Examination of Parental Involvement in Relation to a Child's Academic Success

Abstract

Parents are their child’s first teacher, and education begins in the home. This study has been conducted to investigate the relationship between parental involvement and academic success. The study used a quantitative design which included preexisting data from the National Household of Education Surveys in which participating parents (N = 17,563) completed the Parental and Family Involvement in Education Survey. The study examined the relationships between parental involvement and the parents’ income, education, gender, and employment status. Also, observed in the study were the children’s gender, grades earned, grades repeated, and behavior at school. The results of the chi-square test revealed that there was a significant finding between children’s grades and gender. In addition, the chi-square test also showed a strong positive-negative relationship between children serving in-school suspensions and parent participation in school activities The findings from this study indicated that parents who were unemployed can still help their children with completing homework as well as increase the number of opportunities to assist their children with homework assignments. The findings suggested that parents who have college degrees, increase the possibility of their children maintaining higher GPA’s. Recommendations for future study include conducting further studies representing parents or children with learning disabilities, using a different dataset that includes continuous variables and using studies that include responses from teachers as well.