Teachers constantly call on parents to be more involved with their children's schoolwork.
In the case of struggling students, that plea is right on target, because parental help levels the academic playing field, a University of Illinois study has found. The study was detailed in April during the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. It also appeared in the March issue of Developmental Psychology. For 18 months, Pomerantz and Missa Murry Eaton, a doctoral student in psychology, examined 166 fourth, fifth and sixth graders and their mothers on both a daily and long-term basis. They analyzed the children's grades in English, math, reading, science, social studies and spelling.