Parent involvement as parental monitoring of student motivation and parent expectations predicting later achievement among African American and European American middle school age students

Parent involvement and parent expectations are fundamental to academic success. However, much of the research has been with elementary school aged children; consequently, we know less about the influence of parent involvement and parent expectations on the academic achievement of middle school students, and we have even less information for African American (AA) students. Do parent involvement and parent expectations have a similar effect on later Grade Point Average (GPA) for European American (EA) and AA middle school youth? Data from 567 AA and EA urban youth who participated in a longitudinal study were used in this analysis. Within group hierarchical regression analyses reveal parent involvement and parent expectations are statistically significant for both groups. However, partial correlations indicate parental involvement represents the highest unique contribution to later grade point average for EA students, and for AA students, earlier educational achievement represents the highest unique contribution to later grade point average. Implications for practice suggest that approaches to increase parent involvement may work well with improving academic achievement of EA youth, while approaches to increase early educational achievement may work well with AA students.