Parent home involvement and student achievement for Mexican-American and European American students with learning disabilities

A review of the education literature indicates broad and divergent definitions of parent involvement. This study examined specific, academically related types of parent home involvement practices of 52 Mexican American (MA) and 54 European American (EA) parents of 5th--8th grade students with learning disabilities. A factor analysis identified four home involvement constructs. (a) Monitoring Schoolwork, (b) Current Expectations for School Performance, (c) Future Educational Aspirations, and (d) Communicating Future Educational Aspirations. The Future Educational Aspirations Factor had good reliability, while the remaining three factors produced poor alpha values. A MANOVA revealed that when measured by these composite constructs, EA parents' ratings of Monitoring Schoolwork were significantly higher that MA parents' ratings though, MA parents' ratings of having Current Expectations for School Performance were significantly higher than EA parents' ratings. Both parent groups demonstrated equal frequencies of having Future Educational Aspirations and Communicating Future Educational Aspirations. However, multiple regressions with MA parents' acculturation scores found that American orientation predicted 19% of the variance in the frequency of Communicating Future Educational Aspirations. Further, an ANOVA demonstrated that MA parents' comfort participating at school was significantly lower than the comfort of EA parents. No significant relationships were found between the four parent home involvement factors and student achievement. The implications of this research are that there are specific types of academic parent home support for students with learning disabilities. Since both EA and MA parents have similar aspirations, but some MA parents feel less comfortable participating at school, educators and school psychologists will need to make stronger efforts to initiate contact and engage them in the educational process. Specific, academic parent home involvement constructs should be developed and discussed during the Individualized Education Program process to facilitate academic success for both EA and MA students with learning disabilities.