Monday, April 14, 2014

ESSAY: PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT



Matthew Berumen
Period: 0
Parental Involvement
            Is parental involvement in children’s learning environment beneficial for the child? Most people believe it to be true and encourage parents to be more active in their child’s academics, but statistics have proven otherwise. It’d make more sense if children benefited from the guidance of their parents. It’s ironic to me that the results of this experiment resulted in the way it did, because when I was a kid I remember that my parent’s involvement with my academics was a tremendous help in my school work. My parents were always active and involved in everything that I participated in. Their help, support, and motivation is what kept me going all these years and still is the main source that drives me to succeed.  I was so shocked to find out that parental involvement affected the young students negatively.
            Over the past few years studies have been focused on whether or not the parental engagement in children’s academic lives improve test scores and grades. Despite this, increasing parental involvement has been one of the focal points of both President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and President Obama’s Race to the Top. Both programs promote parental engagement as one remedy for persistent socioeconomic and racial achievement gaps. What did we find? One group of parents, including blacks and Hispanics, as well as some Asians (like Cambodians, Vietnamese and Pacific Islanders), appeared quite similar to a second group, made up of white parents and other Asians (like Chinese, Koreans and Indians) in the frequency of their involvement. The majority of the time the reason why children do worse in the first group because maybe education isn’t seen as important or valuable in the eyes of the student which reflects on the parents and their teaching habits.
            Like I stated earlier my parents were always involved in my school work and they were also active in all the extracurricular activities I participated in. I honestly don’t think that parental involvement can ever be in any way negative. At the same time I can understand why parental involvement can result negatively. Not all children are blessed with such loving and supporting parents who have the time and patience to help their child like the way my parents did with my siblings and I.
            In conclusion the article believes that parents should not be involved in their child’s learning activities/criteria.

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