The Effects of School Choice on Parent Involvement for Latino Students

• In Event: 25.023 - Neoliberal Policies and Family Engagement: New Perspectives, New Contexts

Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of charter schools, family involvement, and Latino students. As charter schools proliferate (Betts & Loveless, 2005; Ni & Arsen, 2010), recent literature considers how these types of schools affect the educational landscape for all students. Considering Latino students separately is germane, as by 2025 they will represent one quarter of the total school-age population (Gandara & Contreras, 2009). Organizations often incorporate family engagement into their charter with governmental authorizers (Wohlstetter, Smith, & Farrell, 2013); research around how family engagement differs between school types (charter vs. traditional public) invokes policy implications. This study addresses two research questions:

1. Are parents of Latino students in charter schools more involved than parents of Latino students in traditional public schools?
2. To what extent does involvement for Latino charter school parents differ from that of Latino traditional public school parents?

Latino student enrollment in charter schools continues to increase as White and African-American enrollment declines (Berends, 2015). Research finds that potential benefits of parent engagement for student achievement are powerful (Epstein, 1995; Epstein & Sanders, 2000; Ingram, Wolfe, & Lieberman, 2007) and many state charter school laws in fact include parent engagement mandates (Wohlstetter, Smith, & Farrell, 2013).
Meanwhile, family background affects parents’ beliefs regarding their roles in their child’s education (Sattin-Bajaj, 2014). Research assessing the effect of these schools’ attempts to improve parental involvement is needed. An exploration of charter vs. non-charter parent involvement has important implications for policies aiming to strengthen school/family partnerships.

This study employs data from the Parent and Family Involvement Survey 2012 of the National Household Education Surveys (NHES) collected by the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) and includes responses from 17,563 parents of school-aged children across the United States. Of this sample, 3,839 respondents were parents of Latino students; by filtering those parents, students enrolled in charter schools were compared to those who were not. In order to understand how parental involvement differed between school types, a series of chi-square tests of independence were employed and a logistic regression model was estimated based on factors including home-school communication, language spoken at home, and school type.

We find that Latino parental involvement is not significantly different for charter vs. non-charter students. However, involvement for Latino parents is positively related to measures of school communication, school information provided, and English language use in the home. These findings have implications for policies encouraging parental involvement, specifically for charter schools serving the growing Latino family population.

Since charter schools generally are mandated to include a family engagement plan, this paper considered the role of such plans in determining outcomes. However, the findings of this study show that charter schools inherently do not correlate to improved family engagement. Measures of efforts that individual schools provide to families do relate to Latino student engagement. This study is important for both charter and traditional public schools in that simple efforts to communicate with families will improve family engagement, which subsequently improves student performance.

Authors

• Wesley Logan Edwards, The University of Texas - Austin

• Eliza Epstein, The University of Texas - Austin

• Michael R. Scott, The University of Texas - Austin