Parents Trust Report Cards More Than Standardized Test Scores — For Kids’ Outcomes
The findings are from a draft paper that has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal and is subject to revision. It was released publicly by the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago this month.
As test scores drop across the country while grades rise, researchers believe parents may be investing less in their children. “Parents are the key to children’s success,” said Ariel Kalil of the University of Chicago. “What you need is for parents to invest in developing their children’s skills, and you need that parental effort to happen early and often. Anything that discourages parental investment is a problem.”
Kalil worries that this underinvestment in children is more pronounced in low-income communities, where, he said, high grades are often offset by low-quality skills. After the pandemic, schools struggled to convince families to sign up for free tutoring and summer programs to make up for months of disrupted instruction. Most report cards show strong grades, which reduces the urgency for parents to act.
Coupled with other recent research on long-term educational and economic outcomes, this study reinforces the case that grade inflation is harmless. Increased grades may feel encouraging, but they can send false signals both to students, who may learn less, and to parents, who may see less reason to enroll. Ultimately, it harms not only individuals, but the skills of the American workforce and future economic growth, the researchers argue.
Kalil, a behavioral scientist, believes that parents trust grades because they are familiar and easy to understand. Meanwhile, score reports are complicated and many educated parents are confused about average scores and percentiles.
A survey accompanying the online test revealed that a large proportion of parents do not trust the standardized test. 40 percent of parents in the survey said the test was biased. About 30 percent thought that student scores reflected family income. Less than 20 percent of parents think that tests have taken away their children’s abilities.
Kalil says there’s another psychological phenomenon at play even for parents who understand and value limited testing: the tendency to ignore bad news when paired with good news. “If the report card is all A’s, there is a cognitive bias of sticking your head in the sand and rejecting the bad information,” Kalil said.
There was a hint in the data that Hispanic families placed more trust in grades and less trust in test scores, while Asian families were more willing to listen to test results. But fewer Hispanic and Asian parents participated in the study, so these patterns were not statistically significant. (About 70 percent of respondents were white and 20 percent were Black.) Parents with at least a bachelor’s degree also paid more attention to standardized tests.
Solving the problem will not be easy. Researchers say schools can do more to explain what test scores mean and how to interpret them, but better communication alone may not change parents’ feelings. Reversing grade inflation would be a straightforward solution, but that would require a broader change across schools — something that won’t happen quickly.
For now, the onus is on parents to read report cards with a critical eye. If grades and test scores don’t match, it’s worth asking why. A solid report card can be reassuring, but it may not always tell the full story of what a child knows – or what help he may need.
Contact a staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 at Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
This story is about parents and report cards was produced by The Hechinger reporta non-profit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up Evidence Points and so on Hechinger newsletters.
