The childs parents are involved in the PTA. Doesnt: The child frequently watches television.     A child whose parents are involved in the PTA tends to do well in school-which probably indicates that parents with a strong relation- ship to education get involved in the PTA, not that their PTA in- volvement somehow makes their children smarter. The ECLS data show no correlation, meanwhile, between a childs test scores and the amount of television he watches. Despite the conventional wisdom, watching television apparently does not turn a childs brain to mush. (In Finland, whose education system has been ranked the worlds best, most children do not begin school until age seven but have often learned to read on their own by watching American television with Finnish subtitles.) Nor, however, does using a computer at home turn a child into Einstein: the ECLS data show no correlation between computer use and school test scores.       Now for the final pair of factors:     Matters: The child has many books in his home. Doesnt: The childs parents read to him nearly every day.     As noted earlier, a child with many books in his home has indeed been found to do well on school tests. But regularly reading to a child doesnt affect test scores. This would seem to present a riddle. It bounces us back to our original question: just how much, and in what ways, do parents really matter? Lets start with the positive correlation: books in the home equal higher test scores. Most people would look at this correlation and