Effects of Parental Involvement Oil Achievement for Students Who Attend School in Rural America

The purpose of this study was to compare the levels and effects on achievement ofparental involvement for students in rural versus urban and suburban schools. Latent variable structural equation modeling was used to determine the effects of rural versus urban or suburban residence on parental involvement and change in achievement from eighth to tenth grade, and to compare the relative effects ofparental involvement on achievement in rural versus nonrural schools. The results suggest that rural school attendance does not affect either parental involvement or change in achievement, and that parental involvement has the same effects on the achievement ofstudents in rural schools as in urban or subur-ban schools. The effect of parental involvement on achievement is small, but significant and important. The findings suggest that group programs and individual interventions designed to increase parental involvement, if successful, will be equally effective in increasing achievement in rural, urban, and suburban schools. Rural schools are responsible for the education of a significant portion of American school children. Forty-six percent of the school districts in the United States are con-sidered rural (Office of Educational Research and Improve-ment [OERIJ, 1994). These districts include 28 % of the country's schools and serve 17 % of America's school chil-dren (OERI, 1994). Understanding and improving the de-livery of services to this population will have important outcomes for these children, rural communities, and the nation at large. Serving the educational needs of children in rural America poses a unique challenge for educators. Rural schools have several distinct advantages; They often enjoy strong community support (Meehan & DeYoung, 1987) and more parental involvement than nonrural schools (Williams, 1978). They may offer flexible scheduling, provide more individualized instruction, have smaller class sizes, lower dropout rates, and safer school environments than their ur-ban and suburban counterparts, and rural schools may ex-pand curricular offerings via cooperative agreements wit