Chapter 8: Pioneer Parents and Creating Pathways for Involvement: A Historical Case Study of School Change and Collective Parental Involvement

The role of parental involvement in schools has a long and varied history (Cutler, 2000). Some have touted increased parental involvement as a “fix all” for the problems facing schools in recent years (Epstein & Sheldon, 2002). Others have explored the differential abilities of parents to affect their children’s experiences in school, based on social class and race differences (Lareau, 2000, 2003; Lareau & Horvat, 1999; Lewis & Forman, 2002; Stanton-Salazar, 2001). Many of these studies have focused on individual efforts of parents to affect their own child’s school experience. There is far less research that has examined the effects of collective parental action in schools (but see Cucchiara & Horvat, 2009). In other words, we know less about how parents work together to change school communities than we do about how parents use networks to affect their own child’s educational experiences. The current research also lacks attention to the interactive nature of parental involvement, focusing instead on one actor—the parents or the school—rather than the relationship between the two (Bryk & Schneider, 2002). It is also clear from examinations of current practice in large urban school districts such as the one in this study that we have had limited success in developing effective strategies to foster, promote and effectively harness parental involvement in schools.