Make your communication streamlined.

Imagine you’re the parent of a high schooler, trying to stay in touch with six or seven different teachers. Each of those teachers uses a different platform to communicate with families—whether it’s email, text or one of dozens of parent-teacher communication apps. To keep track of your child’s progress, you have to download (and check) multiple apps—or worse, sort through hundreds of emails and text messages to find the ones related to school. And that’s just one child at one campus—what if you have two or three, all at different schools? With so many communication channels to keep up with, it’s no surprise that parents might lose track of even the most important conversations.

You might assume that the solution to this problem is less communication—but that’s not actually the case. In fact, our “What Parents Want” survey found that families who receive more frequent school communication are actually like to be more satisfied with their districts. So you don’t need to communicate less—you just need to communicate through fewer channels, especially when it comes to two-way.

We recommend keeping all two-way communication in your district to a single platform. If all your teachers communicate through the same platform, it will be that much easier for families to stay informed and engaged with their child’s learning. What’s more, in states like Oklahoma, new laws are requiring school personnel to communicate with students only through designated, school-approved platforms that automatically include parents in the conversation. It makes particular sense in these cases to choose a single channel for all communication with students and their families. 

Try to avoid channels that families are already using for purposes other than school, like text or email. Instead, establish a channel just for your district’s communication, like a dedicated parent-teacher communication app. This way, parents don’t have to sift through hundreds of corporate marketing emails or texts from friends and family to find conversations with their child’s teachers. 

Make your communication positive.

When your teachers initiate conversations with families, what’s typically the reason for that communication? Traditionally, it’s because something is wrong: A student’s grades are slipping or they’re misbehaving in class. Those conversations are often necessary, and we’re not suggesting that they shouldn’t happen. But what if teachers communicated just as often about what a student is doing right? 

Our research found that the more parents perceive school communications to be positive, the more likely they are to be highly satisfied with their schools and—perhaps more importantly—to trust their schools. This isn’t exactly surprising; after all, everyone likes to hear good news more than bad news, right? But there’s also something more going on here—something deeper. 

The truth is that most parents will interpret comments about their child, whether positive or negative, as comments on their parenting—even if that isn’t the teacher’s intention. Negative feedback can feel like an accusation of bad parenting, but positive feedback can feel like validation that they’re doing a good job. Imagine interacting with someone who only ever told you what you were doing wrong, and never acknowledged or appreciated what you did right. Would you look forward to talking to that person? Probably not.

The “two-way” in two-way communication is also crucial here. Receiving negative updates about your child is discouraging enough, but feeling like you have no ground to respond or ask questions is even worse. Balancing necessary negative conversations with positive ones not only keeps families satisfied with the district—it also builds the kind of positive relationships that encourage families to communicate back. That way, when teachers do need to address falling grades or misbehavior, parents are more likely to engage in that conversation with trust.

At the end of the day, school communication is about more than just sharing announcements; it’s a conversation between your district and its families. When your communication strategy goes both ways, parents can truly collaborate with teachers to provide the support students need—both in the classroom and at home.