| Margaret Clements
New York University
School practices, parent involvement, and children's academic achievement from kindergarten through fifth grade: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study
Increasing parents' involvement in their children's education is a "centerpiece" of the No Child Left Behind legislation (NCLB: U. S. Department of Education, 2004), albeit one that has received less media attention than standardized testing or teacher quality. To promote parents' involvement in their children's education, especially in low-income families, NCLB establishes several requirements for Title I schools. These include the development of a written parent involvement policy and spending at least 1 percent of the school's budget on activities to support parent involvement. Inherent in these requirements is the expectation that school practices can "cause" parents to become more involved in their children's education, and that this increased parental involvement will result in higher levels of academic achievement for children. The goal of this research is to apply rigorous data analytic techniques to kindergarten through 5th grade data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) to investigate whether these assumptions are true and consequently, whether this mandate has the potential to positively effect children's educational outcomes. Specifically, the research will investigate three questions regarding the associations among school practices, parental involvement in children's education, and children's academic achievement for students attending public schools. The research is designed to simultaneously address important methodological limitations of existing research and thereby strengthen its implications for policy and practice. Question 1: Do certain school policies and practices predict that parents will increase their involvement in their children's education? Question 2: Do increases in parents' involvement lead to higher levels of achievement for their children? Question 3: Are the answers to Questions 1 and 2 similar or different for Title 1 schools and the parents and children that are part of these school communities than for non-Title I schools?
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