EFFECTS OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT ON 8TH-GRADE ACHIEVEMENT

The indicators of parental involvement in children's education vary co nsiderably across studies, most of which treat parental involvement as a unidimensional construct. This study identified four dimensions of parental involvement and assessed the relationship of each dimension w ith parental background and academic achievement for a large represent ative sample of U.S. middle school students. The findings provide litt le support for the conjecture that parents with low socioeconomic stat us are less involved in their children's schooling than are parents wi th higher socioeconomic status. Furthermore, although schools varied s omewhat in parental involvement associated with volunteering and atten dance at meetings of parent-teacher organizations, they did not vary s ubstantially in levels of involvement associated with home supervision , discussion of school-related activities, or parent-teacher communica tion. Yet the discussion of school-related activities at home had the strongest relationship with academic achievement. Parents' participati on at school had a moderate effect on reading achievement, but a negli gible effect on mathematics achievement.