Leveraging Parents: The Impact of High-Frequency Information on Student Achievement∗

We partner communication technology with school information systems to automate the gathering and provision of high-frequency information on students’ academic progress to parents. We use this technology to send weekly automated alerts to parents about their child’s missed assignments, grades, and class absences. The intervention reduces course failures by 38%, increases class attendance by 17% and increases retention. There are no effects on state test scores, though the exams, which were new and zero stakes, were discontinued; students used substantially less than the expected amount of time to complete them. In contrast, we find significant improvements on in-class exam scores. JEL Codes: I20, I21, I24, I28. ∗This research is funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation and the Teachers College Provost’s Investment fund and received approval from the Institutional Research Board at Teachers College, Columbia University. We thank Dr. Ron Duerring, Jon Duffy and Kanawha County Schools, as well as Spencer Kier, Alex Farivar, Jeremy Lupoli, Sam Elhag and Zach Posner. We also thank Raj Darolia, Philipp Lergetporer and Susanna Loeb for their comments, as well as those of seminar participants at the Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty, IZA, and CESifo. Bergman has previously received compensation from the learning management system company to advise them with respect to their school-to-parent information technologies. †Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W. 120th Street New York, New York 10027. Email addresses: [email protected] and [email protected]. Website: www.columbia.edu/~psb2101