Brown Bag Seminar: Improving Educational Outcomes By Improving Parenting

In his Brown Bag lecture, Michael Wald—the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law, Emeritus—will discuss three major factors that influence children’s development and school achievement: the nature and quality of the economic and other resources (especially schools) provided to the child by parents and the state; neighborhood; and the quality of parenting the child receives. Over the past 40 years, societal efforts to promote children’s development and academic success have expanded significantly. Most of the attention has been on expanding access to, and improving the quality of, the non-family institutions that serve children, especially the health, childcare, and education systems. There has been far less attention to improving parenting. Yet, parenting is of critical importance, especially with respect to protecting and promoting the basic physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development of children. In this talk, Wald will discuss the influence of parenting on various outcomes of children, with an emphasis on educational attainment. He will propose a new system for improving the quality of parenting received by children up to 5 years old.

Deeply devoted to the cause of children’s rights and welfare and a frequent expert adviser on youth and children’s legal issues nationwide, Michael Wald has had a distinguished career as an academic researcher and teacher. He is one of the leading national authorities on legal policy toward children, and he drafted the American Bar Association’s Standards Related to Child Abuse and Neglect, as well as major federal and state legislation regarding child welfare. He is currently chair of the San Francisco Youth Council and the Faculty Scholars Program of the William T. Grant Foundation, and previously served as a Guggenheim Fellow. He has been a member of the Stanford Law School faculty since 1967.