Linking IEP Status to Parental Involvement for High School Students of First-Generation and Native-Born Families

Abstract

As educators and policymakers increasingly use parental involvement as a mechanism to increase student achievement, scholars know surprisingly little about the disparities in frequencies of parental involvement for first-generation immigrant compared to native-born parents as well as how involvement may differ for parents of students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Using HSLS:2009, we compared parental involvement of first-generation immigrant parents and native-born parents of high school students with and without IEPs. Our descriptive results indicate that first-generation parents exhibit lower frequencies of school-based involvement compared to native-born parents. In our propensity score matching analysis, we found that IEP status is associated with an increase in school-based parental involvement for both first-generation immigrant and native-born families. We also found that IEP status was negatively associated with academic socialization for both first-generation immigrant and native-born families.