In the WaPo today, Patrick Welsh, a teacher in Alexandria VA, pens an interesting op-ed: "Making the Grade Isn't about Race.  It's about Parents." He takes on the question of the racial gap in US high school test scores, but shifts the focus away from race (an unhelpful category for the most part) and hones in on social-cultural dynamics:

Why don't you guys study like the kids from Africa?" 

In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a
virtually all-black class of 12th-graders who had done horribly on a
test I had just given. A kid who seldom came to class — and was
constantly distracting other students when he did — shot back: "It's
because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study."

Another student angrily challenged me: "You ask the class, just ask
how many of us have our fathers living with us." When I did, not one
hand went up.

I was stunned. These were good kids; I had grown attached to them
over the school year. It hit me that these students, at T.C. Williams
High School in Alexandria, understood what I knew too well: The lack of
a father in their lives had undermined their education. The young man
who spoke up knew that with a father in his house he probably wouldn't
be ending 12 years of school in the bottom 10 percent of his class with
a D average. His classmate, normally a sweet young woman with a great
sense of humor, must have long harbored resentment at her father's
absence to speak out as she did. Both had hit upon an essential
difference between the kids who make it in school and those who don't:
parents.

I have wondered before if fathers are necessary for child-rearing, drawing on observations of two mother households or single mother households where economic resources are sufficient to the task.  I suspect what Welsh is encountering is an intersection of single-mother family situations and limited material resources at home, which then requires the single-mother to spend more time out of the household with little time to monitor her kid's homework and behavior.

The fatherly role that emerges in Welsh's piece centers mostly on discipline and modeling of good behavior:

For Junior Bailey, a senior in my Advanced Placement English class,
school has never been a foreign place, a fact he attributes to his dad.
"He has always been on me; it's been hard to get away with much,"
Junior said. He also told me that hardly any of his friends have their
fathers living with them. "Their mothers are soft on them, and they
don't get any push from home."

On parents' night a few weeks ago, I was thrilled to see Junior's
dad, Willie Bailey, a star on T.C. Williams's 1983 basketball team,
walk into my classroom. Willie told me that after seeing how the guys
he grew up with were affected by not having their dads around, he
promised himself that he would be a real presence in his son's life.

It's not at all clear to me that mothers are universally softer on their children.  I have known some pretty tough mothers in my day.  Rather, there is a range of parental roles – disciplinarian, supporter, tutor, bread-winner, role-model, etc. – and in heterosexual parenting households these roles can be divided up in different ways.  Sometimes the mom is the heavy, sometimes the dad.  If that is the case, what is important is to find some way to carry out effectively the various parental roles, regardless of pre-established gender expectations.  The challenge for single parent families is the difficulty that one person faces in fulfilling the full range of parental roles: it might just be too much for one person.

Thus, I agree with Welsh that parental involvement is key to education.  And in his particular circumstances the absence of fathers may certainly be a common and significant factor.  But that should not lead us to generalize that those roles (such as disciplinarian) that might traditionally be defined as "fatherly" can only be carried out by males.  Also, I think we should think about how single mothers are overloaded – they must work long hours and attend to education – and how relieving their economic burden might yield better education outcomes. 

In all of this I am thinking about Confucius and Mencius.  They both assumed that fathers should have a presence in their children's lives and should encourage education.  But both of them warned that fathers should not be their children's teachers, because teachers must constantly challenge students, and that dynamic can create hard feelings, something that Mencius, in particular wanted to keep from the father-son (which we can generalize to father-child) relationship:

Kung-sun Ch'ou said: "Why is it the noble-minded
never teach their own children?"

"The way people are, it's
impossible," replied Mencius.  "A teacher's task is to perfect the student, and if the student doesn't
improve, the teacher gets angry. When
the teacher gets angry, the student in turn feels hurt: You demand perfection, but you're nowhere near
perfect yourself.  So father and son would   only hurt each other.  And it's a tragedy when fathers and
sons hurt each other

"The ancients taught each other's
children. That way father and son never demand
perfect virtue of one another.  If they demand perfect virtue of one another, they grow distant.  And nothing
is more ominous than fathers and sons grown
distant from one another." (7.18)

And Confucius simply encourages his son to read the Songs and practice ritual.  For him doing the right thing in his own life was lesson enough for his son.  Role-modeling is key for Confucian parenting. 

Welsh sees the need for more interventionist fathers, and maybe that is true for his situation.  But its not just about gender, and its not just about discipline.