Heather B. Weiss

Family Involvement in School and Low-Income Children's Literacy: Longitudinal Associations Between and Within Families

Longitudinal data from kindergarten to 5th grade on both family involvement in school and childrens literacy performance were examined for an ethnically diverse, low-income sample (N = 281). Within families, increased school involvement predicted improved child literacy. In addition, although there was an achievement gap in average literacy performance between children of more and less educated mothers if family involvement levels were low, this gap was nonexistent if family involvement levels were high. These results add to existing evidence on the value of family involvement in school by demonstrating that increased involvement between kindergarten and 5th grade is associated with increased literacy performance and that high levels of school involvement may have added reward for low-income children with the added risk of low parent education. As such, these results support arguments that family involvement in school should be a central aim of practice and policy solutions to the achievement gap between lower and higher income children.

Making It Work: Low-Income Working Mothers’ Involvement in Their Children’s Education

This article explores the complex relation between employment and family involvement in children’s elementary education for low-income women. Mixed-method analyses showed work as both an obstacle to and opportunity for involvement. Mothers who worked or attended school full time were less involved in their children’s schooling than other mothers, and mothers who worked or attended school part time were more involved than other mothers. Yet subtle and positive associations between maternal work and educational involvement also emerged. Working mothers described several strategies for educational involvement. The findings reframe current ecological conceptions of family involvement and call for policy and research consideration of the dilemma of work and family involvement.

Increased Family Involvement in School Predicts Improved Child–Teacher Relationships and Feelings About School for Low-Income Children

ABSTRACT Family involvement in school, childrens relationships with their teachers, and childrens feelings about school were examined longitudinally from kindergarten through fifth grade for an ethnically diverse, low-income sample (N = 329). Within-families analyses indicated that changes in family involvement in school were directly associated with changes in childrens relationships with their teachers and indirectly associated with changes in childrens feelings about school, with student–teacher relationships mediating this latter association. Increases in family involvement in school predicted improvements in student–teacher relationships, and, in turn, these improvements in student–teacher relationships predicted improvements in childrens perceptions of competency in literacy and mathematics as well as improvements in childrens attitudes toward school, more generally. These results are consistent with systems theories of child development and help answer why family educational involvement matters for low-income children. This research was supported by a grant to the authors from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (5R03HD052858-02). Principal investigators of the School Transitions Study were Deborah Stipek, Heather Weiss, Penny Hauser-Cram, Walter Secada, and Jennifer Greene, who were supported in part by grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Foundation for Child Development, and the William T. Grant Foundation.

Do neighborhood and home contexts help explain why low-income children miss opportunities to participate in activities outside of school?

In this study, childrens participation (N = 1,420) in activities outside of elementary school was examined as a function of disparities in family income using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Child Development Supplement. Childrens neighborhood and home environments were investigated as mechanisms linking income disparities and participation rates. Family income was positively associated with childrens participation in activities, with the largest effect sizes evident for children at the lowest end of the income distribution. Affluence in the neighborhood and cognitive stimulation in the home were both important mediators of the association between income and participation, explaining from approximately one tenth to one half of the estimated associations between income and participation.

Predicting youth out-of-school time participation: Multiple risks and developmental differences.

Youth out-of-school time (OST) programs and activities can provide developmental benefits for participating youth. Yet little research has examined the contextual predictors of youth OST participation. To address this issue, we examined a collection of child-, family-, school-, and neighborhood-level characteristics as predictors of OST participation using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—Child Development Supplement. In summary, child and family characteristics were most useful in predicting participation such that children least likely to participate were those characterized by high levels of developmental (e.g., low achievement, behavior problems, poor health) and family (e.g., parent psychological distress and low emotional support) problems. These relations, however, emerged only during middle school and high school. For certain types of activities, namely athletics and lessons, problems measured across various contexts were more strongly associated with OST participation for higher-income families than for lower-income families. These findings point to the importance of considering multiple developmental domains and developmental periods in understanding predictors of youth OST participation.

Strengthen What Happens outside School to Improve What Happens inside.

F ederal education legislation has long assumed that K-12 schools could operate alone to level the learning field for poor children. But 40 years of steadily accumulating research has shown that this assumption is incorrect. We now know that opportunities for after-school learning, summer learning, and support for families are major predictors of children’s development, educational achievement, and school success. Research also suggests that economically and otherwise disadvantaged children are less likely than their more-advantaged peers to have access to these out-of-school or complementary learning opportunities and that this inequity substantially undermines their development and chances for school success. This research confirms that America will not achieve its national goals of equal educational opportunity, leaving no child behind, or preparing its workforce and citizenry for 21st-century challenges without addressing the importance of and inequities in out-of-school learning opportu-

Beyond parens patriae: Building policies and programs to care for our own and others' children

In the last few years numerous reports from diverse and eminent commissions and study groups, as well as several powerful books, have been written with common aims to generate broad support and provide blueprints for major new policies and programs designed to help Americas children through new efforts to strengthen their families. Whether driven by desperation at the plight of children due to the familys deterioration and the seeming inability of social service, health and educational institutions to do anything about it, or by optimism from the promising results of multiple, relatively small scale, family oriented interventions, these reports and books call for major changes in the ways institutions and services view and serve families and in the ways they work together to do so. They urge and spell out what a system of family oriented, as opposed to child or bureaucracy oriented, services would look like and, in so doing, they suggest far reaching changes that go beyond simply tinkering with the status quo. They each call for a broader public and institutional commitment to strengthening families so that families, in turn, can better fulfill their critical role in human development and community functioning.

Engage families for anywhere, anytime learning

As society expects children and youth today to explore content-area topics in depth and to develop critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills, out-of-school settings are becoming increasingly important to individual learning. These settings, which include libraries, museums, digital media, and after-school programs, are evolving into extended classrooms. In this context, it is no longer appropriate or fruitful for educators to focus family engagement solely on what happens in school; educators must reimagine this concept within the many opportunities now available for anywhere, anytime learning.