What did the study find about parent involvement?
The headline of an otherwise factual story in the Los Angeles Times gave some people the incorrect impression that the study found that parent involvement doesn’t matter. In fact, parent involvement was found to be positively correlated with API achievement. However, the four strongest practices had a far greater impact on school performance. In other words, the study did not find that parent involvement is not important or not related to student achievement. Rather, within the sample of California elementary schools surveyed, the relationship between student achievement and what the school does to encourage parent involvement is not as pronounced as the relationship between higher student achievement and these other four practices: a coherent curriculum aligned with state standards, availability of instructional resources, prioritizing student achievement, and use of student assessment data to improve instruction and learning The surveys of principals and teachers included 29 question
