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Studies have found that students who live apart from one or both of their biological parents tend to do less well in school than students who live with both their biological parents. Some observers have speculated that differences in levels of parents' school involvement may account for observed disparities in academic outcomes. For this study, involvement at the high school level was defined as participating in at least three of four school activities: attending a general school meeting, attending regular parent-teacher conferences, attending a school or class event, or volunteering at school. Drawing on data from the 1996 National Household Education Survey, the study found that school involvement of biological parents is not the same across family types and that the involvement of stepparents is generally lower than that of biological parents: (1) biological mothers in stepfather families are less likely to be highly involved in their children's schools than biological mothers in two-biological-parent families; (2) biological fathers in stepmother families, on the other hand, are more likely to be highly involved in their children's schools than biological fathers in two-biological-parent families; (3) students living in father-only families are most likely of all students to have highly involved fathers; and (4) stepmothers are more likely than biological mothers, regardless of family type, to show low levels of involvement. Findings show that regardless of family type, parents' school involvement still makes a difference in students' school experiences. Fathers' involvement is associated with a higher likelihood of students getting mostly A's. Fathers' involvement in two-biological-parent families is associated with lower likelihood of students ever repeating a grade. School involvement of mothers, whether biological or step-, is associated with a lower likelihood of 6th through 12th graders ever being suspended or expelled. The study also found that although school involvement of parents who live apart from their children is lower than that of resident parents, some nonresident parents who have contact with their children are still involved in their children's schools. Although nonresident mothers are more likely than nonresident fathers to be involved, the benefits of their involvement are less apparent. (HTH)

Noting the relatively few studies that have examined the individual contributions that mothers and fathers make to their children's schooling, this study examined the extent to which resident (excluding foster) and nonresident fathers are involved in their children's schools, and the influence their involvement has on how their children are doing in school. Information on school involvement was obtained from the parents of 16,910 kindergartners through 12th graders, as part of the National Household Education Survey. Respondents were asked which adults in the household had participated in four types of school activities (general school meeting, scheduled parent-teacher conference, school or class events, volunteer opportunities at the school) and where appropriate, about the children's contact with their nonresident parent and whether the nonresident parent had participated in school activities. Among the findings are the following: (1) in two-parent families the most common activity in which parents participate is a general school meeting such as back-to-school night; (2) fathers in two-parent families are substantially less likely than mothers in either type of family or fathers in single-parent families to participate in the four types of activities; (3) fathers who head single-parent families have school involvement patterns that are very similar to those of mothers who head single parent families; (4) mothers and fathers in both types of families tended to decrease their involvement as children move from elementary to middle to high school; (5) parental involvement in schools is higher for children in families living above the poverty threshold and not receiving federal assistance than in families that experience economic difficulties, and this is true in both two-parent and single-mother families, though the differences are larger in two-parent families; (6) fathers are more likely to be highly involved as mothers' involvement increases, and vice versa; and (7) the involvement of nonresident fathers appears to be particularly important for children in grades 6-12, reducing the likelihood that the children have been suspended or expelled or repeated a grade. (Two appendices include detailed tables on parental involvement by grade level, and adjusted odds ratios for ll factors included in models of student outcomes. Contains 79 references.) (HTH)

Most youth in America have a good chance of becoming productive members of adult society. However, for a particular group of young people, at-risk youth, the probability of maturing into responsible adulthood is less certain. "At-risk youth" is a term commonly used to describe those adolescents for whom there is a high probability (risk) of negative life events, because their demographic, individual, economic, or social characteristics predict that they are vulnerable. This paper reviews research on risk and resilience from two primary disciplines--developmental psychology/psychopathology and social demography/sociology. The paper is one piece of a larger research endeavor, "Pathways to Achievement Among At-Risk Youth," that focuses on socioeconomic achievements among disadvantaged adolescents. The review briefly summarizes research approaches, operationalizations, and key findings from the two research traditions. The goal of the review is to highlight consistencies across disciplines in hopes of developing a coherent framework that can be used to study resilient behavior among at-risk youth. From this interdisciplinary perspective, the paper attempts to extract a more comprehensive list of both risk and protective factors, and a sense of the range of options in operationalizing these variables. The paper concludes by integrating these findings into a new conceptual framework for understanding resilience among disadvantaged youth. (Contains 51 references.) (EV)

This study evaluated the Survey of Income Program Participation (SIPP) as a source of data on children. The evaluation sought to determine whether SIPP provides reasonable estimates of the child population, by comparing estimates derived from SIPP with estimates derived from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Specifically, children living in families receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), children living in families that are poor but not receiving AFDC, and children living in near-poor families were compared with children living in non-poor families and with all children in the United States; comparisons were made on basic demographic variables and on selected characteristics of the children's parents. With only a few exceptions, the estimates from SIPP were similar to those from the CPS, in spite of the SIPP smaller sample size. For some types of questions--specifically those related to employment, income, and Food Stamp receipt--data from SIPP may be better than those available from CPS because of the shorter recall period within SIPP for these questions. In addition to the comparison, a profile was created of children in the United States who are at risk for adverse outcomes because of living in families receiving welfare, living in or near poverty, or living with a mother who began childbearing when a teenager. (Contains 11 references and 8 tables.) (KA)

Using data from the 1996 National Household Education Survey (NHES:96), this issue brief looks at the involvement of nonresident fathers in terms of how such involvement affects student performance in grades K-12. In the NHES, resident parents reported on whether nonresident parents who had had contact with their children in the past year had participated in any of the following four types of school activities: general school meeting, regularly scheduled parent-teacher conferences, school or class event, and volunteer opportunities. The following findings are highlighted: (1) most nonresident fathers are not very involved in their children's schools; (2) children are less likely to have ever repeated a grade or been suspended or expelled if their nonresident fathers are involved in their schools; (3) children are more likely to get A's in school, to enjoy school, and to participate in extracurricular activities if their nonresident fathers are involved in the schools. The issue brief concludes by noting that inconsistencies about the benefits of nonresident fathers' continued involvement with their children in extant studies may be due in large part to the fact that contact is often used to measure involvement. The current findings suggest that it is not contact, per se, that is associated with improved student outcomes, but rather active participation in children's lives through involvement in the schools. (HTH)