6 ms·

Why volunteering at your kid's school does not make her smarter

25 points by tokenadult 13y ago

zwieback 13y ago
Yes and a thousand times yes.
- swah 13y ago
  OT: What was deleted here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6340427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6340427
  - zwieback 13y ago
    Not sure, was the comment unclear? I was trying to say that my university education helped me appreciate things that I wouldn't have seen as valuable had I only had vocational or self-taught experience.
presidentender 13y ago
Contribute to the child's education directly, especially early on. Teach the child to read before the first grade. Spend time working on meaningful educational stuff - help with homework. Guarantee good nutrition. It seems simple to me, and covers all the points that any of the education studies from the past decade or so mention, but it's rare.
- DanBC 13y ago
  An aside to your point (which I agree with) - There is the decoding (the ability to say a word that is written) and the understanding. Decoding is easier for most children, and they can decode sooner most words before they have understanding of those words. So, teaching a child to read may not be as important as just reading to them. Reading to them allows them to build up a larger vocabulary, and allows them to give meaning to decoded words. Putting this in the context of parent volunteers in schools: it's easy to see that a parent may be pronouncing the phonic sounds incorrectly, or may be subverting the techniques (moving to a look and say technique), or just generally adding some sub-optimal hints and shades. I don't know about the HN population but methods for math have changed quite a lot. I'm re-learning so that I can help my son. There are very many innovations.
  - cholmon 13y ago
    Can you recommend any further reading on these innovations in teaching math? I'm interested, as I'm in a similar boat with my children.
mzs 13y ago
I have three kids in grades 3-7 in USA and I spend a lot of time after work helping them, mainly in math and writing. I think that is the most valuable in terms of the educational benefit itself, but I also have helped in the school.Just rudimentary stuff like I read while the teacher prepared an activity on some tables, or staple sheets together cause that thing on the copy machine was perpetually broken. It's not really about improving education just me being a small help and getting to see what my kid and the staff deal with day in day out first hand. My wife was educated in Poland, and school is a lot different there, like the article points out. One thing about here though that is better is that there is so much other than school going on, like the sports, music, drama, and art. They also have clubs that meet there. The main fundraiser is like a carnival, again no help in education at all, but the kids like it. Whatever, my view is until uni as long as there was good enough preparation in math and writing, the smart kids will do fine anyway, so people should not stress so much.
- lotsofcows 13y ago
  What about the kids who aren't smart?
- tokenadult 13y ago
  My friend from Poland (a co-founder of one of the programs run by my nonprofit) was very pleased with his daughter's education until she was in middle school, when he found out that she was learning very little for a few years. He made sure his younger child, his son, had more steady supplementary education through middle school, and encouraged his daughter to challenge herself to catch up during high school. For most of us who have spouses educated in other countries who now live in the United States (I am such a person too), the most successful both-and is to set the expectations of curricula in other countries, while allowing the multifaceted extracurricular activities commonplace in the United States.
joezydeco 13y ago
Since this is HN, let's try an analogy. Pretend you have two clients: One that actively engages in the process and gives you feedback and responds to questions, and one that crosses their arms, never gets back to you with answers to questions and says "just give me what I want when I want it". Which would you be happier to work with? Which do you think would be more forgiving if there's a problem? Which would you work with again? My wife and I volunteer heavily at our childrens' school. From my experience teachers know, consciously or subconsciously, which families care about their kids' performance in school and which families acknowledge the teachers as people and not automatons that turn tax dollars into educated children. When that day comes where your child is struggling and the teacher is making a decision in their head to try one more time or just give up for the day, I'd rather they opt for the former and not the latter. It happens and I've seen it first hand.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Since this is HN, let's go for analogies and anecdotes instead of science? If what you say is true, why doesn't it appear in the data?
  - xaa 13y ago
    From the original study: The children of parents who are more involved in school activities, like parent-teacher meetings or volunteering in the school, also show poorer reading performance. This is probably because parents of children who are having behavioural difficulties or who are progressing slowly in school are more likely to call the teacher to seek ways to improve their child’s performance, or to receive a call from the teacher to discuss the child’s school work. Similarly, parents of low-achieving students are more likely to seek further engagement with the school to find ways to improve their child’s progress or behaviour. This is indeed a good strategy: other research with longitudinal data highlights how more parental involvement in the school improves children’s performance because teachers may pay more attention to children of involved parents, and school may become more important to children if they see that their parents are also invested in their progress (Pomerantz et al.,2007) (Table 3.1b). So I would say that Slate somewhat misrepresented the data.
  - deleted 13y ago
jimhefferon 13y ago
I'll speculate that the cause-effect relationship is: because in the US there are swaths of parents who do not get involved in their child's education at home, schools here have traditionally tried to reach out with PTA's, etc. In countries where the typical parent is involved at home there is less of an inducement for activist schools administrations and teachers to bring parents into the process.
