Middle-Class Engagement in Urban Public Education: Implications for Family-School Partnerships

• In Event: Family, School, Community Partnerships Scholarship at This Moment in Time: Unveiling Our Path

Abstract

This presentation will begin with a brief discussion of the state of urban education in the early 21st century, the scope of middle-class participation in urban public schooling, and the ways it has been handled by the popular media. Next, it will look at scholarly work on this topic, examining the ways it has been studied and some key findings about the costs and benefits. Finally, it will turn to what research has revealed about the consequences of middle-class engagement in urban schools for family-school relationships. It will highlight both the challenges this engagement creates and the possibility family-school partnerships that at once harness the resources and energies of middle-class families and ensure equity and inclusivity.

This study examines middle-class parents’ engagement in urban public schools in the U.S. A large scholarly and popular literature on “parental involvement” examines what parents do with respect to their children’s schools (including helping with homework, attending parent-teacher conferences, and volunteering in the classroom), how schools can promote these actions, and the consequences for students (see, e.g,. Epstein 2005, 2010). However, other scholars have critiqued the individualistic orientation of much of this literature, arguing that it does not pay enough attention to the ways race, class, and culture shape parents’ approaches to involvement; parents’ differential abilities to comply with schools’ expectations; and power relations between parents and educators (Fine, 1993; Lareau & Shumar, 1996). This literature also does not acknowledge the potentially negative consequences of parental involvement—for individual children and for family relations (Lareau, 2011). In contrast, I use the term engagement to capture both what parents do with respect to their children’s schools well as their motivations and strategies for action and the social contexts in which parents operate (Posey-Maddox & Haley-Lock, 2016; Calabrese Barton, Drake, Perez, St. Louis, & George, 2004). In other words, unlike traditional approaches to understanding parental involvement, a focus on parental engagement both situates parents’ actions within a larger social context (characterized by class, race, and gender inequality) and pays close attention to how parents and educators make sense of these actions.

Because parents’ class status has a decisive impact on their engagement with schools and other institutions, the focus here is on class rather than race (Lareau, 2011). However, given the overlap between race and class in many cities in the U.S., racial dynamics—especially the marginalization of families of color and the valorization of white families—are often at work in changing schools. Thus, the “Implications for Practice” section that ends this presentation includes a discussion of how educators can address issues of class and race.

Author

• Maia B. Cucchiara, Temple University