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Parental involvement is being touted as one mechanism by which academic achievement can be increased. If parental involvement is indeed effective, it may be one approach for improving the achievement of Mexican-American students. Many Mexican-American children are educationally disadvantaged, are at-risk for academic failure, and have not demonstrated the academic achievement that other immigrant groups have, even after they have lived in the U.S. for generations. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of parental involvement on the academic achievement of 1,714 eighth grade Mexican-American children from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988. This research developed and tested a structural equations model which considers and controls for diversity of family backgrounds and values, parents' English language proficiency and place of birth, students' previous achievement, and home rules in a systematic fashion. The most salient finding of this research is that parental involvement does influence the academic achievement of eighth grade Mexican-American students. Since parental involvement is a potentially alterable variable, school psychologists can indirectly influence the academic achievement of Mexican-American children by influencing parental involvement.Mexican-Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S., and in many large urban city school districts Mexican-American children (along with African-

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Are Americans planning for the increased longevity they are now experiencing? This question needs to be considered by the counseling profession. Retirement is a major life transition and preretirement planning has been identified as an extremely important part of the successful transition to the role of retiree. Seibert and Seibert (1986) and Schlossberg (1981) are among those who have argued that persons who plan for major transitions are more successful in coping with anticipated changes than those who fail to plan. Many people, however, either do not have access to preretirement programs or choose not to attend. Newman (1979) found that only 15% of employees over age 53 participated in the United Auto Workers preretirement program between 1965 and 1973. Also, a study of retirees by Perry (1980) found that 53% of those surveyed had not made any retirement plans and two-thirds of these people were not even aware of preretirement programs.In spite of the growing number of retirement planning programs offered by industry, government, educational institutions, and other organizations, McCluskey and Borgatta (1981) noted that only 5% to 10% of the population approaching retirement participate in these programs, and this proportion has not increased much over the past 20 years. "Few people see retirement as requiring rational planning. Information gathering concerning retirement tends to be unsystematic and only rarely