Dads at School: The missing piece

More dads volunteering at K12 schools is a free way to improve child outcomes and close gender gaps

May 12, 2026

Dads at School provides K12 schools support in increasing male caregiver engagement through year-round support and $1,000 grants. Thanks to funding from the American Institute for Boys and Men and in partnership with Illinois State University College of Education researchers, Dads at School is being piloted in Virginia for the 2026-2027 school year.

For decades, schools have depended heavily on mothers to carry the invisible labor of family engagement: volunteering in classrooms, organizing events, joining PTAs, answering teacher emails, coordinating fundraisers, and showing up for school culture in countless ways.

This is both a gift and a burden to mothers: School volunteering can be deeply meaningful, hugely influential and also just one more gendered parenting chore.

The PTA mom cliché has taken on new meaning as emerging research on the importance of family engagement on education outcomes has heightened the call for schools to partner with caregivers. Without family involvement, educators know, children do not succeed at school.

But there is another truth schools can no longer afford to overlook: fathers specifically matter deeply to child wellbeing, and this includes at school.

Research is remarkably consistent while on this point. When fathers are positively involved in children’s education, kids are more likely to earn higher grades, have stronger attendance, show better self-control, and report higher levels of confidence and wellbeing. These benefits appear across race, income, and family structure. Multiple meta-analyses and longitudinal studies have linked father involvement with stronger academic achievement and healthier child development.

And yet, in many schools, fathers remain largely absent from everyday school life.

This is not because dads don’t care.

In fact, one of the most important emerging areas of research on family engagement focuses on a hard truth: schools and communities often unintentionally marginalize fathers, even while claiming to support caregivers and families.

That idea sits at the center of the work of Kyle Miller, a professor at Illinois State University whose research has generated some of the rare data on how schools and engage fathers and male caregivers. Miller argues that many institutions use gender-neutral language like “family engagement” while still designing programs, communication systems and school cultures primarily around mothers.

Miller writes, “To care about children is to care about families, and to care about families is to care about fathers.”

Learn more about our new nonprofit, Dads at School »

Father involvement changes outcomes

For the past half century, every facet of society — family life, education — father involvement has been treated as something positive (maybe) but optional. This is certainly been true in the emerging field of K12 family engagement.

But what is old is new again and academic research (and common sense) is now bringing us all back to the truths of what thousands of years of humanity have known:

Fathers and other male caregivers are critical to the healthy raising of both boys and girls. The lack of meaningful father involvement is so detrimental to child outcomes, linking dad absence in children’s lives to crime, addiction, poor relationship and employment outcomes and more, that there have been calls to address lacking father involvement as a public health crisis.

These findings matter because schools increasingly face challenges that cannot be solved through academics alone: chronic absenteeism, behavioral struggles, mental health concerns, loneliness, disengagement, and declining community trust.

Father engagement at schools has many benefits, and different benefits resonate differently with different audiences.

I have found that educators don’t need to be schooled on the value of father involvement. They get it. While the research is lagging what educators observe, it is not hard to understand that when there are more male teachers and parents at a school, behavior improves, more classroom attention is paid, vibes are better.

Principals and engagement officers likely have talked about promoting more father engagement at their schools, but efforts tend to fall away in the face of the many other priorities school leaders juggle.

The benefits are many, and efforts can be completely free of cost to the school:

Schools, especially Title 1 schools, are required to track and report family engagement to qualify for federal funds. Currently, requests to parents to attend school functions or serve on volunteer committees really only reaches moms, as “caregiver” connotes “mother.”

Conversely, intentionally marketing school events to male caregivers doubles the number of potential engaged caregivers. Emails, newsletters and other announcements specifically calling for dads to show up are free and powerful.
More male caregivers at school means more resources for the school.
Educators know that more kids’ dads are involved in school, the more they are involved in the kids’ lives overall. Father involvement is critical to child outcomes throughout a child’s life.
More men in schools — whether as volunteers or teachers — is good for school culture, educators say.
Boys and girls benefit from seeing men in both caring roles (reading buddies, classroom help) and leadership roles (coaching, leading projects or the PTA). Gender norms are broadened and challenged.
Men who are actively engaged with their children’s daily lives report better psychological wellbeing, stronger identity and purpose, greater parenting confidence, and closer relationships with their children compared with less involved fathers.
Moms overwhelmed by gendered pressure — real or perceived — to volunteer at school now feel supported by a new culture that proactively invites dads into schools. Marital discord eases. Prediction: Dads at School is responsible for closing pay gaps and reducing divorce rates!

