That students' social and economic characteristics shape their cognitive and behavioral outcomes is well established, yet policymakers typically resist accepting that non-school disadvantages necessarily depress outcomes. Rather, they look to better schools and teachers to close achievement gaps, and consistently come up short. This report…

Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, this study employed a latent growth curve model to examine how parental involvement explains the association between maternal employment status and children's math and reading achievement growth from kindergarten through the third grade. To address this issue, three types of parental…