IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v36y2008i6p678-705.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are Involved Parents Providing Public Goods or Private Goods?

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Walsh

    (St. Michael's College)

Abstract

Parents who lobby their children's schools for better or increased educational resources may be providing a schoolwide public good. However, they may also be capturing a larger share of school resources, possibly leaving other families worse off. A regression of within-school variation in input quality on parent-initiated school contact identifies this ``private-good'' effect, using involvement in civic organizations to instrument for contact. A 10 percent increase in the probability of parental contact raises the probability of inclusion in a gifted program by 2 percent to 3 percent. At the average school, the highest ``non-gifted'' students significantly outscore the lowest ``gifted'' students, suggesting that this lobbying crowds out deserving students. Alongside these private-good effects, involved parents also provide public goods: again instrumenting with civic involvement, higher participation in a school's parent—teacher organization leads to a higher probability that principals frequently observe and evaluate all teachers at that school.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Walsh, 2008. "Are Involved Parents Providing Public Goods or Private Goods?," Public Finance Review, , vol. 36(6), pages 678-705, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:36:y:2008:i:6:p:678-705
    DOI: 10.1177/1091142107308298
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1091142107308298
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1091142107308298?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eric A. Hanushek & Steven G. Rivkin, 1997. "Understanding the Twentieth-Century Growth in U.S. School Spending," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(1), pages 35-68.
    2. Eric A. Hanushek & John F. Kain & Steven G. Rivkin & Daniel M. O'Brien, 2005. "The Market for Teacher Quality," Discussion Papers 04-025, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    3. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1992. "Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristics of Public Schools in the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(1), pages 1-40, February.
    4. Bergstrom, Theodore & Blume, Lawrence & Varian, Hal, 1986. "On the private provision of public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 25-49, February.
    5. Jacob, Brian A. & Lefgren, Lars, 2005. "What Do Parents Value in Education? An Investigation of Parents' Revealed Preferences for Teachers," Working Paper Series rwp05-043, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    6. Brian A. Jacob & Lars Lefgren, 2007. "What Do Parents Value in Education? An Empirical Investigation of Parents' Revealed Preferences for Teachers," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1603-1637.
    7. Berrara, A., 1989. "The Interactive Effects Of Mother'S Schooling And Unsupplemented Breastfeeding On Child Health," Papers 572, Yale - Economic Growth Center.
    8. Ronald John Shadbegian & Attiat F. Ott, 2001. "Do Children Create an Externality in the Provision of Public Education?," Public Finance Review, , vol. 29(3), pages 233-253, May.
    9. Boozer, Michael & Rouse, Cecilia, 2001. "Intraschool Variation in Class Size: Patterns and Implications," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 163-189, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Walsh, Patrick, 2010. "Is parental involvement lower at larger schools?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 959-970, December.
    2. Chung, Bobby W., 2020. "Peers’ parents and educational attainment: The exposure effect," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    3. Jinho Kim, 2020. "The Effect of Classmates’ Maternal College Attainment on Volunteering in Young Adulthood," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2289-2311, October.
    4. Jang, Hayun & Kim, Jinho, 2023. "Peers’ parental education and cardiovascular disease risk in adulthood: The mediating role of health-related behaviors," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 320(C).
    5. Diemer, Andreas, 2022. "Endogenous peer effects in diverse friendship networks: Evidence from Swedish classrooms," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    6. Fruehwirth, Jane Cooley & Gagete-Miranda, Jessica, 2019. "Your peers’ parents: Spillovers from parental education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    7. Park, Sira & Stone, Susan I. & Holloway, Susan D., 2017. "School-based parental involvement as a predictor of achievement and school learning environment: An elementary school-level analysis," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 195-206.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jesse Rothstein, 2010. "Teacher Quality in Educational Production: Tracking, Decay, and Student Achievement," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 175-214.
    2. Wößmann, Ludger, 2001. "New Evidence on the Missing Resource-Performance Link in Education," Kiel Working Papers 1051, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    3. Mason, Patrick, 2007. "Intergenerational mobility and interraical inequality:the return to family values," MPRA Paper 11327, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Graves, Jennifer, 2011. "Effects of year-round schooling on disadvantaged students and the distribution of standardized test performance," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1281-1305.
    5. Gilpin, Gregory & Kaganovich, Michael, 2012. "The quantity and quality of teachers: Dynamics of the trade-off," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 417-429.
    6. Brian A. Jacob & Lars Lefgren, 2007. "What Do Parents Value in Education? An Empirical Investigation of Parents' Revealed Preferences for Teachers," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1603-1637.
    7. Brian A. Jacob & Lars Lefgren, 2005. "Principals as Agents: Subjective Performance Measurement in Education," NBER Working Papers 11463, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Gilpin, Gregory & Kaganovich, Michael, 2012. "The quantity and quality of teachers: Dynamics of the trade-off," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 417-429.
    9. Lisa Barrow & Cecilia Elena Rouse, 2005. "Causality, causality, causality: the view of education inputs and outputs from economics," Working Paper Series WP-05-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    10. Wo[ss]mann, Ludger & West, Martin, 2006. "Class-size effects in school systems around the world: Evidence from between-grade variation in TIMSS," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 695-736, April.
    11. Tahir Andrabi & Jishnu Das & Asim Ijaz Khwaja & Tristan Zajonc, 2011. "Do Value-Added Estimates Add Value? Accounting for Learning Dynamics," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 29-54, July.
    12. Kevin C. Bastian & Gary T. Henry & Charles L. Thompson, 2013. "Incorporating Access to More Effective Teachers into Assessments of Educational Resource Equity," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 8(4), pages 560-580, October.
    13. Ozkan Eren & Daniel L. Millimet, 2008. "Time to learn? The organizational structure of schools and student achievement," Studies in Empirical Economics, in: Christian Dustmann & Bernd Fitzenberger & Stephen Machin (ed.), The Economics of Education and Training, pages 47-78, Springer.
    14. Vegas, E & Ganimian, A. J., 2013. "Theory and Evidence on Teacher Policies in Developed and Developing Countries," Working Paper 104291, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    15. Christopher Jepsen, 2015. "Class size: Does it matter for student achievement?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 190-190, September.
    16. Ozkan Eren & Daniel J. Henderson, 2008. "The impact of homework on student achievement," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 11(2), pages 326-348, July.
    17. Gary Henry & Roderick Rose & Doug Lauen, 2014. "Are value-added models good enough for teacher evaluations? Assessing commonly used models with simulated and actual data," Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación volume 9, in: Adela García Aracil & Isabel Neira Gómez (ed.), Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación 9, edition 1, volume 9, chapter 20, pages 383-405, Asociación de Economía de la Educación.
    18. Barankay, Iwan & Lockwood, Ben, 2007. "Decentralization and the productive efficiency of government: Evidence from Swiss cantons," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(5-6), pages 1197-1218, June.
    19. Reback, Randall, 2008. "Demand (and supply) in an inter-district public school choice program," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 402-416, August.
    20. Clapp, John M. & Nanda, Anupam & Ross, Stephen L., 2008. "Which school attributes matter? The influence of school district performance and demographic composition on property values," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 451-466, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:36:y:2008:i:6:p:678-705. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.