Joking aside, data is emerging that communities where equal co-parenting is the presumption enjoy more gender equality.

Schools unintentionally discourage fathers

One of the most striking findings in Miller’s research is that K–12 schools were often reported as less father-friendly than some social service agencies.

While schools do not intentionally exclude dads exclusion is real.

Communication often defaults to mothers. Parent emails may only reach one caregiver — and that is the mom. Volunteer opportunities are frequently framed in ways that signal mother participation:

Events are often scheduled during traditional work hours when more moms than dads are likely to be free.

Posters and flyers around campus disproportionately depict women.

School nurses reaching out to mothers when kids are sick, even when both parents are listed as emergency contacts.

Front desk attendants asking male caregivers: Are you legally allowed to pick up your child?

In Miller’s research, she found “small but consistent exclusions reinforce a broader cultural message: fathers are peripheral to parenting.”

That insight is critical.

Many schools assume that because they welcome families and promote family engagement fathers are obviously included. But without intentionally reaching out to male caregivers, and without specifically addressing unspoken anti-man bias at schools, men are not, in fact welcomed, and often tell me they feel unwelcome in their child’s education.

Boys especially need men in educational spaces

Boys and girls alike benefit when more men are in schools, as I wrote about as it relates to male educators. Men are underrepresented in children’s lives: in about 80% of separated families, mothers retain primary custody; roughly two-thirds of K–12 teachers — and nearly all early childhood educators — are women, and fields like social work and psychology are overwhelmingly female.

Some evidence suggests that boys especially stand to benefit from more male presence in schools, as they are more likely than girls to face school discipline, disengage academically, struggle with literacy, and report feeling disconnected from school environments.

When dads and male caregivers volunteer visibly in schools, children see men reading with students, helping in classrooms, mentoring, organizing events, coaching, listening, and participating in community life. Those experiences expand children’s understanding of gender as both boys and girls gain more time with men when their worlds are normally dominated by women. Children stand to develop healthier expectations about partnership, caregiving, and shared responsibility when they see fathers in caring roles.

Father engagement is not expensive

Too often, father engagement is reduced to novelty programming: a “Donuts with Dads” once a year, a playground cleanup investment or a gender typical role like safety patrol.

Those activities can be valuable. They are often expensive. But they are rarely enough to truly engage with male caregivers and change the culture of a school — not to mention the world!

Good news is taht meaningful progress does not necessarily large budgets, complicated bureaucracy or elaborate programming. Small, free initiatives can make a big difference to raise awareness, change perceptions and help dads feel welcome and needed.

Personally and intentionally invite fathers and male caregivers to existing programs, lunchtime reading buddies or field trip chaperoning. You have to say the words: Dad. Father. Male caregiver.
If the message is too inclusive, it becomes exclusive.
Ensure communication reaches all caregivers equally. If there is a group chat or email thread for each classroom, require that two caregivers are added for each child.
Schedule events outside traditional work hours
Feature fathers in school newsletters and websites
Prioritize gender equality in PTAs or other family organizations
Create a dad’s council
Train staff to recognize implicit assumptions about gender and caregiving
Ask dads how they want to serve the school, then support their leadership in those initiatives

These initiatives communicate to dads and the world that fathers belong in schools too.

And once fathers begin participating visibly, involvement often becomes self-reinforcing. One engaged dad encourages another. Volunteerism spreads socially. School culture shifts. Men in schools is normalized for everyone — including dads.

Dads at Schools is committed to supporting K12 father engagement through year-round support and $1,000 grants to participating schools. Dads at Schools is free to schools, and is a 501c3 with funding from American Institute for Boys and Men.