Family Engagement Effects on Student Achievement: A Challenge to Social Capital Theory

• In Event: Parents and Families' Influences on Education

Abstract

Does social capital boost children’s schooling outcomes, as many writers presume? Or does social capital emerge in schools in which children are thriving academically? With observational data, it is difficult to say. This study answers the question with a randomized design. Of course, we cannot randomize families to social capital. Instead, we randomized schools to a family engagement intervention that is well known (and validated in this study) to boost social capital among families and between families and schools. Analysis of test scores two years after randomization shows no effects on achievement in reading or math, and higher levels of grade retention in schools selected for the intervention. These findings pose a challenge to social capital theory.

Authors

• Adam Gamoran, William T. Grant Foundation

• Hannah K. Miller, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Jeremy E Fiel, University of Arizona

• Jessa Lewis Valentine, University of Wisconsin - Madison