Reply to Parent involvement is overrated

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Read the whole article.  The specific conclusions are that being involved in PTA, attending parent teacher conferences, [b]helping with homework[/b] etc. don't really impact academic achievement.[/quote]

I doubt that one.  Sorry, they were not specific enough.  I know some parents sit down with their children and walk through every question and point out the steps the children are missing, and manage each question along the way filling in all the gaps.  Others will look it over after it's complete, indicate the wrong answers, and say "you'll need to do these over."  Others will help their child get online to find practice exercises and then step back and have the child complete them on their own.  My father used to take me to the library, and then give me free reign from there.  When I had trouble in Algebra, he sat down and drew the quadratic equation and walked me through each step until I fully comprehended it.  I went on to win an award for being the best Honors Algebra student in my class of 500.  Homework help can indeed help - but we don't all agree on what "help" fully means and equally important, what it does [i]not[/i] mean.[/quote]

The authors of the article would seem to agree with you.  The fact that demographics skew tells you that the definition of "involvement" varies wildly.

When the author says, "set the stage," the kind of help you describe is precisely what is implied.  That is, give them the information they need, but make sure they do the work on their own, make their own decisions, and make their own mistakes.  Freeing them up allows them to reach greater heights.

[/quote]

I don't think the authors agree that setting the stage involves helping with the quadratic equation. Instead of saying that they need to do further work to understand the qualitative differences in involvement of each type (PTA, homework help etc.)  They conclude since there is variation between races/groups parental involvement is not important.  
Their conclusion (below)  is really dangerous in that is says to parents "if your kid is doing bad it has little to do with your involvement and hey we know because we "studied" this.

From the article, "There is a strong sentiment in this country that parents matter in every respect relating to their children’s academic success, but we need to let go of this sentiment and begin to pay attention to what the evidence is telling us."[/quote]

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