Interaction Effects of Sex of Mother's Child and Child's Reading Performance on the Mother's Evaluation of the School

Abstract

A recent project conducted within the Kansas City, Missouri, school district involved mothers in a multi-faceted effort to enhance the social-emotional and academic growth of third-year pupils who were having difficulty in learning to read,1 It is commonly assumed that “parental support” of the school or positive parent-school relationships are conditions facilitating academic progress in the child. Accordingly, one of the intended outcomes of the project efforts was the “improvement” of parent evaluations of the school. The present paper reports the analysis of pretest data pertaining to the assumption of a relationship between parent evaluations of the school and academic success in the child. Do mothers whose children are having difficulty in learning to read evaluate the school less favorably than mothers of children not having difficulty?