How Behavioral Science Can Empower Parents to Improve Children's Educational Outcomes

Parents powerfully influence their children's educational outcomes. Yet psychological and informational barriers impede parents’ ability to engage with their children in ways that improve outcomes: parents tend to have inflated perceptions of their children's performance, which can deter them from taking helpful steps to effectively support their learning, and parenting is complex. Limited cognitive bandwidth for coping with complexities can steer parents’ attention away from actions that have long-term benefits for their children and toward actions yielding immediate returns. Poor school-to-parent communication and poverty exacerbate all of these problems. In this article, the author demonstrates how providing timely, actionable information to parents can lower these barriers and help parents engage with their children more productively from kindergarten through high school. Moreover, providing this information can improve educational outcomes at low cost.