Despite widespread political and pedagogical consensus on the importance of parental involvement in children's schooling, the academic literature offers mixed findings regarding its impact on student achievement. This research seeks to address that gap through examining the associations between parental involvement and student learning in math and English over elementary school using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 (ECLS-K:2011). Building on ecological and critical theories of involvement, this study employs composite indices of both at-home and in-school involvement to track parental engagement over time. Methodologically, this research deploys both two-level weighted growth curves which adjust for nonrandom non-response and three-level hierarchical models to account for the clustering of students in schools. In line with the literature, findings reveal a consistent small-to-moderate association between at-home and in-school parental involvement and learning in elementary school. A closer look at the models, however, reveals that parental involvement yields greatest benefits in early elementary school, with associations fading by fourth grade. Not all parental involvement is equally associated with learning; across models, parental involvement among racial minority families is a significantly stronger predictor of academic growth than for White students. While these findings suggest efforts to increase parent involvement may reduce some racial disparities in achievement, this research concludes that parental involvement alone is insufficient to overcome the structural inequities and racial biases embedded in the U.S. educational system.
Madeline Hopper (Sun,) studied this question.