Parent involvement and academic achievement among language minority students in elementary school using structural equation modeling

Despite more than 50 years of academic research on the achievement gap, researchers still struggle to understand whether racial/ethnic and immigrant status can explain the differences in educational achievement and attainment (Kao & Thompson, 2003). Language minority students are the fastest growing segment of students nation-wide and they often intersect categories related to racial/ethnic minority status (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008; KewalRamani, et al., 2007). Many of these students come from lower socioeconomic status households and they speak a language other than English.;Parent involvement has increasingly become a focal point for researchers and policymakers as a way to close the learning gap for racial/ethnic/language minority students (Epstein, 1987). A number of studies have found that parent involvement can lead to increased academic achievement for students (Fan & Chen, 2001; Jeynes, 2003, 2005). However, the impacts of parent involvement have been found to vary across racial/ethnic groups, especially based on the particular form of involvement (Hong & Ho, 2004; Fan, 2001). This study attempts to fill this gap of knowledge by using a longitudinal sample of students in kindergarten through fifth grade from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS). This study used descriptive statistics to examine parent participation levels and patterns between kindergarten and fifth grade. Structural equation modeling was also utilized for three purposes: (1) to test the hypothesis that parent involvement is a multi-dimensional construct, and (2) to test whether parent involvement impacts academic achievement through direct effects, or through indirect effects by influencing other mediators, and (3) to test whether results differ according to language group status.;The primary findings from this study are that not all forms of parent involvement impact fifth grade reading and math achievement equally, and that the forms vary by language groups. The most important dimension of parent involvement across most groups was parent expectations in both kindergarten and fifth grade, which had both direct and indirect effects. Home learning activities in kindergarten, school involvement in kindergarten and fifth grade, and class involvement in kindergarten also had small, but significant effects.