Promoting Parental Involvement in Schools: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments

Felipe Barrera-Osorio, Paul J. Gertler, Nozomi Nakajima and Harry Patrinos

No 9462, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Parental involvement programs aim to increase school-and-parent communication and support children's overall learning environment. This paper examines the effects of low-cost, group-based parental involvement interventions in Mexico using data from two randomized controlled trials. The first experiment provided financial resources to parent associations. The second experiment provided information to parents about how to support their children's learning. Overall, the interventions induced different types of parental engagement in schools. The information intervention changed parenting behavior at home -- with large effects among indigenous parents who have historically been discriminated and socially excluded -- and improved student behavior in school. The grants did not impact parent or student behaviors. Notably, the paper does not find impacts of either intervention on educational achievement. To understand these 0 effects, the paper explores how social ties between parents and teachers evolved over the course of the two interventions. Parental involvement interventions led to significant changes in perceived trustworthiness between teachers and parents. The results suggest that parental involvement interventions can backfire if institutional rules are unclear about the expectations of parents and teachers as parents increase their involvement in schools.

Keywords: Educational Sciences; Employment and Unemployment; Effective Schools and Teachers; Educational Institutions&Facilities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/21714160 ... ized-Experiments.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Promoting Parental Involvement in Schools: Evidence From Two Randomized Experiments (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9462

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().