A large-scale examination of the nature and efficacy of teachers' practices to engage parents: assessment, parental contact, and student-level impact.

As schools move forward with comprehensive school reform, parents' roles have shifted and been redefined. Parent-teacher communication is critical to student success, yet how schools and teachers contact parents is the subject of few studies. Evaluations of school-change efforts require reliable and useful measures of teachers' practices in communicating with parents. The structure of teacher-parent-contact practices was examined using data from multiple, longitudinal cohorts of schools and teachers from a large-scale project and found to be a reliable and stable measure of parent contact across building levels and localities. Teacher/school practices in contacting parents were found to be significantly related to parent reports of school contact performance and student academic adjustment and achievement. Implications for school improvement efforts are discussed.