Parental Educational Expectations for Adolescents with Disabilities

Abstract

This study used a national sample (from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988) of 8th-grade students to examine the effects of child disability on parental educational expectations. Four types of disability conditions were included: visual impairment ( n = 97), hearing impairment ( n = 126), deafness ( n = 38), and orthopedic impairment ( n = 61). Controls without disabilities were also included. Although parental expectations were found to be higher for students with disabilities than for those without, student disability status (disabled versus nondisabled) did not contribute significantly to the ability to predict parental expectations. School performance, parent education, and race were found to similarly influence parental educational expectations for students with and without disabilities.