- zwieback 13y ago
  I think that's definitely part of it. I think in the US there's another effect where parents view school as an extension of their social circle. This is especially true of affluent suburban elementary school parents, some of which become their children's driver and social/athletic assistant. This behavior is viewed as helpful in solving the American "public school problem" but in effect prevents kids from becoming more independent. I don't think anyone is complaining about working parents in poor school districts being overly involved. It is in those districts where we need the most improvement.
- tokenadult 13y ago
  Historically, what happened to make the PTA what it is today is that independently organized parent groups were co-opted by school staff so that they wouldn't question the assumptions of the school system. http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2003/02/01/taking-parent-out-national-ptaan-exclusive-interview-charlene-k-haar http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2003/02/01/takin...
mathattack 13y ago
This article hits very close to home: Given a finite amount of time, what's more important for your children's studies, face time at the school or helping them learn 1 on 1? Clearly it's the latter. What I find so strange about the Bake Sale mentality is that it is a very inefficient use of everyone's time. Someone who works 200 days a year and makes 100K has a time value of $500 per day. These bake sales rarely give a return near that amount of time spent. Better to write a check, skip the bake sale and help the kids study at night.
jack-r-abbit 13y ago
It does save the school money though. We have a lot of volunteers that otherwise would need to be paid staff. Crossing guards, valet attendants, playground supervisors, room parents (to assist teachers with stuff). It also helps build a community. Volunteering in your kid's class along with other parents is a good way to get to know the families you and your child will be sharing space with for 9 months.
hosh 13y ago
"I came to realize that parents are involved in education in these other countries—but they are involved differently. They are more involved at home. And that, it turns out, might be one secret to their success." And there it is, folks! It's an interesting contrast to yesterday's postings wherein I've seen comments from a former member of a board of education, and a teacher involved in a teacher's union. That there seems to be this expectation in America to leave education up to the professionals (state-certified teachers). There's a stigma attached to home-schooling, as it is highly associated with religious fundamentalists indoctrinating kids, and further, parents might "mess up" their children's education. This phenomena is thoroughly explored in John Taylor Gatto's book, "Underground History of American Education." In the 1800s, children were taught to read at home. The push towards compulsory education, however, somehow convinced the American public that parents are no longer good enough to teach their kids. That is crazy. Coming from an Asian family, this notion would have been absurd. It isn't about who is "qualified" to teach something, and more about gaining competitive advantages. (Now, Asian family dynamics have their own shadow-sides too).
- ianstallings 13y ago
  There has been an oppressive trend in the states towards home schoolers. In fact, DHS staged a terrorism drill in 2004 where the terrorists were "Wackos Against Schools and Education": http://hslda.org/hs/state/mi/200409220.asp http://hslda.org/hs/state/mi/200409220.asp Having gone to public school, I can see why people home school their children. I did not home school mine but I did augment her learning with teachings at home.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
cafard 13y ago
"Weren’t the parents who volunteered in the school community showing their children how much they valued education?" Because phoning other parents for money or collecting tickets at the fall fair moon bounce just screams "I value education!" I volunteered because they asked. Once at least I did not volunteer, my wife volunteered me.
bevn 13y ago
It doesn't make child smarter but it makes teachers give better grades.
GrinningFool 13y ago
(Edit: rewrite for clarity) The underlying premise appears to be that parents volunteer to improve their kids' intelligence (eg, grades). Nowhere is this premise discussed, proven, or cited - it's just taken as a given. The author then goes on to suggest that there are much better things you can do as a parent to improve academic performance. I accept this, but it's meaningless if he doesn't at least show that someone has demonstrated a significant correlation between parental volunteering and the intention of improving academic performance. As a parent of a not-quite-school-age child, I will likely volunteer to some limited extent - but I will do it so that I can better know the people who are monitoring and teaching my child for a significant part of every year. The author also conflates PTA meetings, volunteering, and fundraising - treating them as if they were all the same thing. Clickbait article without substance is clickbait.
- tokenadult 13y ago
  You should read her (the author of the article is a woman) entire newly published book, which is receiving very good reviews, and see if you still summarize her argument in the same way. http://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Kids-World-They-That/dp/1451654421/r http://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Kids-World-They-That/dp/14516...
  - GrinningFool 13y ago
    On the basis of the content of the article -- which is my first impression as to the quality of her research -- I am reluctant to buy the book.
drewrv 13y ago
> Finland, like most countries, spends less per student on education than the U.S. It seems to me that a lot of "education" money in the US is spent on things that benefit students, yet that benefit is indirect and could be done by more efficiently by other agencies. Lunch programs, nurses, athletics, and bus service come to mind. A welfare state with less hungry kids, universal healthcare, good parks, and good public transportation doesn't need to have schools pay for all of the above and more.

