School Readiness of Children of Immigrants: Does Parental Involvement Play a Role?

Objectives. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey—Kindergarten Cohort, this article analyzes the link between parental involvement and the school readiness of children of immigrants. Methods. Multivariate regression models estimate the association between parental involvement and t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social science quarterly 2008-09, Vol.89 (3), p.684-705
Main Author: Lahaie, Claudia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic Achievement
Academic readiness
Access to education
Child Development
Childhood
Children
Children & youth
Cognitive models
Education
English language
Families & family life
Human ecology and demography
Immigrants
Kindergarten
Kindergarten education
Language
Learning
Literacy
Longitudinal studies
Mathematics
Mathematics education
Mathematics teachers
Mothers
Noncitizens
Of General Interest
Parenthood
Parents
Parents & parenting
Preschool Education
School readiness
Schooling
Schools
Sociology
Sociology of education. Educational systems. Lifelong education
Sociology of migrations
Standard deviation
U.S.A
Variables
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Objectives. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey—Kindergarten Cohort, this article analyzes the link between parental involvement and the school readiness of children of immigrants. Methods. Multivariate regression models estimate the association between parental involvement and the school readiness in English proficiency and math scores of children of immigrants. They also estimate the impact of this association on the gap in math scores between children of immigrants and children of natives. Results. Results demonstrate that parental involvement is associated with an increase in the level of English proficiency for children of immigrants. Parental involvement also is associated with a decrease in the gap in math scores between immigrant children from English- and non-English-speaking backgrounds. Parental involvement decreases the gap in math scores between children of immigrants and children of the native born by a third of a standard deviation. Conclusion. Given that parental involvement appears to benefit children of immigrants and given that they have lower academic achievement than children of the native born, these findings suggest that parental involvement policies and practices targeting children of immigrants could help decrease the academic achievement gap between children of immigrants and children of the native born.
ISSN:0038-4941
1540-6237
DOI:10.1111/j.1540-6237.2008.00554.x