Parent and teacher judgments about children's mathematics and reading competencies in primary school: Do parent judgments associate with children's educational outcomes?

Abstract

Most research on this topic has focused on examining parent and teacher judgments separately. Therefore, information about the relationship between parent and teacher judgments and children's cognitive competence is relatively sparse. To bridge this research gap, this study aimed to examine the relationships between both parent and teacher judgments and children's mathematics and reading competencies.The present study used data from the Starting Cohort 2 of the German National Educational Panel Study, which primarily collected data on children, but also collected data on parents and educators.The results of multilevel regression models confirmed the significant contribution of both parent and teacher judgments in explaining the variance in mathematics and reading competencies. More importantly, the results indicated that the combined contribution of parent and teacher judgments to children's competencies is more meaningful than their independent judgments. This result highlights the role of family-school partnerships in promoting children's educational success.