The recent reauthorizations of the No Child Left Behind

Act (NCLB) and the Individuals with Disabilities Educa-tion Act (IDEA) hold states and local schools accountable for ensuring all students achieve high academic standards. Two recent reports on the state and local implementation of NCLB (Le Floch et al., 2007) and IDEA (O’Reilly et al., 2006) document both considerable progress and continuing challenges. Students with disabilities and students from ethni-cally/linguistically diverse backgrounds were most likely not to make adequate yearly progress under NCLB accountabil-ity measures (Le Floch et al., 2007). The gap between the academic achievement of students with and without disabili-ties and the need to increase parent participation in educa-tion were both noted as key challenges for improving the implementation of IDEA in schools (O’Reilly et al., 2006). Parent involvement is widely regarded as important for improving student academic achievement because strong empirical evidence exists in general education that links par-ent involvement in education to student achievement (e.g., Jeynes, 2005; Kohl, Lengua, & McMahon, 2000; Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwack, 2007). The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of parent involvement on academic achievement of students with disabilities by analyz-ing a large-scale national database. Effects of race/ethnicity were also examined by using Caucasian as a reference group. The Caucasian group was chosen as the reference group because it was the largest group and appropriate for statisti-cal analyses. We had no intention to imply that its practices were regarded as standards for other groups. Parent involvement has been conceptualized and defined in many ways. One widely accepted approach views and defines parent involvement from an activity-based perspective 394447 DPS22110.1177/1044207310394447Zh ang et al.Journal of Disability Policy Studie