Parent and school influence on student achievement research

Parents who want their children to succeed academically in school have more influence over that outcome than the schools themselves, according to a study by researchers from three universities.To arrive at their findings, researchers used the National Education Longitudinal Study data to evaluate social capital at home and at school. Parcel said her group evaluated results from 10,000 12th graders, taking into account their composite test scores in math, reading, science, and history to measure achievement levels. Researchers compared measures of "family social capital" and "school social capital," discovering that even in schools that had low social capital, students were more likely to excel if their family social capital scores were high.
Dufur, M., & Troutman, K. (2012). Does Capital at Home Matter More than Capital at School?: Social Capital Effects on Academic Achievement. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.