Suet-Ling Pong Investigates the Variances

¶ … Suet-Ling Pong investigates the variances along the lines of the structure of the household. Pong notes that, "Growing proportions of children in the United States reside with a single biological parent, and there are also more children attending schools where the majority of students are from single-parent families or stepfamilies," (Pong 734). Pong analyzes eighth grade reading and math scores to determine that schools exhibiting a majority of students from single-parent homes statistically score lower on such exams. This trend is found to be true even after the demographic background of the parents is factored in -- how far they went in school. Pong is quick to note that some of these findings can be explained by the socioeconomic status of the child, despite the statistical corrections. Additionally, it is argued that many of the negative effects of single-parent households can be overcome if the social relations among parents remain strong.

Karen Bogenschneider attempts to limit such findings even further by adjusting for socioeconomic levels, race, class, ethnicity, and family structure. She writes, "Yet in this study of 10,000 high school students, parents who were more involved in their adolescents' schooling had offspring who performed better in school, irrespective of the parents' gender or education and the children's gender, ethnicity, or family structure," (Bogenschneider 718). Still, little attention is given to the particular forms of involvement or parenting styles that were most beneficial. She manages to isolate involvement as the key factor, but fails to define it adequately.

A third study be Taylor et al. focuses research upon African-American students; thus completely eliminating race as a correction factor. Consequently, the group is able to distinguish a handful of parenting techniques that are most strongly associated with academic achievement: "Multiple regression analysis showed that parenting style (nurture and control) and parental involvement significantly predicted academic outcomes," (Taylor 293). Although not explicitly detailed, the results hint that hands-on parental involvement is not the only way parents can positively influence their child's academic success.

Xitao Fan and Michael Chen attempt to use meta-analysis to better characterize the association between parental involvement and student achievement. This approach allows them to look into various manifestations and forms of achievement in relation to parental involvement. Ultimately, "Through moderator analysis, it was revealed that parental aspiration/expectation for children's education achievement has the strongest relationship, whereas parental home supervision has the weakest relationship, with students' academic achievement," (Fan 1). They also found that using grade point average as a measurement device amplified these results significantly; rather than using subject-based test scores.

Overall, the level of parental involvement in children's schooling has always been intuitively accepted as being positively associated with academic achievement and high test scores. However, precisely what forms of involvement are most beneficial to the students remain, for the most part, unexplored by most of the current literature. It follows that if the most effective types of parental involvement in education can be identified, then the lack of these measures would be strong indicators of low achievement in many students. Essentially, this is a positivistic approach to addressing the issue of low achievement in the context of parental involvement; it is easier to diagnose in cases where the favorable factors are absent. In other words, one of the most informative uses of finding the styles of parenting that aid in student achievement would be to determine instances in which low levels of parental involvement can be recognized as the leading component in low academic achievement. In order to isolate these factors, however, studies need to be conducted that control for social status -- of both the student and their parents -- sex, race, and the structure of the household -- whether there is one or two parents. Additionally, only a workable definition of what academic achievement is should be used as an appropriate gauge of the term.