Parent involvement is a cornerstone of special education policy and best practice. Parents of students with disabilities participate in school events in a manner similar to parents of students without disabilities, and the benefits of parent involvement are widely recognized for all students. Recent legislation and federal funding opportunities have targeted parent outreach programs as an area of improvement for schools. Using data from the Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study, this study examined the effect of school-initiated parent outreach activities on parent involvement in school. Parents reported greater involvement in schools that offered a greater number of outreach activities. Parent involvement was lower for older students, non-Caucasian students, students from non-two-parent households, and students from lower income households, and these lower participation rates were not differentially higher in schools that offered a greater number of parent outreach activities. Patterns and trends of parent involvement and school-initiated outreach programs are discussed, with suggestions for practitioners and future research.

In this study, the authors investigated the role of social skills in disciplinary exclusion by examining parent and teacher ratings of students as having either high or low social skills. Data were drawn from 1,438 students from the Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study. Findings indicated that social skills mediated disciplinary inclusion for students with the following characteristics: males, African Americans, students identified with emotional and behavioral disorders and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and students from low-income backgrounds. Moreover, students with high social skills were subject to disciplinary exclusion less often than peers with lower social skills. More research regarding the relationship of social skills to disciplinary exclusion is warranted due to the positive effects of high social skills.