25 points by tokenadult 13y ago

zwieback 13y ago

Yes and a thousand times yes.

swah 13y ago
OT: What was deleted here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6340427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6340427
- zwieback 13y ago
  Not sure, was the comment unclear? I was trying to say that my university education helped me appreciate things that I wouldn't have seen as valuable had I only had vocational or self-taught experience.

presidentender 13y ago

Contribute to the child's education directly, especially early on. Teach the child to read before the first grade. Spend time working on meaningful educational stuff - help with homework. Guarantee good nutrition. It seems simple to me, and covers all the points that any of the education studies from the past decade or so mention, but it's rare.

DanBC 13y ago
An aside to your point (which I agree with) - There is the decoding (the ability to say a word that is written) and the understanding. Decoding is easier for most children, and they can decode sooner most words before they have understanding of those words. So, teaching a child to read may not be as important as just reading to them. Reading to them allows them to build up a larger vocabulary, and allows them to give meaning to decoded words. Putting this in the context of parent volunteers in schools: it's easy to see that a parent may be pronouncing the phonic sounds incorrectly, or may be subverting the techniques (moving to a look and say technique), or just generally adding some sub-optimal hints and shades. I don't know about the HN population but methods for math have changed quite a lot. I'm re-learning so that I can help my son. There are very many innovations.
- cholmon 13y ago
  Can you recommend any further reading on these innovations in teaching math? I'm interested, as I'm in a similar boat with my children.

mzs 13y ago

I have three kids in grades 3-7 in USA and I spend a lot of time after work helping them, mainly in math and writing. I think that is the most valuable in terms of the educational benefit itself, but I also have helped in the school.Just rudimentary stuff like I read while the teacher prepared an activity on some tables, or staple sheets together cause that thing on the copy machine was perpetually broken. It's not really about improving education just me being a small help and getting to see what my kid and the staff deal with day in day out first hand. My wife was educated in Poland, and school is a lot different there, like the article points out. One thing about here though that is better is that there is so much other than school going on, like the sports, music, drama, and art. They also have clubs that meet there. The main fundraiser is like a carnival, again no help in education at all, but the kids like it. Whatever, my view is until uni as long as there was good enough preparation in math and writing, the smart kids will do fine anyway, so people should not stress so much.

lotsofcows 13y ago
What about the kids who aren't smart?
tokenadult 13y ago
My friend from Poland (a co-founder of one of the programs run by my nonprofit) was very pleased with his daughter's education until she was in middle school, when he found out that she was learning very little for a few years. He made sure his younger child, his son, had more steady supplementary education through middle school, and encouraged his daughter to challenge herself to catch up during high school. For most of us who have spouses educated in other countries who now live in the United States (I am such a person too), the most successful both-and is to set the expectations of curricula in other countries, while allowing the multifaceted extracurricular activities commonplace in the United States.

joezydeco 13y ago

Since this is HN, let's try an analogy. Pretend you have two clients: One that actively engages in the process and gives you feedback and responds to questions, and one that crosses their arms, never gets back to you with answers to questions and says "just give me what I want when I want it". Which would you be happier to work with? Which do you think would be more forgiving if there's a problem? Which would you work with again? My wife and I volunteer heavily at our childrens' school. From my experience teachers know, consciously or subconsciously, which families care about their kids' performance in school and which families acknowledge the teachers as people and not automatons that turn tax dollars into educated children. When that day comes where your child is struggling and the teacher is making a decision in their head to try one more time or just give up for the day, I'd rather they opt for the former and not the latter. It happens and I've seen it first hand.

mikeash 13y ago
Since this is HN, let's go for analogies and anecdotes instead of science? If what you say is true, why doesn't it appear in the data?
- xaa 13y ago
  From the original study: The children of parents who are more involved in school activities, like parent-teacher meetings or volunteering in the school, also show poorer reading performance. This is probably because parents of children who are having behavioural difficulties or who are progressing slowly in school are more likely to call the teacher to seek ways to improve their child’s performance, or to receive a call from the teacher to discuss the child’s school work. Similarly, parents of low-achieving students are more likely to seek further engagement with the school to find ways to improve their child’s progress or behaviour. This is indeed a good strategy: other research with longitudinal data highlights how more parental involvement in the school improves children’s performance because teachers may pay more attention to children of involved parents, and school may become more important to children if they see that their parents are also invested in their progress (Pomerantz et al.,2007) (Table 3.1b). So I would say that Slate somewhat misrepresented the data.
- deleted 13y ago

jimhefferon 13y ago

I'll speculate that the cause-effect relationship is: because in the US there are swaths of parents who do not get involved in their child's education at home, schools here have traditionally tried to reach out with PTA's, etc. In countries where the typical parent is involved at home there is less of an inducement for activist schools administrations and teachers to bring parents into the process.

