The Democratic Potential of Parental Dissent: Keeping Public Schools Public,Legitimate, and Educational

In this essay, Sarah Stitzlein describes the democratic potential of parents choosing to opt out of school testing, explaining how they ought to engage in political dissent to best fulfill their responsibilities as citizens and to practice democracy on behalf of children and schools. Parents' decisions to opt out are often based on rights claims about their oversight as parents; moral claims regarding the potential undue pressure testing places on children and the misuse of students' scores; political and economic concerns with the role of corporations in testing; and educational claims about the validity of scores, the narrowing of curriculum, and the deprofessionalization of teachers who feel they must teach to the test. By building publics around these rationales and shared concerns, parents may increase the political legitimacy of public schools and create public schools that are more deeply public; in some cases, they may also provide an educational model of democratic life for budding citizens in schools to observe and learn from.     

Parent preferences and parent choices: the public–private decision about school choice

School choice survey data from the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, a large county‐wide school district, is analysed to examine the characteristics of parents who consider choosing private schools for their children and those who do not. We examine differences in background, including race, educational attainment and socioeconomic status, as well as differences in parent satisfaction with their child’s previous school, parent involvement in school, parents’ priorities in school choice, as well as parents’ social networks. After controlling for background characteristics, we find that parent satisfaction with their child’s previous school was not a predictor of considering a private school. Rather, parent involvement seems to be a more important indicator of whether or not a parent would consider sending their child to a private school. In this case, parents are not ‘pushed’ away from public schools, contrary to much public rhetoric that suggests private schools are somehow inherently ‘better’ than public schools and parents who are dissatisfied with their public schools will opt for private schools. Instead, these findings suggest a ‘pull’ towards private schools. Parents may perceive that parent involvement and parent communication are more easily facilitated and valued in private schools.     

School Choice and the Politics of Parenthood: Exploring Parent Mobilization As a Catalyst for the Common Good

A substantial body of research has shown how white, middle-class parents in urban school districts use school choice as a tool to pursue educational advantages for their children. The purpose of this qualitative research was to examine the debate over neighborhood schools and school choice among a diverse group of parents in a gentrifying, yet highly diverse New York City neighborhood that I call “Prospect Point.” My central focus was studying a parent advocacy group that supports neighborhood schools. Findings show that about one third of families living in Prospect Point choose to send their children to charter or gifted and talented (G&T) schools located outside of the neighborhood. Given this outflow of parents and resources via school choice, most of the gentrifier parents in the sample who opted in to the local schools viewed their choice as a politically charged decision, and they credited the parent advocacy group as having influenced it. As a group, they rejected the consumer model of school choice, which they believed put the local schools at a disadvantage and was the norm for their racial/ethnic and socioeconomic demographic. Opt-in parents in this context recognized their privilege, and their children’s privilege, in the school-choice process and actively sought to diminish it through their choice to opt in. This research has important implications for the transformative role that parent mobilization can play in the future of diverse, high-quality public education and our democratic society.     

Continuing to exercise choice after selecting a school: Insights into parent-decision making in local education markets in Nepal

This paper analyzes how parents continue to engage with schooling after their initial selection, using parent survey and focus group data collected in two urbanized districts in Nepal in 2011. I find substantial heterogeneity within and between public and private schools in parental participation. In particular, the parents who chose smaller private schools had stronger engagement with the school and their children, were more likely to voice their concerns, and consequently were more satisfied. In contrast, parents in below average public schools were more likely to express dissatisfaction but had limited interactions with schools to remedy their concerns.     

A Review of the Empirical Research on Private School Choice

Parents in the United States have had the legal right to choose the school their child attends for a long time. Traditionally, parental school choice took the form of families moving to a neighborhood with good public schools or self-financing private schooling. Contemporary education policies allow parents in many areas to choose from among public schools in neighboring districts, public magnet schools, public charter schools, private schools through the use of a voucher or tax-credit scholarship, virtual schools, or even homeschooling. The newest form of school choice is education savings accounts (ESAs), which make a portion of the funds that a state spends on children in public schools available to their parents in spending accounts that they can use to customize their children's education. Opponents claim that expanding private school choice yields no additional benefits to participants and generates significant harms to the students “left behind” in traditional public schools. A review of the empirical research on private school choice finds evidence that private school choice delivers some benefits to participating students—particularly in the area of educational attainment—and tends to help, albeit to a limited degree, the achievement of students who remain in public schools.     

