Family Structure Matters to Student Achievement. What Should We Do With That?

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A version of this essay originally appeared on Robert Pondiscio’s SubStack. 

A recent report from the University of Virginia—Good Fathers, Flourishing Kids — confirms what many of us know instinctively but rarely see, or avoid altogether, in education debates: The presence and engagement of a child’s father has a powerful effect on their academic and emotional well-being. It’s the kind of data that should stop us in our tracks — and redirect our attention away from educational fads and toward the foundational structures that shape student success long before a child ever sets foot in a classroom.

The research — led by my AEI colleague Brad Wilcox and co-authored by a diverse team that includes another AEI colleague, Ian Rowe — finds that children in Virginia with actively involved fathers are more likely to earn good grades, less likely to have behavior problems in school, and dramatically less likely to suffer from depression. Specifically, children with disengaged fathers are 68% less likely to get mostly good grades and nearly four times more likely to be diagnosed with depression. These are not trivial effects. They are seismic.

Most striking is the report’s finding that there is no meaningful difference in school grades among demographically diverse children raised in intact families. Black and white students living with their fathers get mostly As at roughly equal rates — more than 85% — and are equally unlikely to experience school behavior problems. The achievement gap, in other words, appears to be less about race and more about the structure and stability of the family.

This may be a surprising finding to some, but not to William Jeynes, a professor of education at California State University, Long Beach, whose meta-analyses have previously demonstrated the outsized academic impact of family structure and religious faith. (The new UVA report does not study the role of church-going). 

As I wrote in How the Other Half Learns, Jeynes’ work highlights how two-parent households and religious engagement produce measurable benefits in educational achievement. “When two parents are present, this maximizes the frequency and quality of parental involvement. There are many dedicated single parents,” Jeynes has noted. However, the reality is that when one parent must take on the roles and functions of two, it is simply more difficult than when two parents are present.” Jeynes’ most stunning finding, and his most consistent, is that if a Black or Hispanic student is raised in a religious home with two biological parents the achievement gap totally disappears—even when adjusting for socioeconomic status.

My colleague Ian Rowe has been a tireless advocate for recognizing and responding to these patterns. He has long argued that NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card, should disaggregate student achievement data by family composition, not just by race and income. That simple step would yield a more honest accounting of the challenges schools are facing — and help avoid both unfair blame and unearned credit.

Yet this conversation remains a third rail in education. Many teachers and administrators are understandably wary of saying too much about family structure for fear of stigmatizing children from single-parent households, particularly in settings where single-parent households are dominant. Rowe has also faced resistance to his efforts to valorize the “Success Sequence,” the empirical finding that graduating high school, getting a full-time job and marrying before having children dramatically increases one’s odds of avoiding poverty. But being cautious is not the same as being silent, and it’s not compassionate to pretend these dynamics don’t matter when the data so clearly shows that they do.

None of this absolves educators of their duty to reach and teach every child. But it does suggest we should be clear-eyed in how we interpret data and set expectations. Teachers, particularly those in low-income communities, often shoulder the full weight of student outcomes while lacking the ability to influence some of the most powerful predictors of those outcomes. That’s frustrating — and understandably so.

Citing compelling evidence on fatherhood and family formation is not a call for resignation or excuse-making. It’s a call for awareness and intelligent action. While schools can’t influence or re-engineer family structure, teachers can respond in ways that affirm the role of fathers and strengthen the school-home connection. They can make fathers feel welcome and expected in school life — not merely tolerated. They can design family engagement activities that include dads as co-participants, not afterthoughts. They can build classroom cultures that offer structure and mentoring, especially to students who may lack it at home. 

And maybe — just maybe — the field can overcome its reluctance to share with students what research so clearly shows will benefit them and the children they will have in the future. Rowe takes pains to note his initiative to teach the Success Sequence is intended to help students make decisions about the families they will form, not the ones they’re from. “It’s not about telling them what to do,” he says, “it’s about giving them the data and letting them decide for themselves.”

This leads to a final point, and for some an uncomfortable one: If we truly care about student outcomes, perhaps we should be willing to support the institutions that reliably foster them. And that includes religious schools.

Religious schools — particularly those rooted in faith traditions that emphasize marriage, family life and moral formation — often create environments where the presence of fathers and the reinforcement of shared values are not incidental but central. A recent analysis by Patrick J. Wolf of the University of Arkansas, published in the Journal of Catholic Education, found that adults who attended religious schools are significantly more likely to marry, stay married, and avoid nonmarital births compared to public‑school peers. The effects are most pronounced among individuals from lower‑income backgrounds.

In states with Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) and other school choice mechanisms, we have an opportunity — perhaps an obligation — to expand access to these institutions. That’s not merely a question of parental rights or religious liberty. It’s a matter of public interest. If these schools produce better education and social outcomes by encouraging family formation and reinforcing the value of fatherhood, the public benefits — even if instruction is delivered in a faith-based context. Said simply: The goal of educational policy and practice is not to save the system. It’s to help students flourish.

So yes, let’s fund fatherhood initiatives. Let’s run PSAs about the importance of dads. But let’s also get serious about expanding access to the kinds of schools — whether secular or religious in nature — that support the kind of family culture where children are most likely to thrive. Because if we follow the evidence where it leads, we must conclude that the biggest intervention in education is not another literacy coach or SEL curriculum. It’s dad.

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