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When babies are born they are like little blank sheets of paper. As they grow the stimulation and exposure they experience are recorded on these little blank pieces of paper with indelible ink-they are like sponges. The good thing is that they respond to positive stimulus in positive ways. The bad thing is that they respond to negative stimulus the same way. So, it is important that a child's parent be an active player in his or her education.

Any successful professional athlete would probably tell you that when he or was a child, his parents drove him, encouraged him, admonished him and yes, may have even coerced him a little to make him the best athlete he could be. Why was this athlete successful? Because there was someone behind him who cared. Someone he knew expected certain things and someone he did not want to disappoint. His efforts to please his parents paid off in his becoming a better athlete.

When a child feels something is of value he is going strive to work a little harder. If a parent is indifferent toward school work, then the child will not consider it a valuable part of his life either and therefore, he will put very little effort into it.

Research shows that children of low income families make lower scores on standardized test than their more affluent counterparts. Environment is probably the key to this phenomenon. In many cases families with low incomes are in their situation because the parents' jobs do not pay a lot of money. This could be the affect of dropping out of high school, alcoholism, or drug abuse. Perhaps the parents are depressed or have some other illness. When a child is reared in this type of environment, survival trumps the need to make an "A" in math.

Further research shows however, that children who live in low income homes where the parents actively participated in their education had higher scores than low income children whose parents did not. Furthermore, this participation may not even come in the form of helping with homework, but may simply be the parent consistently communicating with the child's teachers, belonging to the PTO, or volunteering at the child's school. Being "present" means as much as being "hands-on".

There are some reasons however, why parents maintain a hands off approach in regard to their child's education. Sometimes parents feel inadequate when dealing with homework. Some parents may not have had the advanced math some children take today. So, rather than embarrass themselves by admitting to the

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