Past research has established clear educational inequities between young people with disabilities and their peers. In part, some of these inequities may be attributed to expectations. In this study, we examined whether parental expectations were related to school functioning at high school, with school functioning broadly defined as ease and frequency of engagement in school-based activities. Using the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (N = 3,956; 48.9% female; 5.01% with disability), we examined parental expectations and school functioning measured at three time-points, biennially from the ages of 12 and 13 through to 16 and 17. A multigroup, parallel latent growth curve analysis revealed that high parental expectations at the first timepoint predicted steeper increases in the trajectory of school functioning over time, but only among young people with disability. Parental expectations did not significantly predict school functioning trajectories for the remainder of the sample. Subsequent multigroup analyses that compared disability characteristics revealed that learning difficulties and speech problems, in particular, were associated with lower parental expectations. These results suggest that the perceptions of parents in the lives of young people with disability are important and efforts to shape them may have long-term benefits.

过去的研究已经确定了残疾青年与其同龄人之间明显的教育不平等。在某种程度上，其中一些不平等可能归因于预期。在这项研究中，我们检查了父母的期望是否与高中的学校运作有关，学校运作被广泛定义为参与学校活动的容易程度和频率。使用澳大利亚儿童的纵向研究（N = 3,956；48.9% 女性；5.01% 有残疾），我们检查了在 12 岁和 13 岁至 16 岁和 17 岁之间每两年一次的三个时间点测量的父母期望和学校运作情况。多组平行潜在增长曲线分析显示，父母的高期望在一开始时间点预测学校运作轨迹会随着时间的推移而急剧增加，但仅限于残疾年轻人。父母的期望并没有显着预测其余样本的学校运作轨迹。随后比较残疾特征的多组分析表明，学习困难和言语问题尤其与较低的父母期望有关。