Parenting and Children's Educational Achievement

WHAT WORKS (in order):

1. The educational attainment of the children's mother.

2. The socio-economic level of the children's home.

3. In-home parental promotion of preschoolers' skills acquisitions, such as reading and numbers, game playing, and the creation of a stable, stimulating environment.

4. Parental aspirations (expectations) for children's achievement, and parents' own enthusiasm for, and attitudes toward education and learning.

5. In-home parent-child discussions, valuing of children's opinions and conversation, and social interaction, i.e. "the curriculum of the home."

6. Parental supplementation of children's education with enrichment activities, such as libraries and museums, and family hobbies.

7. Parental encouragement of older children's self-reliance and autonomy.


WHAT DOESN'T WORK

1. Homework in elementary school. [Recent research again confirms this.]

2. Routine parental involvement and help with homework.

3. Extended parent-teacher contact beyond the minimum necessary communication of notices, events, grades, and so forth.

4. Parental volunteering in and presence at the child's school and children's in-school activities. (As an independent variable and not merely appearing in the research as a correlate of parental socioeconomic status or family culture and interest in education, this does nothing for children.)

5. Parental involvement with and participation in school-related organizations, such as PTA. (Same comment as #4, above. This is not the kind of "parental involvement" that matters.)

6. Verbally encouraging a child to "do well in school," and giving rewards or punishment based on grades.

7. Parenting programs to enhance parenting skills. (Notwithstanding promotional hype, parenting skills programs have not been shown to result in any clear academic achievement or enhanced outcomes for children. However, to the extent there is some small success in situations in which these programs address families with serious problems, such as adolescent behavior issues, behavior-based programs work and relationship-oriented programs don't.)


WHAT ELSE DOESN'T MATTER

1. Children's educational achievement is not negatively impacted by a parent's lack of fluency in the English language.

2. Single motherhood, while it tends to reduce mothers' participation with children's schools and with their teachers (an "involvement" of little or no benefit anyway but bearing on educators' and the public's perceptions), does not reduce maternal in-home enhancement of children's education -- where "parental involvement" counts.


See the research and more at The Liz Library.