Abstract
Parent involvement at both home and school during the middle school years is positively associated with a range of behavioral and academic outcomes. Yet, due to structural changes in school environments and the increasing autonomy of teenagers, parent involvement often declines during the formative middle school years. Therefore, parents face unique challenges in their ability to both monitor their middle school child’s academic progress and be engaged in their child’s life.
This project covers a set of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of Texts4Teens, a text messaging program for parents of middle school that aims to increase parental involvement by decreasing the behavioral barriers to engaged parenting.
This document describes general text message interventions administered during two academic years: 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. The general program uses a non-differentiated curriculum that gave students in grades 6 through 8 the same text messages. These interventions were implemented in District 1 (pseudonym). The 2018-2019 program is considered a pilot year and lasted 18 weeks. The 2019-2020 program lasted 32 weeks.
Our middle school parenting program, Texts4Teens, is a text-based intervention that seeks to positively influence parent-teenage day-to-day interactions by addressing potential barriers to parents’ home and school involvement with their child. Texts4Teens’ goal is to narrow achievement gaps before children enter high school and beyond. The text messages include facts and tips on: 1) How to best support and guide their child’s academic trajectory as they transition from middle school to high school; 2) How to best support their child’s social and emotional learning (SEL) skills; and 3) How knowledge, skills, and abilities of their child are grow-able. Parents can choose to receive texts in English or Spanish. Every week, we will send middle school parents in the treatment group three texts about a particular academic topic and an SEL skill or activity for their child. Specifically,
--> The INSPIRE texts will be sent on Mondays. These texts are designed to motivate parents on a weekly academic topic related to their middle school child (e.g., asking questions in class, learning from mistakes, sharing schoolwork in progress, talking about report cards, and talking to teachers).
--> The EXCEL texts will be sent on Wednesdays. These texts address the academic topic of the week and aim to: (1) develop specific social and emotional learning (SEL) skills for their child (i.e., growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, self-awareness, and social awareness, responsible decision-making), (2) promote their child’s school engagement (i.e., emotional, behavioral, or cognitive), (3) encourage a parenting practice (i.e., autonomy support, monitoring, or warmth) and/or (4) foster a type of parental involvement (i.e., home-based, school-based, or academic socialization).
--> The BOND texts will be sent on Fridays and are also related to the academic topic of the week. These texts typically reinforce the week’s aim from the EXCEL text by fostering positive parent-child interactions (e.g., affective interactions).