practice.
| Opportunity offered during 2016–17 | Public school principals reporting it |
|---|---|
| Open houses or back-to-school nights | 97% |
| Regularly scheduled schoolwide parent-teacher conferences | 92% |
| Parent involvement in governance | 92% |
| Volunteering in school as needed or regularly | 91% |
| Special subject-area events | 90% |
| Involvement in school instructional issues | 83% |
| Involvement in budget decisions | 76% |
| Signing a school-parent compact | 73% |
| Parent education workshops or courses | 69% |
Open houses or back-to-school nights were the most widely reported opportunity, while parent education workshops or courses were the least widely reported among these nine listed opportunities. Even the lowest of the listed shares, 69%, indicates that a majority of public school principals said their schools offered that type of program. Offering an opportunity, however, is not the same measure as family participation. Source: NCES, Parental Involvement in U.S. Public Schools in 2017–18, p. 1
These data are principal reports about schools’ offerings in 2016–17, gathered through the 2017–18 National Teacher and Principal Survey. They do not say how many families attended each event, or how many schools offered multiple opportunities to the same families. The age of the data matters: they provide a snapshot of provision during that school year and should not be presented as a current-year estimate. Source: NCES, Parental Involvement in U.S. Public Schools in 2017–18, p. 1
Parent involvement in schools: participation rates by school level
A separate figure in the 2017–18 survey examined public schools that offered each opportunity. It reports the percentage of principals who said that 76–100% of students had at least one parent or guardian participate. The three school levels shown are primary, middle and high school. The percentages are therefore not the share of students who participated: they are the share of principals reporting participation in that specified range.
| Opportunity offered | Primary schools | Middle schools | High schools |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open house or back-to-school night | 57% | 33%* | 14%* |
| Regularly scheduled schoolwide parent-teacher conferences | 62% | 27%* | 14%* |
| Signing a school-parent compact | 65% | 57%* | 47%* |
For open houses and back-to-school nights, 57% of primary school principals reported that 76–100% of students had a parent or guardian participate. The corresponding figures were 33% for middle schools and 14% for high schools. For scheduled schoolwide conferences, the shares were 62% at primary schools, 27% at middle schools and 14% at high schools. In this figure, asterisks mark values significantly different from the primary-school value at p < .05. Source: NCES, Parental Involvement in U.S. Public Schools in 2017–18, Figure 2, p. 2
The compact-signing measure shows a different pattern across the listed levels: 65% of primary, 57% of middle and 47% of high school principals reported participation by 76–100% of students. The asterisks on the middle- and high-school values indicate significant differences from primary schools at p < .05. They do not explain why participation varied, and the figure alone does not support a causal explanation. Source: NCES, Parental Involvement in U.S. Public Schools in 2017–18, Figure 2, p. 2
The figure covers public schools offering the relevant opportunity, and combined schools are not shown. Its results come from principals’ reports about 2016–17 opportunities in the 2017–18 survey. They should be interpreted alongside that scope: they describe how often principals placed student participation in the 76–100% range, not a direct student-level participation rate for all schools. Source: NCES, Parental Involvement in U.S. Public Schools in 2017–18, Figure 2, p. 2