Parents, Their Children, And Schools

Barbara Schneider, James Coleman, James S. Coleman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429978128
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book examines the resources available to parents and the actions parents can take to further their childrens education. It is the first study of the subject based on major survey data, drawing from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988a national survey of 26,000 eighth graders, their parents, teachers, and school administrators. The authors explore several important debates, including the extent to which parental involvement can mitigate the constraints of poverty for minorities and disadvantaged students, school choice and equality of educational opportunity, and the effects that school-sponsored activities involving parents have on educational performance. }Parental involvement with children at home, in school, and in the community is one of the most important factors in educational success. Yet we know very little about the most effective approaches to parental intervention. Moreover, not all parents have the same resources or opportunities to act on the educational expectations they have for their children.This book examines the resources available to parents and the actions parents can take to further their childrens education. It is the first study of the subject based on major survey data, drawing from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988a national survey of 26,000 eighth graders, their parents, teachers, and school administrators. The authors explore several important debates, including the extent to which parental involvement can mitigate the constraints of poverty for minorities and disadvantaged students, school choice and equality of educational opportunity, and the effects that school-sponsored activities involving parents have on educational performance.Certain to change the thinking of educators and policymakers, this book is essential reading for scholars and parents as well. }

1

Parents, Their Children, and Schools: An Introduction

Barbara Schneider

One of the most important factors in a child’s success in school is the degree to which his or her parents are actively involved in the child’s education. Yet, we really know very little about those actions parents take with their children at home, in school, and in the community that actually improve school performance. For example, will a mother help her child more by working full-time for extra income or by staying home and supervising the child after school? What are some parents depriving their children of by not contacting the school regularly? If parents know the parents of their child’s friends, can this compensate for a lack of time and money spent on the child?

Not all parents have the same resources or opportunities to act on the educational expectations they have for their children. Variations in financial and social resources, such as money to purchase a home computer or adequate child care, factor into parents’ decisions about the actions they take regarding their children’s education. Family composition, that is, the number of adults in the household and their relationships to the children, constitutes another social resource, the nature of which can affect educational opportunities in the home. Similarly, the absence of a parent may negatively impact a child’s learning environment. For example, in families where there is only one parent, household duties like cooking, cleaning, and attending to child care may limit the amount of time that can be devoted to helping a child with homework. Furthermore, if the single parent has a full-time job, this may further reduce the amount of unrestricted time the adult has to spend with the child.

Parent involvement in a child’s education is also affected by the opportunities made available by the school. Some schools may encourage parents to contact teachers about their children’s academic performance, social development, or future plans such as selecting a high school program and courses. Other schools may have certain policies or characteristics that discourage parents from contacting the school regarding their children’s academic achievement or high school plans. Schools with these policies may offer few activities, such as parent-teacher conferences, go-to-school nights, or fund-raising events, that foster communication and social ties between families and school personnel.

Community characteristics, such as informal networks among parents, are another resource for increasing parent involvement. For example, if parents frequently interact, they can share information about their children, their children’s teachers, new school policies, and they can express their complaints about the school. These networks can generate either positive or negative opinions about various aspects of school life and serve as a vehicle for bringing issues to school boards and school administrators.

Parent involvement, then, is shaped by parents’ orientation toward education, their financial and social resources, and the opportunities that are available in the schools and communities in which they live. This book is designed to look at the resources that parents have and the actions that they take in their children’s education. It is a story of different types of families—two-parent families, single parents, working mothers, some with high incomes and high levels of education, some that are very poor economically, some that have high educational expectations for their children, others who do not, families of different racial and ethnic groups—and how they are involved in their children’s education and what effect it has on student performance. It is a story of what these families do at home, at school, and in the community to facilitate their children’s achievement.

Interest in Families

The roles the American family and school can have in the education of our children demand systematic inquiry, especially given the dramatic changes occurring in these social institutions. Traditional families, or those composed of mother, father, and child, represent a much smaller proportion of American households today than in the past. Nearly half of all American children under the age of 18 will be raised in single parent homes, arising from a divorce or separation at one time in their lives (Statistical Abstract of the United States 1991). These rates are even higher for African American children, the majority of whom will be raised in single parent homes.

