Classroom Race/Ethnic Composition, Family-School Connections, and the Transition to School.

Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (N = 13,970), we examined whether two aspects of school-family connections-parental involvement and communication quality-accounted for the association between classroom composition and children's academic and socioemotional functioning following the transition to elementary school. For students with more same-race/ethnic representation in their classrooms, greater classroom race/ethnic diversity promoted more parental involvement, which in turn promoted children's interpersonal skills and reading achievement. Classroom diversity made little difference on parental involvement when students had fewer same-race/ethnic peers in the classroom. Teacher-parent communication quality did not emerge as an explanatory mechanism, and findings did not vary by the race/ethnic match between students and their teachers.