
My colleague and I wanted to see if this was the case.

That is, frequent homework help from parents might not be the cause of problems, but rather, coincide with them. When children are struggling in school, parents may step in to help more often.

These studies find that frequent homework help from parents is associated with lower test scores.īut this finding does not necessarily mean that moms and dads do harm when they help with homework. The basis for claims that parental help with homework can be bad for students comes from research examining national surveys. Together with sociologist Angran Li, I set out to make sense of this conflicting guidance.
