Building Parent Capacity and Participation: Two District Parent Engagement Initiatives

• In Event: Bridging the Engagement Gap: Lessons for Equitable School-Community-Family Collaboration Within a Collective Impact Initiative

Abstract

While new models of comprehensive school reform call for effective parent-community partnerships to improve student outcomes, school systems continue to struggle to engage historically marginalized parents. Efforts to build increased parent capacity and participation in local and district school improvement initiatives must address the strategies and relationships needed to build school, community, and parental capacity to effectively work together, while simultaneously addressing the processes that address the broader political context of schools. This paper extends the literature around effective district-led parent engagement programming by examining the extent to which initiatives enact equitable collaboration between parents, families, and educators.

Using civic capacity (Stone, 1998), authentic participation (Anderson, 1998), and social capital theories (Putnam, 2000; and others), we conducted a comparative case study (Merriam, 2009) to understand how two district-led parent engagement initiatives work to build the participation of non-dominant parents and families in two mid-sized district: Kellogg School District’s (KSD) Parents for Student Success (PSS) program adapted from a successful parent involvement model from California; and the Fairview School District’s (FSD) parent engagement organically developed by their Family and Community Partnerships Office (F&CPO). Findings indicate the potential for equitable collaboration, but also highlight challenges in engaging and collaborating with diverse, non-dominant families, communities, and schools. The strategies emphasized within these programs broadly converged in their focus on cultivating parent leadership and building relationships with other parents and with school-community staff. However, goals and outcomes were framed differently within these two programs. While both programs aspire to build leaders and increase parental and community participation within schools, it remains to be seen whether non-dominant parents and families will be able to share power with educators and educational leaders in shaping a more responsive and equitable system.

Authors

• Kathryn Elizabeth Torres, University of Washington

• Ismael Fajardo, University of Washington - Seattle