School Success, Possible Selves, and Parent School Involvement* Daphna Oyserman Daniel Brickman Marjorie Rhodes** Abstract: Increased parent school involvement is associated with better academic outcomes; yet, proximal contribu- tors to this effect remain understudied. We focus on one potential proximal contributor, youth’s positive and nega- tive future self-images or ‘‘possible selves,’’ reasoning that if parent school involvement fosters possible selves, then interventions aimed at enhancing youths’ possible selves should moderate the negative effect of low parent school involvement. We examine a 2-year follow-up of a randomized clinical trial of a possible self-based intervention (N ¼ 239), demonstrating with regression equations that the intervention moderated the association of low parent school involvement with worse grades and less school-engaged behavior. Low parent school involvement negatively influenced achievement among control, not intervention youth, suggesting that school-based, possible self-focused interventions can moderate the undermining effect of low parent school involvement. Key Words: achievement gap intervention, African American, high-risk youth, Latino, parent involvement, possible selves, school success. Daily behaviors (e.g., doing homework, paying atten- tion in class) become imbued with meaning when they are linked to the future, especially self-relevant goals for the future, such as graduating from high school or going to college. The term possible self has been coined to describe incorporation of future goals into the self-concept (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Pos- sible selves are positive and negative images of the self already in a future state—the ‘‘clever’’ self who passed the algebra test, the ‘‘healthy’’ self who lost weight, the ‘‘drop-out’’ self who failed to graduate from high school, the ‘‘offtrack’’ self who uses drugs or becomes pregnant (Oyserman, Bybee, & Terry, 2006; Oyserman & Markus, 1990a, 1990b). By providing concrete positive expected and negative to-be-avoided future images, possible selves personal- ize goals and connect current behaviors to future states. In this way, possible selves improve self-regula- tory capacity (Cross & Markus, 1994; Oyserman & Markus, 1990a, 1990b; Oyserman, Terry, & Bybee, 2002) and make one’s current situation feel meaning- ful (Cross & Markus, 1991). Succeeding in school is a central life task of adoles- cence, and school failure can seriously limit future possibilities (Morrison, Bachman, & Connor, 2005; Orfield, 2004). Unfortunately, school failure is all too common among low-income youth, especially low- income youth from racial-ethnic minority groups. This achievement gap calls for creative and sustained response. In the current paper, we focus on unpacking proximal contributors to one factor associated with school success—parent school involvement. Whereas parent school involvement is clearly associated with positive attainments (e.g., Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994; Miedel & Reynolds, 1999; Woolley & Bowen, 2007; Woolley & Grogan-Kaylor, 2006), as we will outline below, it is not clear how parent school involvement influences academic outcomes, limiting *Funding and support for this study came from NIMH grant R01 MH 58299 (Oyserman, PI). D. B. and M. R. were supported by the Michigan Prevention Research Training Grant (NIH grant T32 MH63057-03, Oyserman, PI). We thank the schools, teachers, parents, and children who participated and shared their responses, Kathy Terry for parent involvement data collection, and Jim Klein for help obtaining school grade records. **Daphna Oyserman is a Professor at the University of Michigan with appointments in the Department of Psychology, the School of Social Work, and the Institute for Social Research, 426 Thompson Avenue, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248 (daphna.oyserman@umich.edu). Daniel Brickman is a doctoral stu- dent in Psychology at the University of Michigan, East Hall, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043 (dbrick@umich.edu). Marjorie Rhodes is a doctoral stu- dent in Psychology, University of Michigan, East Hall, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043 (rhodesma@umich.edu). Family Relations, 56 (December 2007), 479–489. Blackwell Publishing. Copyright 2007 by the National Council on Family Relations.