School competition and pupil flight in the urban periphery

In France, the existence of competition among schools and pupil flight from local public schools is not easily acknowledged because it calls into question established ideals concerning equality of opportunity and social integration through schooling. However, research on schools on the urban periphery shows that these phenomena are now quite common and reveal important changes in the functioning of schools and in perspectives and actual choices of parents. Faced with pupil flight to more prestigious public or private schools, local collèges create ‘good classes’, reinforce security and discipline and try to strengthen links with feeder schools to improve their image among parents. Parents, however, who are in search of guarantees of the existance of a good leaning environnement, have major doubts about the relevant criteria to judge school quality. Moreover, they differ strongly not only in the will to choose but in the ability to do so. The end result of these transformations in attitudes and behaviors is an increase in school segregation that can only be limited if important measures are taken to homogenize public school provision.     

Dynamics of community participation,student achievement and school management: the case of primary schools in a rural area of Malawi

School management in many sub-Saharan African countries has been enhanced through community participation in an attempt to improve education quality. This study uses field research in a rural district of Malawi to assess how community and parent participation differs between schools, the intentions of communities and parents when carrying out activities in schools, and the mechanism promoting active participation in schools. In high-achieving schools, but not in low-achieving schools, communities and parents were actively involved in events aimed at improving student achievement. Communities and parents considered most highly prioritised activities that directly influenced student achievement, including hiring volunteer teachers, arranging extra classes and holding mock examinations. Community participation did not directly improve student achievement. Instead, when communities and parents actively participated in a school, school management improved, ensuring better student achievement. The implications of this finding are discussed in relation to community participation.     

Opting Out or Opting In? Test Boycott and Parental Engagement in American Public Education

This article provides a “thick” understanding of how public school parents understand their decision to opt their children out of standardized tests. In it, Amy Shuffelton draws from qualitative research interviews with Chicago parents to explore how three mothers connected opting out of standardized testing to their broader commitments to public schools. In probing the democratic potential of their logic, Shuffelton points to avenues of hope for democratic and equitable public schooling. As scholars have argued on multiple grounds, public schools have generally preserved inequitable power relations and resource allocations rather than changed them, and this happens in part because of parental resistance to reforms they believe to be detrimental to the interests of their children. Precisely because privileged parents have and implement the power to use schooling to pass advantages to their own children, however, it is important to consider when and why some of these parents instead see reason to build a public school system that shares those advantages widely. Putting these parents' explanations for opting out of testing into conversation with ideas about the democratic public in texts by John Dewey and Bonnie Honig, Shuffelton finds potential pathways, as well as hurdles, to reviving commitment to public schooling.     

Pathways to Parental Engagement: Contributions of Parents,Teachers, and Schools in Cultural Context

Research Findings: This study examined correlates of parents’ reported school engagement in an ethnically diverse, rural sample (N = 346) of parents and teachers in kindergarten through Grade 2. Of particular interest were role expectations and family–school relationships in American Indian families, who historically have been marginalized by schools. In terms of role expectations, parents and teachers agreed that they should support each other’s roles, parents should have more responsibility than schools for teaching social skills, and families and schools should have shared responsibility for children’s academic success. Teachers had higher expectations than parents for parent engagement, which in turn was greater when parent–teacher communication was more frequent and the school climate was more welcoming. American Indian parents more strongly endorsed a separation of family and school roles and felt less welcomed at school; ethnicity moderated correlates of reported parent engagement. Practice or Policy: These findings have practical promise given that parent–teacher communication, school climate, and role expectations are more easily altered than are structural barriers that also may hinder parents’ involvement in supporting their children’s early education.     

