Are at home reading records effective?

I have noticed that many teachers will assign at home reading records for students to log in the amount of time they spend silently reading at home. However, I have also heard from students themselves that often times they just have their parents sign off on the reading record. In reality, the student has not read the actual 30 minutes assigned, or the parent does not know what their child is reading. Now, I do agree with doing reading records, and I think it can be an effective way to have students read at home. My question is, does anyone have any ideas of how to make this reading strategy effective so that the student is not just having their parent sign off on a sheet of paper each week?