Vol:.(1234567890) Race and Social Problems (2018) 10:158–169 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-018-9229-1 1 3 Educational Expectations in African American Families: Assessing the Importance of Immediate Performance Requirements James P. Huguley 1  · Eric Kyere 2  · Ming‑Te Wang 1 Published online: 2 May 2018 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Prior research has shown that parents’ educational expectations contribute positively to several student academic outcomes, including grades in school, standardized test scores, and school completion. These expectations are typically conceptualized as long-term educational attainment beliefs, and consequently, it remains unclear how parents’ short-term expectations for performance (i.e., grades in school) impact their children’s academic success. It is conceivable, for example, that the greater immediacy and actionability of short-term performance expectations make them highly important to student achievement as well. Moreover, previous research on parents’ expectations of any type has rarely considered African American families specifcally. In response, the present study uses hierarchical regression modeling with an intra-racially diverse longitudinal sample of African American families to examine the degree to which African American parents’ short- and long-term edu- cational expectations simultaneously impact their children’s academic achievement. Results suggest that independent of prior performance and social background, African American parents’ short-term requirements for performance are more important to their children’s grades in school than are expectations for long-term attainment. This fnding was likely obfuscated in prior research by a lack of simultaneous consideration of short- and long-term expectations, particularly in the African American family context. Implications for research and practice are discussed. Keywords Academic achievement · African American families · Educational involvement · Parental expectations · Racial socialization Introduction Parents’ educational expectations have been shown to con- tribute to their children’s academic outcomes, including grades in school, standardized test scores, and degree attain- ment (Froiland and Davison 2014; Loughlin-Presnal and Bierman 2017; Murayama et al. 2015; Wang and Sheikh- Khalil 2014; Yamamoto and Holloway 2010). Although such expectations can take many forms, they are most commonly operationalized as parents’ beliefs regarding long-term edu- cational attainment outcomes. In several studies, these long- term expectations have in fact been shown to be the strongest predictor of student achievement among various parental educational involvement strategies, including volunteering at school, helping with homework, and discussing courses with children (Fan and Chen 2001; Froiland et al. 2012; Hill and Wang 2015; Jeynes 2005). Yet despite the fndings on long-term expectation efects, research remains unclear as to whether other types of paren- tal educational expectations matter for student achievement. This dearth is likely attributable to the fact that existing research lacks a standard conceptualization of parental edu- cational expectations, including the near absence of pur- poseful delineation among several expectation subconstructs (Gill and Reynolds 1999; Murayama et al. 2015; Seyfried and Chung 2002). In order to better defne and describe these concepts, some researchers have expressed a particular inter- est in whether expectations for long-term attainment (i.e., how far one’s child will go in school), short-term perfor- mance (i.e., grades one’s child is expected to get in school), or both are key contributors to later academic outcomes (Okagaki and Frensch 1998). It is conceivable, for example, that the greater immediacy of parents’ short-term school performance expectations makes them more important in * James P. Huguley huguley@pitt.edu 1 University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA 2 Indiana University, Indianapolis, USA