Parent Involvement Overrated?

05/07/2014

Parent Involvement Overrated?

Good enough never is.
Debbie Fields

We've had a few controversial items in ExchangeEveryDay recently and this New York Times article "Parental Involvement Is Overrated" will certainly raise eyebrows. If you are stimulated by this report, scroll to the bottom of this email and click "Comment on this article."

"Most people, asked whether parental involvement benefits children academically, would say, “of course it does.” But evidence from our research suggests otherwise. In fact, most forms of parental involvement, like observing a child’s class, contacting a school about a child’s behavior, helping to decide a child’s high school courses, or helping a child with homework, do not improve student achievement. In some cases, they actually hinder it....

"...After comparing the average achievement of children whose parents regularly engage in each form of parental involvement to that of their counterparts whose parents do not, we found that most forms of parental involvement yielded no benefit to children’s test scores or grades, regardless of racial or ethnic background or socioeconomic standing.

"In fact, there were more instances in which children had higher levels of achievement when their parents were less involved than there were among those whose parents were more involved. Even more counterintuitively: When involvement does seem to matter, the consequences for children’s achievement are more often negative than positive."

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