Family-School District Relations and Educational Policy Making in New Immigrant Destinations

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18.
  In Roundtable Session: Home-School Relations in Traditional and New Immigrant Destinations: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between families and school districts, an area that has been strikingly unattended to in the research on school districts and on school-family relations. This is despite evidence and theorizing that some parents are influential at this level (Noguera, 2003; Peterson, 1981). Specifically, this paper investigates how immigrant and non-immigrant families influence district-level policy in two cities experiencing significant growth in their immigrant populations.
Previous research on family-school relations finds that race, class, culture, and immigrant status play a significant role in shaping these relationships (Lareau, 1989; Noguera, 2003; Valdés, 1996). Research in new immigrant destinations emphasizes that school district policymaking rarely involves immigrant families’ participation (Dorner, 2006; Hamann, 2003). However, researchers have identified immigrants’ indirect influence on school systems (Levinson, Everitt, & Johnson, 2007; Rosen, 1993). Nevertheless, much remains to be learned about the conditions under which family-school district relations support immigrant families’ voice and participation in policymaking and the role of immigrant status on family-school district relations and on families’ influence on policymaking.
This paper draws from a comparative case study of two medium-sized, historically White, urban school districts in Wisconsin. The districts share comparable histories of Hmong and Latino immigration, but differing economic and demographic contexts. Semi-structured interviews with over 70 subjects (district administrators, school board members, principals, community leaders, and parents), observations of over 35 school district meetings, and numerous archival documents were collected in the fall and winter of the 2009-2010 school year. Follow-up interviews are being conducted in the summer of 2010.
Findings from the study suggest that despite differences in the economic and racial context of each city, school district-family relationships develop a similar dynamic. Immigrant families have little direct influence or input on district-level decisions. Instead, district leaders’ connections to immigrant families are generally mediated through principals with immigrant students, district diversity liaisons, and middle class, non-immigrant co-ethnics from the community. One important exception is that in both districts, immigrant Hmong families drew on their familial and community organizations to protest actions that conflicted with their cultural beliefs. District administrators interpreted these concerns as legitimate and the Hmong were largely successful in getting their points addressed. Finally, school district responses to immigration sometimes led to the mobilization of parents who were primarily non-immigrant, White and middle class. These parents, due to their socioeconomic and political power, were successful at getting their interests addressed despite the potentially adverse effects on other families’ access to educational opportunities.
This paper contributes to our understanding of school-family relationships at the school district level and the influence of these relationships on district policy. These findings have important implications for understanding how immigrant families are, or are not, incorporated in public schooling and for understanding the dynamics of different groups’ school-family relations on school district policymaking. By analyzing the circumstances under which families are influential in district policymaking, this paper suggests ways to strengthen immigrant families’ influence on their children’s education and make school systems more democratic.

Author

• Erica Owyang Turner, University of Wisconsin - Madison