How Teachers and Principals Can Improve Parent-Teacher Conferences

Research and experience tell us that children do better in school when families and educators work together to support students. Because families are so busy, parent-teacher conferences may be the only times you talk with parents about their child’s performance in school.

The Harvard Family Research Project offers research-based information about making parent-teacher conferences more powerful. What can you do?

Principals

• Share guidelines. Be sure teachers and families know about the goals—focusing on instruction and improvement. Don’t forget to deal with logistics—child care, transportation, translation (if needed), and alternate scheduling options.
• Provide professional development to teachers so they know about best practices.
• Create a welcoming school environment.
• Be visible and available.
• After the conferences, ask for feedback from teachers and parents.

Teachers

• Send invitations by more than one means to be sure parents know about the conference.
• Review student work so you can be ready to talk with each child’s parents.
• Start by discussing progress and growth—the positives—and use work examples that demonstrate the child’s abilities.
• Make an action plan for how you and the family will support the student, being specific about activities and frequencies.
• After the conference, follow up to thank families for attending and to find out if they have other questions.

These are a few of the ideas presented in Parent-Teacher Conferences: A Tip Sheet for Principals and Parent-Teacher Conferences: A Tip Sheet for Teachers. Both are free at the Harvard Family Research Project Web site, where you’ll find many other useful and interesting resources. Plan to spend a few minutes exploring the rest of the site.

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This Web site is supported in whole or in part by funds from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement, under grant #U310A060257. Its content does not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Education, any other agency of the U.S. government, or any other source.