“I’ll See You in School”: A Multiple Proxy Analysis of the Role of Parental Involvement in K-12 Education and Improved Student Outcomes

We analyze the role of parental involvement on a child’s academic performance by employing multiple proxies for direct and indirect parental involvement in his/her child’s schooling using a large dataset of 11,913 observations from the 2016 National Household Education Survey (NHES (2016)). Our estimations of ordered logit grade models show that children of parents who volunteer in the school or classroom, serve on a school committee, or attend PTO meetings are significantly more likely to receive higher grades; these children are 2.4% to 11% more likely to be making grades of mostly As compared to children of parents who do not engage in these activities. Elementary aged children who are told by their parents to read are also significantly more likely to receive higher grades in school. However, we find that homework help is a noisy proxy for parental involvement. Finally, our analysis uncovers some stark racial and gender disparities in K-12 student performance as well as racial differences in the parental involvement measures.