Fostering Productive Parent Engagement at School Entry

Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to test the efficacy of the GoPals Kindergarten Club intervention. GoPals is designed to address the needs of economically disadvantaged students living in rural communities by engaging their families in guided home learning activities and fostering positive family-school involvement. Children from low-income families often enter school with less social-emotional and cognitive school readiness than their more advantaged peers, fueling a socioeconomic gap in school attainment that grows over time. Although public investment in prekindergarten programs is designed to reduce these early socioeconomic disparities, fewer than half of the children in rural areas attend prekindergarten.