Relation of Parental Involvement, Empowerment, and School Traits to Student Academic Performance

Abstract

School-level data on parent perceptions and structural characteristics of 42 elementary schools were used to examine the relation of parental involvement and empowerment to student academic performance. Results showed that measures of parental involvement and empowerment could be reliably predicted. Multiple regression analyses showed that parental involvement and empowerment accounted for substantial variance in student standardized test performance (lowest R ² = 25% and 5%, respectively). Positive relations of parental involvement to student test performance were largely unaffected by school characteristics or the socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic composition of the student population.