Using Technology to Increase Parent Involvement in Schools

The importance of parent involvement in Parents who monitor their student’s schoolwork and daily activities, communicate frequently with teachers and help develop schools and its relationship to student achievement have been widely studied. Nevertheless, many principals and teachers report that lack of parent involvement continues to be an obstacle to increasing student achievement at school. The purpose of this study was to determine whether emerging technologies facilitate better parent-teacher communication and parent involvement. Data were collected through surveys and semi-structured focus group interviews to analyze the relationship between parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of student achievement when electronic communications are used between parents and school. The study revealed that parents and teachers both place a high value on proactive parent involvement. Because proactive involvement does not require parents to be physically at their children’s school, the question of how technology can be used to keep parents involved in their children’s academic lives becomes important. As access to technology continues to expand, the capabilities for connecting parents to schools will continue to grow. As schools invest in websites, phone calling systems, parent portals, online curriculum, and other types of technologies that connect schools to home, research needs to continue to focus on the effectiveness of these technologies to increase parent involvement.     

Schooling,Welfare and the Policing of Parents

The relationship between the home and the school is a subject of much debate within the public domain. Present concerns over a parent charter which grants parents more say in the running of the school overlaps with a more long-standing critique of the school as a welfarist agency which undermines parental authority. This paper focuses on the latter interpretation of ‘parent power’ and offers an empirical assessment at three levels of analysis. First, I outline the policing potential of the school in terms of the development of an internal welfare network. Second, I outline a professional understanding of parent/ teacher relations from the perspective of the individual teacher. Finally, I examine the influence of the individual school in both framing the understandings that teachers have of, and their relations with, parents.     

Parents,quality, and school choice: why parents in Nairobi choose low-cost private schools over public schools in Kenya’s free primary education era

Low-cost private schools (LCPS) are widespread in Kenya, particularly in urban areas. This study examines the reasons that parents send children to fee-charging schools in a context of free public primary education. Drawing on parent survey and interview data, as well as interviews with national policy makers, we found that parents who chose LCPS for their children were more driven by quality concerns than were public school parents. We also present data on the costs of the school types, compared to household income. Despite being termed ‘low cost’, the fees charged by schools primarily serving the poor were often a heavy burden on families. We conclude with recommendations for maximising the impact of LCPS on educational access and quality.     

There Goes the PTA: Building Parent Identity,Relationships, and Power in Gentrifying Schools

In cities across the country, school communities must contend with new challenges introduced by gentrification and the arrival of middle class and white families. This collaborative research study looks at schools where parent organizers are attempting to intervene in processes of gentrification that may further marginalize lower-income families of color. Based on interviews with diverse parents at three gentrifying schools, the study applies existing organizing models to urban schools undergoing racial, class, and linguistic transformations. The findings indicate that parents and organizers can develop an inclusive and equitable school community by rooting their shared identity in school/neighborhood history, emphasizing relationship building, and ensuring that parent leadership structures and practices remain responsive to lower-income families. Implications and limitations of the model also are discussed.     

Lesbian,gay, and heterosexual adoptive parents' experiences in preschool environments

Little research has examined the school experiences of lesbian/gay (LG) parent families or adoptive parent families. The current exploratory study examined the experiences of 79 lesbian, 75 gay male, and 112 heterosexual adoptive parents of preschool-age children with respect to their (a) level of disclosure regarding their LG parent and adoptive family status at their children's schools; (b) perceived challenges in navigating the preschool environment and advocating on behalf of their children and families; and (c) recommendations to teachers and schools about how to create affirming school environments with respect to family structure, adoption, and race/ethnicity. Findings revealed that the majority of parents were open about their LG and adoptive family status, and had not encountered challenges related to family diversity. Those parents who did experience challenges tended to describe implicit forms of marginalization, such as insensitive language and school assignments. Recommendations for teachers included discussing and reading books about diverse families, tailoring assignments to meet the needs of diverse families, and offering school community-building activities and events to help bridge differences across families.     

Home-School Relations in Hong Kong: Separation or Partnership

This article contains an analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data about the perception of both parents and school personnel on parents' participation at different levels of school activities. Findings indicated that most of the school personnel demonstrated unwelcome attitudes towards parent involvement and parents themselves did not like to become school managers either. Both of them expressed the intention of separate responsibilities in school management. It is recommended that schools should develop a school-based strategy to promote home-school cooperation. Besides, there is a need to establish parent schools to educate parents in their rights and responsibilities in participating in school education.     

