Parent Conference Forms Can Help Increase Parent Attendance in Required Meetings

Parent participation is an essential component to academic growth and achievement. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015 considers parent participation so pivotal that sixteen different types of meetings are defined throughout the law. In this blog and in our free ebook, "The Parent Participation Form for Parent Meetings: What You Need To Know", we discuss best practices for raising participation in parent meetings, and review the components of an effective meeting notification.

Components of Strong Parent Conference Forms

A good parent participation form (PPF) is a single page document that provides logistics and services information about the meeting and acts as a response mechanism. Parents complete the form and return it to their child’s teacher. Strong Parent Participation Forms include:

• The name of the meeting at the top of the PPF
• Date, time and location of the meeting
• A section for parents to complete and return to the child’s teacher. This separate ‘response’ section provides opportunities for parents to indicate if they are able to attend the meeting and what assistance they might need, as well as a space for Limited English Proficiency (LEP) parents or deaf/hard of hearing parents to request interpretation assistance
• A meeting notification that is separate from the PPF so that the parent has a copy of the meeting logistics
  • Logistics information (date, time, location and services) should be repeated on both the meeting notification and the PPF that the parent returns to the school. When there are multiple meetings planned for different groups of parents, the date, time, location and meeting name helps meeting organizers identify the specific meeting the returned form is referencing.

For more components of parent conference forms, including a list of categories under ESSA in which parent meetings are required, download our eBook for free.