The Impact of Parental Resources on Student Outcomes using Middle School Data

Main Article Content

Luis J Gonzalez Brandon Koford

Abstract

This paper examines the use of four measures of parental involvement in Kentucky middle schools and assesses whether they improve student learning in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. The parental involvement measures are: parental volunteer hours, the number of parents voting in school-based decision-making council elections, the number of parents serving on school committees, and the number of parents having parentteacher conferences. Our approach allows for investigation of the impacts of parental involvement in schools throughout the achievement distributions in each subject area. The findings suggest that parental involvement is associated with increases in the percentage of students at the high end of the achievement distribution in reading, writing, math, and social studies and decreases the percentage at the low end in science. The strongest support is for election participation. The overwhelming evidence suggests that parental involvement is associated with improved middle school student outcomes. (I20, H41, C23)

Article Details

Section
Articles