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Mary Fischer
University of Connecticut
Social capital, school choice, and student success: Examining the linkages among high school students in the ELS
FINAL REPORT:
This paper uses data from the Educational Longitudinal Survey of 2002 (ELS 2002) and Common Core Data (CCD) to examine the efficacy of various forms of parental involvement and the utilization of public school choice in improving school outcomes. Prior research points to the positive effects of parental involvement on school outcomes, but whether this involvement is greater or varies in effectiveness by school type is not established. On the one hand, public schools of choice may encourage greater parental involvement by bringing together like-minded parents. On the other hand, the physical disconnect between residence andschool that often accompanies attendance in non-assigned public schools may hinder involvement (particularly parental interconnectedness). In the first part of the paper, I employ hierarchical linear models to examine the relationship between parental involvement and student outcomes by school type, with a focus on whether these relationships are facilitated or hindered in public schools of choice compared to assigned public schools or private schools. While students in public schools of choice on average do not have higher levels of parental social capital or perform better than students in general public schools, there were some interesting interactive effects between school type and parental involvement on math achievement. Students in choice schools obtained an additional boost in their math test scores from their parent’s organizational involvement, while greater interconnectedness among parents resulted in higher math scores for students in general public schools. These findings remain robust in auxiliary propensity score analyses, thus it does not appear that the results are driven by selection into different types of schools.
The second part of this paper examines the effects of aggregate parental involvement to see whether the generation and transmission of social capital at the school level operates similarly in general public schools compared to public schools of choice or private schools. I find some evidence to support the positive impact of parental involvement at the school level net of the effect of a student’s own parental social capital. For instance, there was a significant positive association between aggregate parental organizational involvement and higher math scores, while the aggregate level of parent’s interconnectedness to other parents was significantly related to reduced problem behavior and an increased likelihood of graduating from high school. However, there was no indication that these aggregate effects of involvement were greater in certain types of schools.
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