This study uses data from the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09). Parent responses to the Parent Involvement survey, given as part of the NCES study were considered, along with their child's socio-economic status and self-reported level of mathematics course enrollment during their 9th grade year of high school The purpose of this study is to identify parent behaviors that result in their child enrolling in upper level mathematics coursework in high school, regardless of race or ethnicity. Seven 2-factor ANOVA tests were conducted to determine interaction effects between types of parent behaviors and level of 9th grade mathematics course enrollment. The interaction effect between passive parental connoisseurship and socio-economic status was found to be significant. The main effect of socio-economic status, as well as school choice, direct parental connoisseurship, indirect parental connoisseurship, and passive indirect parental connoisseurship were also found to be significant. As expected the main effect of a student's socio-economic status was also significant, in terms of level of 9th grade mathematics course enrollment. The findings from this study suggest that when students from lower socio-economic background are grouped homogenously in school related setting and out of school experiences, the level of mathematics course enrollment is lower than their middle and upper class counterparts.

This study explored the factors that influence public high school students' advanced math course-taking. The factors investigated were parental involvement, peers' educational aspirations, students' own educational aspirations, and math self-concept. These factors were further examined for students in different settings as defined by school demographic variables of urbanicity, minority concentration, and poverty concentration. The study analyzed longitudinal data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS: 88), using structural equation modeling. Results indicated that parental involvement was much more important than peer influence for students' educational aspirations, and in turn, for their advanced level mathematics course-taking. Parental involvement had a larger effect for students in high-minority, high-poverty urban schools, who, on the average, had taken the smallest number of advanced mathematics courses, compared to students in other settings. Results from the study indicated that African-American students' math self-concepts were not affected by their previous math achievement, suggesting the lack of feedback about their mathematics performance. Recommendations based on the findings included improving parental involvement for all students, especially for students in high-minority, high-poverty urban schools, and providing more feedback to African-American students about their level of performance in mathematics and its consequences in terms of advanced math course-taking. / Ph. D.

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