Family poverty, school-based parental involvement, and policy-focused protective factors in kindergarten

Abstract

Multilevel models of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (N = 19,375) revealed that the negative association between family poverty and school-based parental involvement in education varied according to family and school factors targeted by large-scale policy interventions. Specifically, the association was weaker when parents and teachers had higher levels of educational attainment. In contrast, the association was stronger when schools had greater parent outreach. Also, the moderating role of parent education was stronger for two stably partnered biological parents than for other parents. These findings underscore the need to examine protective factors in research on the family process model and shed light on policy-amenable factors that potentially improve the early educational experiences of poor children.