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 s

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.