Running head: PARENTAL INVOVLMENT AND ACEDEMIC ACHIEVEMENT Most recently there has been much heated debate regarding our children's education and the blamed responsibility to be in the hands of the educational system. However, researchers and educators generally agree that parents play an extremely important role in students' academic development. Parents have been found to actually have the advantage over peers, educators, counselors, and other professionals. This study examines the assumed relationship with a student's academic achievement and the amount of parental involvement they receive. There also seems to be an increasing trend toward higher educational expectations. High school sophomores in 1990 were more likely than sophomores in 1980 to report the expectation of receiving a bachelor's or advanced college degree. Educational attainment does appear to be increasingly important to students, parents, counselors, and teachers. These apparent trends in educational expectations and advice given by adults were consistent across races, socioeconomic strata, school type, section of the country, and student achievement levels (Rasinski et al., 1993). The purpose of this study is to merely examine the relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement. With the study of these two topics there are many various variables that help in determining the eventual out come. It is extremely difficult to form any conclusions regarding parental involvement because for the variety in conceptualization and the subjective measurement of parent involvement. Other variables obviously play important roles such as, internal locus of control (Baumrind, 1991; Trusty & Lampe, 1997), and self-esteem (Chubb & Fertman, 1992). It is generally accepted that the relationship of parent involvement to many of the above variables is causal. That is, parenting practices produce adolescent outcomes. In addition, par...
