Parent and Community Involvement in Schools: Policy Panacea or Pandemic?

Abstract

A global tide of policy, programs, and rhetoric puts parent and community involvement in the education mainstream. In the nineties, new policies on parent involvement in education were put in place at the national level in the US and UK, and in many state and local jurisdictions in the English speaking world and beyond (Moles, 2001; OECD, 1997). In the literature, reports and testimonials on parent involvement climbed steadily across the 1980s and 90s. Many promising local school community partnerships were reported (Holtzman, 1995; Corter, Harris, & Pelletier, 1998) but were not easily translated into wide scale policies. The role of the parent is popular fodder for the public mind and is good counterpoint to the roles of teachers and schools in accounting for the failures and successes of children. Report cards on parents are tabloid topics in the US, and parents being jailed for their children’s truancy gets similar press in the UK. Although it is harder to think about the roles of “community” and the complex interactions that surround the efforts of teachers and parents, the word has positive connotations not lost on politicians. Popular media reflect the importance of parents in education and large scale surveys suggest that the public, including parents themselves, see the responsibility for children’s school success as being shared between parents and schools (OECD, 1997; Williams, Williams, & Ullman, 2001, Livingstone, Hart, & Davie, 2000). In many ways, it seems that parent and community involvement have already been the ’’next big thing’’ in education