Parent involvement and its affects on student academic achievement

Traditional forms of parental involvement include participating in school activities such as Parent Teacher Associations (PTA), back-to-school nights, open houses, parent-teacher conferences, or volunteering at the school. Parental involvement has become a priority on school campuses nationwide because of the positive effect on student academic performance suggested by some researchers and the legal mandate of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 to implement parent participation strategies. The purpose of this study was to determine whether differences existed in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics achievement between fourth grade students whose family members were involved in school and fourth grade students whose family members were not involved in school. The sample consisted of 30 fourth grade students whose family members were highly involved in school and 30 fourth grade students whose family members were not involved. Independent t-tests were conducted to compare the ELA and mathematics district benchmark mean scores between the two groups. The results suggested that students of highly involved family members significantly outperformed those with family members who were not involved based on scores of the cumulative end-of-year district benchmark tests for ELA and mathematics for grade 4. The mean difference for ELA was 32.33 p=.001 and 52.73 (p=.001) for mathematics