Today, mothers are entering the labor force in increasing numbers. From 1970 to 1989 the number of mothers working outside the home increased by more than 20% (Statistical Abstract of the United States 1991). The rise in labor force participation has been greater for those women with children than for those with no children. Today, most mothers will work outside the home for a significant part of their children’s school years.

Arguably, the rise in the number of working mothers has also decreased the amount of time mothers can spend with their children, thus leaving supervision to other child care institutions. Oftentimes the values adopted in these child care facilities and the children who attend them may be in direct conflict with those reinforced in the home. Receiving different messages about what constitutes good behavior at school, how to treat teachers and peers, and why schooling is important, many children find they have to cope with these contradictions in values by themselves.

The growth in the number of two-income families has increased the amount of discretionary income in many households. Some modern families seem to invest more in their children than was once the case, not merely in terms of money, but also in time and attention. Of course, this is not the case in all situations, as there are other parents who, regardless of their income, are narcissistic and neglectful toward their children. Many schools have to contend with a mass of families who are willing and able to expend considerable resources on their children while dealing with families who are unable or unwilling to do so.

Like families, schools have also undergone major structural changes. The growth of school districts and the professionalization of the teachers have in many instances distanced schools from the families and communities they once served. The distance between families and schools is further exacerbated by television, another potent force that has become a significant actor in the life of children. The commercial world has aggressively sought to compete with families and schools for children’s time and monetary resources.

Families have few mechanisms to insulate their children from the messages communicated through the media. Schools also lack such mechanisms. The school, not unlike the family, is not currently organized to compete successfully against the external conditions of this commercial world. This world offers children yet another set of values which are often contradictory to those of the school and the family.

Perhaps now more than ever, families find themselves needing support and sustenance from schools to help them in the education of their children. Schools also need the support and sustenance provided by the family to make this possible. The question then becomes, how can families and schools work together for the benefit of children in our modern society?

The study of family-school relations has been dominated by educators and sociologists, both bring their own perspectives to bear on the problem. Educational researchers have been primarily concerned with identifying parent activities at home and in school that help preschoolers and elementary students improve their cognitive and social development skills (Leichter 1978). Focusing on “readiness,” many of these studies explore how parents can prepare their young children for school. Studies with older students have tended to concentrate on assisting parents in improving the academic performance of their children through such activities as engaging in ongoing communication with school professionals and monitoring homework and other out-of-school assignments (Epstein 1987; Baker and Stevenson 1986).

Social scientists concerned with family-school relations have tended to view the contribution of the family to the child’s academic performance through socio-demographic factors, such as who is in the home, what type of jobs household members have, and the quality of the child care provided to younger children. They focus on these factors as well as family occupational status, income, and educational attainment, but typically do not focus on the processes by which some families support and create opportunities for learning (Coleman 1988).

More recently, educators and sociologists have turned their attention to family beliefs, activities, and cultural values to gain an understanding of how some families become involved with their child’s school (Clark 1983; Lareau 1989). Recognizing that families vary in their economic resources and attitudes toward education, these researchers have concentrated on describing variations in family values and the types of activities families feel comfortable pursuing in schools. Primarily qualitative in their methodological approach, these studies are somewhat constrained in their ability to make systematic connections between parent actions and student academic outcomes.

From a policy perspective, research on parent involvement in schools has tended to focus on relating family background characteristics to school involvement activities and then tracing that involvement to achievement. The underlying assumption is that parent involvement, especially for minorities, can counteract the negative effects of low socioeconomic background and significantly improve student performance. But the drawback of this approach is that it tends to define parent involvement through school-based activities, suchas joining parent-teacher organizations, serving on advisory boards, or helping with homework, rather than using a more holistic definition, looking at parent involvement in the home and community and relating that to specific school characteristics.

In contrast to these views, we are interested in isolating both the values parents have and the actions they take in the home toward the education of their children that may increase academic performance and social development. We are interested in determining what norms and sanctions families impose that encourage or discourage learning in school and what other social institutions families use besides formal schools to socialize and reinforce children’s learning. If we are to better understand variation in how families educate their children, we need to look more closely at the values and activities undertaken by families.

We approach this problem by focusing on the social and economic resources of the family and then by looking specifically within the home, community and school to learn how families are involved in educational activities. Our analyses begin by isolating family social and economic resources that are likely to encourage or prevent families from supporting their child’s education. However, our analyses do not end with first order explanations but move to examine those intervening activities that parents can pursue to compensate for the lack of certain resources, like time. Networking with other parents can be especially beneficial for single mothers as they can learn more about the school, such as which teachers are especially problematic for boys or girls, which ones assign and grade homework, and who are the best mathematics or English teachers.

