Keith Robinson and Angel L. Harris: Broken Compass: Parental Involvement with Children’s Education

Abstract

By proclaiming in the New York Times that ‘‘parental involvement is overrated,’’ Robinson and Harris have sparked considerable debate with their book Broken Compass: Parental Involvement with Children’s Education. At the core of Broken Compass is an attempt to determine whether differences in parental involvement account for race and socioeconomic status achievement gaps. Robinson and Harris question whether ‘‘the resources expended in efforts to increase parental involvement are justified’’ as, in their view, evidence exhibiting direct links between parental involvement and improved student outcomes is lacking (p. 4). Using three nationally representative data sets from the National Center for Education Statistics and one additional data set from the state of Maryland, the authors conclude that no clear relationship exists between parental involvement and student outcomes. Robinson and Harris thus propose a new conceptualization of parental involvement that they call ‘‘stage setting’’. In reviewing previous research, Robinson and Harris contend that scholarship on parental involvement has produced inconsistent results on the specific types of parental involvement that are associated with achievement, such as parental supervision of homework. According to the authors, a lack of research on minority students together with the use of small sample sizes in parental involvement studies has obscured the assumed connection between parental involvement and achievement gaps. However, in their review, the authors fail to mention a vast body of key scholarship. Most glaringly, leading parental involvement scholar William Jeynes is quoted in 2003 as mentioning ‘‘no meta-analysis that examines the effect of parental involvement on minority student educational outcomes has ever been published in an academic journal’’ (p. 20). Unfortunately, Robinson and Harris do not inform the reader that this quote comes from Jeynes’ meta-analysis on minority student achievement, which finds statistically significant effect sizes for African American students for both general and specific measures of parental involvement (Jeynes 2003). Nor does Broken Compass mention Jeynes’ subsequent meta-analyses on parental involvement and academic achievement for urban elementary school students, urban secondary students, and school-operated parental involvement programs (Jeynes 2005, 2007, 2012). All of which exhibit significant correlations between student outcomes and specific measures of parental involvement for minority students. Following their review of previous research, the authors declare a need to determine whether social class and race differences exist for parental involvement; which types of involvement are most salient for increased outcomes; and to what extent the achievement gap is linked to involvement. To address these objectives with large data sets, parental involvement is defined as a parent’s specific actions (63 measures) either at home or at school. Other measures, such as parenting, are excluded. However, this omission is noteworthy because parenting style has routinely exhibited large effects on academic achievement and may exert both positive and negative influences over other measures of parental involvement. Although the authors consider parenting in one of the final chapters where they connect student outcomes to race and social class differences in parenting style, no discussion as to D. Hamlin (&) Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St W, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada e-mail: dan.hamlin@mail.utoronto.ca