Transitional High School Parent-Teacher Home Visits: Effects on Parent Engagement and Student Outcomes

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine how the increasingly popular parent engagement strategy of parent-teacher home visits is associated at the high school level with parent-teacher engagement, student attendance, and graduation rates. Research questions include how home visits impact parent-teacher relationships, perceptions of home visit barriers, and home visit associations with student outcomes. Participants were high school teachers who were invited to conduct home visits for rising 9th graders, and the students visited at home. In this explanatory sequential mixed-methods study, attendance and graduation data were collected for students participating in home visits, and teacher participants completed a survey, followed by semistructured interviews. When comparing the relationship scale for teachers who conducted home visits with those who had not, the Mann-Whitney test resulted in a p-value of .18. Furthermore, over three years, the chronic absenteeism rate was nearly 4% higher for students visited at home compared to the whole cohort. Teachers who conducted home visits are far more likely than nonhome visiting teachers to report positive parent support. They also meet with parents more in person, and they believe that parents welcome home visits more than non-home visiting teachers. Chronic absenteeism is lower for students who were visited at home, and their graduation rate is higher. The Home visiting teacher group has more positive relationships with parents, and students visited at home by teachers have better outcomes than other students.