Families hold the key to increasing African American achievement in schools

In recent decades progress in addressing racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps between African American and Latino students and white and Asian American students has been painfully slow. William Jeynes has conducted two meta-analyses examining which factors reduce this achievement gap, and the extent to which to parental involvement helps African American students perform well in school. He finds that faith and family factors help to reduce the achievement gap by up to 65 percent. Rather than simply pumping billions of dollars into school-based solutions for improving educational outcomes, he argues that politicians need to take a broader minded approach, and consider policies which recognize the importance of family involvement in improving educational outcomes

Moves towards greater educational standardization epitomized by Common Core have done little to address the decline of American education

The 1960s and 1970s saw a significant decline in national average SAT achievement scores in America. Since that time, successive governments have tried to implement public school reforms, the latest iteration of which is the Common Core policy, which applies consistent national standards. William Jeynes argues that the Common Core policy lowers educational standards and has also had a disappointing effect on test results. He argues in order to improve educational outcomes, rather than increasing moves towards educational standardization, policymakers should encourage greater competition between public and private schools through improved school choice

Policymakers should embrace greater school choice to include private and faith schools to address the achievement gap

For decades education policymakers have been concerned with the achievement gap between school students from low and high income backgrounds. William Jeynes argues that one way to tackle this problem would be to allow greater school choice, which would include private and faith schools. He writes that faith schools yield better educational results for students than traditional public schools or charter schools, and do so at much lower cost

The Effects of Catholic and Protestant Schools: A Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis was undertaken including 41 studies to determine the influence of Catholic and Protestant schools. The analysis examined studies undertaken at both the elementary and secondary school level. The results indicate that both Catholic and Protestant school students do better than their counterparts in public schools. In addition, Protestant school students excelled more than their Catholic counterparts on most standardized tests, but Catholic school students did better than their Protestant school counterparts on non-standardized measures. The significance of these results is discussed

How we might begin to reduce school shootings in America

The past two decades have seen a marked increase in both the number and severity of school shootings. Following a meta-analysis of factors common to many of these school shootings, William Jeynes suggests a number of potential solutions. These include supporting parental involvement with their children, reintroducing character education in schools, and more intelligent gun laws

The Effects of Catholic and Protestant Schools: A Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis was undertaken including 41 studies to determine the influence of Catholic and Protestant schools. The analysis examined studies undertaken at both the elementary and secondary school level. The results indicate that both Catholic and Protestant school students do better than their counterparts in public schools. In addition, Protestant school students excelled more than their Catholic counterparts on most standardized tests, but Catholic school students did better than their Protestant school counterparts on non-standardized measures. The significance of these results is discussed

Parental involvement and academic success

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