The Structure of Middle School Single Subject Scheduling and the Effects on Parent-Teacher Communication in Educational Subgroups

Research has shown that parental involvement is a great resource and benefit for students as they go through their school career; however, we see both a parental involvement drop off and a student academic and behavioral drop off as students transition into the middle school years. The purpose of this study was to see if our current scheduling structure in middle school, which is vastly different from what students and parents are used to at the elementary level, inhibits or promotes frequency in parent-teacher communication between different populations on a middle school campus. The results of the study were that teacher-parent communication increased in frequency when general education or SAI students had more teachers and communication decreased for parents of ELL students. Additionally, when teachers were interviewed about their perception of communication, teachers who only taught single subjects were more likely to call out communication as a partnership between parents and teachers.