Dear Editor,
I wish to respond to a letter in your newspaper dated September 17 entitled ‘A two-parent house does not combat illiteracy.’ I want to thank Candice Ramessar for responding to my letter in a cordial way. My letter was written from my personal experience as a school dropout.
I’m not an expert on combating illiteracy, and since I am not a scholar no one should take advice from me. I would like Ms Ramessar to write about her personal experience as a student. I think we would have more in common than differences because I agree with most of her letter. One of things that we have in common is that we home school our children.
I don’t like to use so called experts to prove a point because experts have been wrong a lot. But, since Ms Ramessar used the book, Freakonomics to prove her point, I decided to use ‘experts’ to prove my point. But, I want to make it clear, I don’t believe my experts are right and hers are wrong. Maybe both of our experts are wrong. I know we will not agree on this topic, but it’s good to have a conversation; who knows maybe we can get others involved and go out for tea and continue this dialogue.
Christine C Kim, a policy analyst in the Domestic Policy Studies Department at the Heritage Foundation agrees with me that a two-parent home does help with combating illiteracy. In her article, ‘Academic Success Begins at Home: How Children Can Succeed in School,’ she writes:
“Despite this increase in public spending, student achievement and educational attainment over the last four decades has remained relatively flat. In 2007, a significant portion of students, disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds, scored ‘below basic’ in reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Sadly, in many of the nation’s largest cities, fewer than half of high school students graduate.”
She continues: “While academic research has consistently shown that increased spending does not correlate with educational gains, the research does show a strong relationship between parental influences and children’s educational outcomes, from school readiness to college completion.
“Two compelling parental factors emerge: Family structure, i.e., the number of parents living in the student’s home and their relationships to the child, and Parents’ involvement in their children’s schoolwork.
“Consequently, the solution to improving educational outcomes begins at home, by strengthening marriage and promoting stable family formation and parental involvement.”
Further, she writes, “studies show that children raised in intact families, i.e., with two continuously married parents, tend to fare better on a number of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes than children living in other family forms. Not surprisingly, the changes in family structure over the last 40 years have affected child and adolescent well-being.
“One study of 11,500 kindergartners living with two parents or parent figures reported that, accounting for parental education and income, children living with married parents averaged higher reading achievement test scores than peers living in cohabiting or stepparent families. Children aged three to 12 who live in intact families have higher average math scores than peers whose mothers live in cohabiting relationships.”
She stated, finally, “studies have also shown a robust link between family structure and high school dropout or graduation rates, and the evidence suggests that the relationship may be causal…
“The impact of family structure on educational outcomes appears to last into young adulthood. Throughout the college entrance process, students from non-intact families tend to fall behind their peers from intact families.
“Policies that strengthen healthy marriage and stable family formation may bolster child well-being, including school outcomes, both at the individual and aggregate levels.
“Conversely, policies and laws that facilitate further family breakdown may have adverse impacts on children’s educational outcomes and provide additional stress on the education system.
“While numerous education reforms over the last quarter century have demonstrated little impact on overall student achievement, the research clearly shows that the intact family structure and strong parental involvement are significantly correlated with educational outcomes, from school readiness to college completion. Instead of favoring proven ineffective education policies, policymakers seeking effective education reform should consider policies that strengthen family structure in America and bolster parental involvement and choice in education.”
Yours faithfully,
Anthony Pantlitz