Parenting style has been shown to have significant impact on a child's development. Baumrind developed the concept of three parenting styles that is still used today including: Authoritarian/controlling, authoritative/directive, and permissive. Of these, the authoritative/directive parenting style has proven the most effective with children. Accelerated and typical 8 th grade students in mathematics classes were compared to explore if there were differences in parenting style for these two groups of parents. A quantitative cross sectional survey design was used for the investigation. Descriptive data was collected, and responses on the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ) were compared. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used as the statistical analysis. In this study there were no statistically significant differences for parents of accelerated or typical students on the Authoritative scale, F (1, 116) = 1.146, p < 0.286, but there were statistically significant differences between parents of accelerated and typical students for the Authoritarian scale, F (1, 116) = 9.101. p = 0.003, and for the Permissive scale, F (1, 116) = 12.680, p < 0.001. Analysis of the reliability statistics for this study and previous research found there were differences in reliability, with reliability for the participants in this study being lower overall. This study adds to the research on the important topic of parenting and how the demographics and parenting styles of parents impact students and their academic performance. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]