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ERIC Number: EJ905601
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010-Dec
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0272-7757
EISSN: N/A
Is Parental Involvement Lower at Larger Schools?
Walsh, Patrick
Economics of Education Review, v29 n6 p959-970 Dec 2010
Parents who volunteer, or who lobby for improvements in school quality, are generally seen as providing a school-wide public good. If so, straightforward public-good theory predicts that free-riding will reduce average involvement at larger schools. This study uses longitudinal data to follow families over time, as their children move from middle schools to high schools, thus netting out unobservable differences among families. Increases in school size result in significant reductions in parental involvement, although the magnitude of the effect is small. If parents experience a doubling in school size, they are 2 percentage points less likely to increase their contacts with the school, and 5 percentage points less likely to increase their volunteering. A continuous-treatment propensity-score method tests whether the results are driven by selection into treatment. The parental contact results are robust to this test, while the volunteer results are not. Also, there is some evidence that parents see their involvement as a substitute, rather than a complement, for perceived school quality. (Contains 9 tables and 2 figures.)
Elsevier. 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, FL 32887-4800. Tel: 877-839-7126; Tel: 407-345-4020; Fax: 407-363-1354; e-mail: usjcs@elsevier.com; Web site: http://www.elsevier.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education; High Schools; Middle Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A