Parent decision-making when selecting schools: The case of Nepal

This paper analyzes the parent decision-making processes underlying school selection in Nepal. The analysis is based on primary survey and focus group data collected from parent meetings in diverse local education markets in two districts of Nepal in 2011. It highlights three main arguments that are less frequently discussed in the context of school choice, including in developing countries. First, children who go to public schools play a significant role in their own decision-making on schooling; this complicates the currently predominant conceptualization that schooling decisions are primarily made by parents and school officials. Second, the gradual growth in private schools has led to significant sorting of students and created a stigma around public education. Finally, in contexts such as Nepal, that suffer from political conflict, and poor conditions for law and order, a school’s proximity to their home becomes a greater priority for students and families.     

Is parental involvement lower at larger schools?

Parents who volunteer, or who lobby for improvements in school quality, are generally seen as providing a school-wide public good. If so, straightforward public-good theory predicts that free-riding will reduce average involvement at larger schools. This study uses longitudinal data to follow families over time, as their children move from middle schools to high schools, thus netting out unobservable differences among families. Increases in school size result in significant reductions in parental involvement, although the magnitude of the effect is small. If parents experience a doubling in school size, they are 2 percentage points less likely to increase their contacts with the school, and 5 percentage points less likely to increase their volunteering. A continuous-treatment propensity-score method tests whether the results are driven by selection into treatment. The parental contact results are robust to this test, while the volunteer results are not. Also, there is some evidence that parents see their involvement as a substitute, rather than a complement, for perceived school quality.     

The Netherlands: Participation in the School

Various arrangements have existed to ensure the participation of pupils' parents in school life, in particular, parent committees, which are obligatory in public schools. Private schools merely had the obligation to permit parents to form such a committee. This distinction was abolished by the new law concerning participation in education that went into effect February 1, 1982. This law is equally applicable to private or public education, nursery schools, primary schools, special schools, secondary schools, and higher professional schools (for a provisional period pending the establishment of specific regulations), as well as to part-time instruction and evening schools.     

Parent Involvement and the New Title I

The Improving America's Schools Act legislation of 1994 greatly increased the responsibility and requirements for parental involvement activities in Title I schools. Though the requirements for annual meetings and involvement of parents in planning, review, and implementation of projects remain from the old Chapter 1 wording, expansion of the parental involvement role signifies its importance. Because schools have so much to learn following the changes to Title I, the school-parent compact has often been at the center for parental involvement activities as the new legislation is implemented. Many compacts have been generic to entire districts or buildings. Some model designs have gone from general school concepts to concepts specific to each child and family. Those with some explicit points, where parents and/or guardians and school staff can demonstrate the action, seem to have the greatest effect. It is important to note that the legislation talks about shared responsibility, not just what more a parent should do. Of further interest is the denotation of the involvement of the "entire school staff" and not just the Title I staff. Though it is not a requirement, many schools have also delineated a portion of the compact for the child to develop and/or sign. Meaningful partnership between home and school can only strengthen the support for learners to achieve high state standards.     

The Desegregation Aims and Demographic Contexts of Magnet Schools: How Parents Choose and Why Siting Policies Matter

This paper is designed to specify a set of new opportunities for educators, school administrators, and scholars to realize the practical aims and strategic advantages envisioned in magnet schools. The paper is divided into three distinct sections. In Section I, we examine the extensive research literature on parents’ choice patterns and school preferences in magnet schools and other school-choice programs. In Section II, we compare the reasons parents choose particular schools with the criteria school districts use to select magnet school locations (and themes). This section highlights desegregation goals and district-level magnet school policies pegged to the following questions: What is the policy context for siting decisions in districts with magnet schools? Are siting policies strategically aligned with what is known from the research literature about parents’ school preferences? Do neighborhood characteristics play a part in magnet school siting policies and specific decision-making? In Section III, we use geographic information system (GIS) tools to add both clarity and complexity to the convergence of parent choice patterns and sociodemographic diversity in our four selected school districts. The maps depict the racial and socioeconomic characteristics of the magnet schools in each district, as well as the demographic characteristics of surrounding census tracts (extended school neighborhoods). We conclude that GIS can be a viable option for improving the citing decisions for magnet schools, and that this can allow for the merging of parent choice priorities with educational equity and diversity goals of the district.