Browsing by Subject "Parents at Urban Schools: Longer-Term Effects of Parental Involvement on Educational Outcomes"

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    Parents at Urban Schools: Longer-Term Effects of Parental Involvement on Educational Outcomes
    (Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, 2011-05-17) Warner-Richter, Mallory
    There is widespread concern about the state of student achievement in America’s schools. The United States ranks low in test scores among comparable countries, too few minority youth graduate from high school, and disparities in test scores and graduation rates exist between white students and students of color. One of the most frequently cited solutions to these problems is to increase parental involvement in schools. Using a sample of urban children from low-income families from the Chicago Longitudinal Study, this paper analyzes the effects of early parental involvement in school activities on long-term educational outcomes and finds that having average or above level of parental involvement in the early years of elementary school was associated with on-time graduation from high school, high school completion by age 23, and whether a student was ever grade-retained through grade 8. Results for whether or not a student ever received special education were sensitive in changes to the specification of the parental involvement variable and control variables. This paper also analyzes the effect of socioeconomic risk as a moderator of these results. As specified in this paper, high levels of socio-economic risk do not moderate the relationship between parental involvement and the long-term outcomes. Both low-risk and high-risk children benefit from parental involvement. Finally, this paper looks at the effect of one intervention, the Chicago Child-Parent Centers, for its effectiveness in increasing parental involvement in school. Policy implications are provided in the context of the results.