'Politically Correct' Gov't Ignoring These 2 Things for Improving Education, Scholar Says
The government is failing to resolve issues like the achievement gap and economic stagnation because it is ignoring "politically incorrect" solutions, argues a scholar who specializes in education.
William Jeynes, a professor of education at California State University and senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, recently spoke on these matters at the University of Antwerp in Belgium.
Titled "A Meta-Analysis on the Relationship Between Parental Involvement And Academic & Behavioral Outcomes," the presentation focused on parental involvement on student achievement.
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"The research suggests that we need to broaden our approach to addressing the achievement gap to include more Home-Based Factors such as family structure, religious faith, and parental involvement," read the presentation notes.
"The relationship between parental involvement and student outcomes is strong. Parental involvement can play an important role in raising achievement."
In an interview with The Christian Post, Professor Jeynes explained that he gave the speech in Antwerp because "I was invited by some professors there to present my quantitative research on the family and faith."
"The professors who invited me said they were impressed by my speech at the Vatican and had followed my previous publications," said Jeynes.
Jeynes noted that his meta-analysis research found that government has attempted "through money and their policies to address problems of violence, the achievement gap, economic stagnation, raising academic achievement etc. and has largely been unsuccessful" because they ignore the importance of family and faith.
"One of the primary reasons the government has been unsuccessful is that it has overlooked the 'politically incorrect' solutions of the family — especially parental involvement and the power of the two-parent intact family — and faith," continued Jeynes.
"The facts indicate that family and personal faith are huge helps in reducing the achievement gap and school violence, but through defactualization — overlooking facts and emphasizing opinions only — these factors are often dismissed."
To justify his focus on family unit and faith involvement, Jeynes drew upon polling data regarding African-American and Latino families compared to white American families.
"African Americans and Latinos in poll data consistently are the most likely to state that their faith is very important to them. Children of faith from these two groups have an achievement gap with whites that is more than cut in half than their counterparts who are less religious. It has the same effect on school violence for these groups," noted Jeynes.
"African Americans and Latino children who are both very religious and from intact two-parent families have the achievement gap disappear entirely."