We maintain that there are a variety of activities that parents undertake to help their children learn, not all of which are formally tied to the school. For example, some parents may enroll their child in music classes outside of the school. The discipline and time involved in learning an instrument can have positive spillover effects on other academic work. The actions parents take at home with their children can be seen as a measure of their responsiveness to the availability of certain resources. From our perspective, parents’ decisions to spend time talking to their children about school or implement rules about television viewing and homework constitute means through which parents conceivably can positively influence children’s learning. Both time and communication help to strengthen social relations between parents and their children.

There may in addition be orientations and actions of parents that are important for a child’s education quite apart from the time spent with the child, or relations with the school or with other parents. Some parents, for example, hold strong expectations and make strong demands concerning their child’s school performance, while others do not. Children know what is expected in terms of effort and performance, with or without extensive communication with their parents about school matters.

Social Resources in the Family

The changes in the structure of the American family will undoubtedly influence how educational values are communicated and supported among family members. We assume that social control in families is typically maintained through authority and norms, provided that conditions necessary to uphold the source of that authority and the norms are present. Norms and authority in families, as well as communities, are developed and sustained through relationships. These relationships can form a source of social capital, that is, those social resources in the family and in the community which serve as capital assets available to members of the family. These resources are particularly valuable as they can serve as a conduit through which norms, standards and expectations are conveyed (for further discussion of social capital see Coleman (1990)).

The closer and denser the relationships, the more likely they are to act as constraints upon behavior. A family that is very close or a community that is characterized by many relations of interdependence will have extensive norms and clearly delineated sanctions which serve to control deviant actions by its members. A more loosely constructed family or a community whose interactions are casual and incidental will have fewer and more ambiguous norms and sanctions.

Recognizing that families have these potential assets, we are interested in learning what actions help to accumulate additional capital within the home. Thus, our first priority is to investigate how social capital forms in the home and the community and its relationship to strengthening student academic performance. From the family and community we move to the school, recognizing that most policies directed at encouraging greater involvement on the part of parents in their children’s education will be constructed around schools. However, we have relatively limited information concerning what types of schools encourage parent involvement or, for that matter, what types of activities schools use to involve parents and what effect they have on performance.

Parents make choices about the type of actions they are willing to engage in at home, in the community, and in the school that relate both directly and indirectly to their children’s education. These choices are influenced by family economic and social constraints as well as by the policies and practices in the schools their children attend. For example, a family decision to contact the school regarding their child’s academic performance will be influenced by the parents’ assessment of the child’s performance, their knowledge of school policies regarding making such contacts, and the resources needed to make the contact, such as getting time off from work or hiring a baby-sitter. Immigrant families may be less willing to contact the school because they may not know the procedures for doing so or how such actions are viewed by the school and teachers. On the other hand, in close communities where such activities are fairly commonplace, families who do not contact the school may be perceived by the school as being uninterested in their child’s education.

School choice represents another form of parent involvement that has received considerable attention from scholars and policy makers. During the last decade we have learned a great deal about the families who exercise school choice in the private sector and the educational experiences their children receive in different types of schools (Coleman and Hoffer 1987; Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore 1982). Two questions remain however. First, exercising choice represents an effective social resource for improving student performance, taking into account other resources such as parents’ education. Second, it is unclear who would take advantage of school choice if choice were expanded in both the private and public sectors. Thus, it is important to learn the impact of school choice opportunities on student outcomes and on equality of educational opportunities.

Furthermore, the effort to understand the actions that parents take with their children has yet to have the benefit of large-scale survey data. For example, studies at the elementary school level which look at family resources and parent involvement have primarily been conducted on small samples and have been of a qualitative nature. From these efforts, we have learned about the significance of helping with homework, the importance of a place to study, and the effect of parent participation in school activities on student perform...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figurs
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Parents, Their Children, and Schools
• 2 Parent Involvement in the Home, School, and Community
• 3 Family Structure Effects on Student Outcomes
• 4 Parent Involvement and Academic Achievement
• 5 Parental Intervention in the School
• 6 Parent Choice and Inequality
• References
• About the Book and Editors
• Index