Peter "Just Loves Flying"

There is a new Best Evidence in Brief including this interesting bit:

A recent study from Harvard and Brown Universities shows that struggling students did better in school when their teachers communicated with their parents regularly, and suggested specific actions students could do to improve their grades.

 Researchers studied the effects of teacher/parent communication on the academic achievement of 435 struggling high school students enrolled in summer school to recover lost credits in English, history, math, or science two hours a day during a five-week program. Students were mostly Hispanic and African-American, and all were low-income. All students had to have been absent less than 30 days and to have received an “F+” in up to two courses. Students’ parents were randomly divided into three groups: the first group received a short weekly message from the teacher by phone, text, or email about what their child was doing well…