Family-School Connections, Early Learning, and Socioeconomic Inequality in the US

Abstract

Policy interest in parental involvement in the U.S. has rapidly grown, necessitating a deeper understanding of how families and schools can partner to promote learning and reduce performance disparities in this country. Matching multidisciplinary theory with growth curve analyses of American children in the Early Childhood Longitudinal StudyKindergarten Cohort, this study found that familyschool engagement (in which school personnel and parents reached out to each other) and familyschool symmetry (in which parents and teachers constructed parallel learning environments) were associated with greater reading gains during the primary grades. Socioeconomically disadvantaged children appeared more at risk from one-sided engagement, and their more advantaged peers appeared to benefit more from symmetry.

To persist or not? Examining the relations between parental education, self‐regulation, school engagement and persistence in post‐compulsory education

“…In addition to the above, in this study, we take into account the socio-economic position of the adolescents as a predictor of self-regulation, school engagement and the choice to persist in post-compulsory education. Specifically, we consider the educational background of the primary caregiver as the indicator of the socio-economic position of the children since parental education tends to be more invariant over time (Haveman et al, 2004) and has greater impact on the development of children's educational outcomes compared with income (Crosnoe, 2012). However, the evidence on links between parental education differentials, self-regulation and sustained school engagement remains inconclusive.…”

Trends in Parents’ Time Investment at Children’s Schools During a Period of Economic Change

“…Specifically, we examine change over the past 20 years in parents' time investments at their children's schools and how the nature of these changes may have differed for low-and high-income parents. Scholars have long argued that the time parents spend at their child's schools is an important element of children's social capital and educational success (Crosnoe, 2012;Crosnoe & Cooper, 2010;Lareau, 1989Lareau, , 2015Lareau & Horvat, 1999;Vincent, 2017), as measured, for example, by time spent at parent meetings, volunteering in the classroom, and time spent fundraising for the school. We hypothesize that just as U.S. parents at all income levels have intensified the time they spend on children's learning at home, parents on average will also have increased the time they spend at their children's schools, reflecting changes in macroeconomic conditions that increasingly demand parents' efforts to support their children's success (Doepke & Zilibotti, 2019).…”

“…Attendance at school-wide meetings, though perhaps the least time-intensive activity (in part because such meetings occur infrequently), nonetheless provides a forum for sharing information and building social ties with other parents. Parents who spend time volunteering in their child’s school or classroom can informally track their child’s educational progress and get to know their child’s teacher and other parents, which provides a forum for building social capital on behalf of the parent’s child (Crosnoe, 2012). To the extent that parents volunteer their time in the classroom, specifically, they are also effectively lowering the teacher-student ratio or possibly serving in informal roles as teaching assistants, factors that have been established in other work to be causally related to children’s educational outcomes and later life achievement (Dynarski et al, 2013; Hemelt et al, 2021).…”

“…School-based volunteer organizations in which parents spend their time institutionalize social ties among parents by offering events, facilitating information-sharing and access to school personnel, and potentially building trust and organizational capacity at the school (Coleman, 1988; Murray et al, 2019; Small, 2009). Like PTA/PTO involvement, high-income parents are, on average, more likely to report participating in volunteer work at their child’s school than low-income parents (Crosnoe, 2012), but it is not well established how this might have changed over time and for which types of parents.…”

“…Although the causal impact of parent participation in these organizations on child's academic success has not been established, Cucchiara (2017) finds that when parents attend a PTA meeting, it is likely to be in the service of fundraising for such things as improvements to school facilities, materials, enrichment programming, and even additional teachers, all of which might benefit children's learning and development. Some research suggests that high-income parents are, on average, more involved or engaged in their children's schools, using such measures as time spent serving on the PTA (Crosnoe, 2012), but, unlike the broader parental time use literature, the historical trends are not well established.…”