Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 8, 1994                   TAG: 9409080077
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PARENTS' HOME WORK HELPS KIDS IN SCHOOL

Now, the first wave of research from a 6-year, ongoing national survey of students, parents, teachers and principals confirms that parents are justified in being concerned, since a great deal of the responsibility for children's school achievement falls on them.

Referring to the research, Education Secretary Richard Riley announced Wednesday that his department will join with the 45-member National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education and other groups to make family participation in education a national priority. ``The American family is the rock on which a solid education can and must be built,'' Riley said.

``There is a disconnection between educators and parents that needs our attention,'' Riley said. When parents enter schools, they often find nothing inviting, ``nothing that suggested that parents were, in fact, the true owners of the school.''

Employers, Riley said, should be more understanding of working parents' needs. ``We must see the value in job-sharing, flex time and release time for families to give attention to the children. Schools at the plant site, day care in the office, parents working at home without stigma or financial loss.''

Parents can no longer depend on schools to look out for their child's interests, said Chandra Muller, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas, who is one of more than 150 researchers analyzing the data from the survey, the National Education Longitudinal Study. ``Parents have to be alert about what's going on; they have to take charge of their children's education and participate in an authoritative way,'' she said.

The study, sponsored by the Education Department, includes information on 26,000 students who were eighth-graders in 1988, randomly selected from 1,057 public and private schools. Students in the survey took specially designed standardized tests in math, reading, science and social studies and answered a broad range of questions about their lives. One or two of each student's teachers, a principal and a parent were also interviewed. The testing and interviews were repeated when students were in the 10th and 12th grades.

Among the findings:

Students do best when their parents ``take a managerial role in relation to the school, viewing themselves as being in charge of their child's educational career.''

Children whose parents talk to them about school events or what they learned in class do better on achievement tests. Thirty-seven percent of the eighth-graders said their parents spoke with them about school three or more times during the school year, Muller said. The other students said their parents discussed the issue only once or twice, or not at all.

Children whose parents restrict television during the week, provide music classes outside school and offer some form of adult supervision after school also do better on achievement tests.

Children whose teacher expects the class to achieve at a higher than average level do better on achievement tests in math and reading, said Shelley Drazen, another researcher.

The more homework teachers assign, Drazen said, the higher the students' achievement level.

The Associated Press contributed information to this story.