martes, 20 de septiembre de 2016

MercatorNet: To strengthen schools, start with the family

MercatorNet: To strengthen schools, start with the family

To strengthen schools, start with the family



To strengthen schools, start with the family

New research shows family structure is strongly linked to educational success.
Carolyn Moynihan | Sep 20 2016 | comment 


If your country is anything like mine, you will hear teacher organisations constantly complaining about the government’s miserliness towards schools and smallness of teachers’ pay packets. Money, it seems, would make all the difference to the success rates of students.
It ain’t necessarily so. New research from the Institute for Family Studies finds that what’s happening at home probably makes more difference to educational performance than funding. W. Bradford Wilcox and Nicholas Zill studied data from counties across the state of Florida, and they say:
"We found that the share of married-parent families in a county is one of the strongest predictors of high-school graduation rates for Florida counties; indeed, it's a more powerful predictor than family income, race or ethnicity.
"Across the state's counties, graduation rates are 4 percentage-points higher for every 10 percentage-point rise in married-couple families."
In their report, Strong Families, Successful Schools, Wilcox and Zill cite another recent study -- by MIT economist David Autor and colleagues -- of more than one million Florida children that also highlights the importance of family circumstances. Autor told The New York Times: “Boys particularly seem to benefit more from being in a married household or committed household—with the time, attention and income that brings.”
In fact, the IFS scholars point out that this correlation was already observed 50 years ago in the Coleman Report, Equality of Educational Opportunity,  which found that children’s family backgrounds—their parents’ education, income, and family structure—were more powerful predictors of school success than the quality, character, and spending of their schools.
The difference in the new IFS study is that, rather than looking at individual children and their families, it looks at the links between family structure and school performance at the collective level, in this case, counties across Florida.
While acknowledging that parental education and income matter, the authors “hypothesize that counties with more married families enjoy higher levels of parental engagement, better parental discipline, and more parental involvement in PTO groups, all factors that would likely redound to the social and educational benefit of children in these counties.”
Their findings support this:
* Strong Families, Successful Schools finds that the share of married parent families in a county is one of the strongest predictors of high school graduation rates in the 67 counties across Florida, as well as recent growth in high school graduation rates in the Sunshine State.
* The share of married families also is the strongest predictor of county school suspension rates in Florida in our models.
* Moreover, the share of families headed by married couples is a more powerful predictor of high school graduation and school suspension rates than are income, race, and ethnicity in Florida—factors that tend to get more attention in media and policy circles.
* The report also finds that parental education is the best predictor of county high school graduation rates in Florida, according to our models.
Take home message: The best resourced schools and the best paid teachers are not going to cancel the emotional and cultural deficit caused by broken homes.
(W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist, is director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia  and a senior fellow of the Institute for Family Studies. Nicholas Zill, a psychologist, co-founded Child Trends and recently retired as vice president of Westat.)


MercatorNet



Apart from asking whether you support Clinton or Trump, there is no more incendiary question nowadays than: is gay parenting as good as straight parenting? But most of the ensuing argument will be conducted in a fact-free zone. Unfortunately this is not only the case at water coolers, but in courts and legislatures as well. In today's feature we review a mammoth article by American sociologist Walter Schumm in which he debunks the official consensus on the issue. Check it out.
There's still time to vote for your favourite romantic novel -- we'd especially like nominations of more contemporary authors. Enter the MercatorNet survey now! 


Michael Cook 
Editor 
MERCATORNET



Is there really no difference between straight and gay parenting?
By Michael Cook
The consensus is flawed by small-scale studies, badly framed questions and poorly understood data
Read the full article
 
To strengthen schools, start with the family
By Carolyn Moynihan
New research shows family structure is strongly linked to educational success.
Read the full article
 
Euthanasia for kids kicks off in Belgium
By Michael Cook
The first death under the country's new law occurred last week
Read the full article
 
America’s legendary ignorance about Africa persists
By Julius A. Amin
Negative perceptions continue to dominate the thinking of major political leaders
Read the full article
 
The new religion of transgenderism in Australian schools
By Michael Cook
Australia's Safe Schools program is so bizarre and fact-free that you can describe it as a cult, says an academic
Read the full article
 
Sophie Ellis-Bextor inspires with her family ethic
By Tamara El-Rahi
An inspiration where other pop stars fail to be.
Read the full article
 
Great novels about romance
By Carolyn Moynihan
Readers, give us your suggestions for best novels about romance and marriage.
Read the full article
 
Four innovative foodies
By Shannon Roberts
New ideas deserve to be celebrated.
Read the full article
 
Secret experiments on animals revealed
By Jennifer Minicus
Raffa discovers the truth behind investments in scientific research.
Read the full article


MERCATORNET | New Media Foundation 
Suite 12A, Level 2, 5 George Street, North Strathfied NSW 2137, Australia 

Designed by elleston

New Media Foundation | Suite 12A, Level 2, 5 George St | North Strathfield NSW 2137 | AUSTRALIA | +61 2 8005 8605 

No hay comentarios:

Publicar un comentario