zwieback 13y ago
I think that's definitely part of it. I think in the US there's another effect where parents view school as an extension of their social circle. This is especially true of affluent suburban elementary school parents, some of which become their children's driver and social/athletic assistant. This behavior is viewed as helpful in solving the American "public school problem" but in effect prevents kids from becoming more independent. I don't think anyone is complaining about working parents in poor school districts being overly involved. It is in those districts where we need the most improvement.
tokenadult 13y ago
Historically, what happened to make the PTA what it is today is that independently organized parent groups were co-opted by school staff so that they wouldn't question the assumptions of the school system. http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2003/02/01/taking-parent-out-national-ptaan-exclusive-interview-charlene-k-haar http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2003/02/01/takin...

mathattack 13y ago

This article hits very close to home: Given a finite amount of time, what's more important for your children's studies, face time at the school or helping them learn 1 on 1? Clearly it's the latter. What I find so strange about the Bake Sale mentality is that it is a very inefficient use of everyone's time. Someone who works 200 days a year and makes 100K has a time value of $500 per day. These bake sales rarely give a return near that amount of time spent. Better to write a check, skip the bake sale and help the kids study at night.

jack-r-abbit 13y ago

It does save the school money though. We have a lot of volunteers that otherwise would need to be paid staff. Crossing guards, valet attendants, playground supervisors, room parents (to assist teachers with stuff). It also helps build a community. Volunteering in your kid's class along with other parents is a good way to get to know the families you and your child will be sharing space with for 9 months.

hosh 13y ago

"I came to realize that parents are involved in education in these other countries—but they are involved differently. They are more involved at home. And that, it turns out, might be one secret to their success." And there it is, folks! It's an interesting contrast to yesterday's postings wherein I've seen comments from a former member of a board of education, and a teacher involved in a teacher's union. That there seems to be this expectation in America to leave education up to the professionals (state-certified teachers). There's a stigma attached to home-schooling, as it is highly associated with religious fundamentalists indoctrinating kids, and further, parents might "mess up" their children's education. This phenomena is thoroughly explored in John Taylor Gatto's book, "Underground History of American Education." In the 1800s, children were taught to read at home. The push towards compulsory education, however, somehow convinced the American public that parents are no longer good enough to teach their kids. That is crazy. Coming from an Asian family, this notion would have been absurd. It isn't about who is "qualified" to teach something, and more about gaining competitive advantages. (Now, Asian family dynamics have their own shadow-sides too).

ianstallings 13y ago
There has been an oppressive trend in the states towards home schoolers. In fact, DHS staged a terrorism drill in 2004 where the terrorists were "Wackos Against Schools and Education": http://hslda.org/hs/state/mi/200409220.asp http://hslda.org/hs/state/mi/200409220.asp Having gone to public school, I can see why people home school their children. I did not home school mine but I did augment her learning with teachings at home.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

cafard 13y ago

"Weren’t the parents who volunteered in the school community showing their children how much they valued education?" Because phoning other parents for money or collecting tickets at the fall fair moon bounce just screams "I value education!" I volunteered because they asked. Once at least I did not volunteer, my wife volunteered me.

bevn 13y ago

It doesn't make child smarter but it makes teachers give better grades.

GrinningFool 13y ago

(Edit: rewrite for clarity) The underlying premise appears to be that parents volunteer to improve their kids' intelligence (eg, grades). Nowhere is this premise discussed, proven, or cited - it's just taken as a given. The author then goes on to suggest that there are much better things you can do as a parent to improve academic performance. I accept this, but it's meaningless if he doesn't at least show that someone has demonstrated a significant correlation between parental volunteering and the intention of improving academic performance. As a parent of a not-quite-school-age child, I will likely volunteer to some limited extent - but I will do it so that I can better know the people who are monitoring and teaching my child for a significant part of every year. The author also conflates PTA meetings, volunteering, and fundraising - treating them as if they were all the same thing. Clickbait article without substance is clickbait.

tokenadult 13y ago
You should read her (the author of the article is a woman) entire newly published book, which is receiving very good reviews, and see if you still summarize her argument in the same way. http://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Kids-World-They-That/dp/1451654421/r http://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Kids-World-They-That/dp/14516...
- GrinningFool 13y ago
  On the basis of the content of the article -- which is my first impression as to the quality of her research -- I am reluctant to buy the book.

drewrv 13y ago

> Finland, like most countries, spends less per student on education than the U.S. It seems to me that a lot of "education" money in the US is spent on things that benefit students, yet that benefit is indirect and could be done by more efficiently by other agencies. Lunch programs, nurses, athletics, and bus service come to mind. A welfare state with less hungry kids, universal healthcare, good parks, and good public transportation doesn't need to have schools pay for all of the above and more.