![]() The children of parents in the treatment group increased their chances of earning a passing grade by 2.7 percentage points. The results show that our intervention significantly moved the needle. Parents in both groups got messages about general school matters and the usual quarterly report cards. The treatment group received individualized weekly messages on their kids’ attendance and monthly messages on their classroom behavior and scores on math tests. ![]() The experiment involved dividing parents into a treatment group and a control group. These are precisely the discrepancies, or information gaps, that our intervention was intended to correct.įigure 1: Baseline Share of Misinformed Parents Note: Y-axis presents the (lowness-smoothed) share of parents misinformed regarding their child’s grades and attendance as measured by the at-risk index. More than 80% of the parents of the students with the highest at-risk values had inaccurate information on their children’s attendance (red line in the figure) and around half were mistaken about their grades (blue line in the figure). When examined against an at-risk index-an average of standardized attendance, standardized math grades, and negative behavioral notes from teachers-the perils of misinformation for grade retention and dropout were clear. As can be seen in Figure 1, about one in four parents had inaccurate information about their kids’ class attendance and grades. Our baseline survey confirmed how unaware many parents are of what is going on with their children studies. It is in this age bracket that attendance and grades start to matter, but before the risks of grade repetition or dropout significantly rises. The students’ age-an average of 10-was important. The messages contained information on kids’ attendance, grades, and classroom behavior. We created a program called Papás al Día and for two school years, we sent weekly and monthly text messages through the program to parents of 1000 students in grades four through eight in the metropolitan area of one of the country’s cities. Our experiment conducted in Chile, at low-income schools with few resources, shows how sending simple text messages to the parents of school children can make a real difference. They can bridge the information gap between schools and parents, lead to greater parent involvement in their children’s academic life, and significantly improve student outcomes. Recent work in the United States, and an experiment we conducted in Chile, however, show that low-cost communication technologies-in this case, text messages-can help turn things around. Parents are often in the dark, and the consequences for a student’s future are potentially dire. Part of the difficulty is that while schools routinely record students’ performance, they don’t necessarily share it with parents in a timely manner that would allow them to constructively intervene. In Latin America, where only 53% of students graduate from school on time and dropout rates are high, those problems are among education systems’ greatest challenges. Classroom misbehavior and absenteeism, along with failing grades, are strong warning signs that a student is likely to repeat a grade or give up on school altogether down the line. We’ve all known kids who joke around in class, get up to mischief, and even skip school altogether, yet manage to ultimately thrive.
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