providing them only those services which
are immediately at our disposal."
Several recent studies contend that parent involvement in schools suffers
because educators do not understand different family cultures or even the
circumstances that make parenting difficult for poor families. They describe
situations where it is not lack of parental interest in the education of their
children that causes poor communication with the schools, as many educators
believe, but, rather, parental feelings of alienation from the schools.
In Appalachia, for example, the Education Writers Association (1992) notes
that school failure by mothers over several generations leads again and again to
early pregnancies, dropping out, and extreme difficulties in re-entering the
education system. These mothers and others interviewed for this report generally
felt ignored or misunderstood by the schools because of their poverty and/or
lack of English proficiency. The interviews were with populations of young
families--inner-city African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and rural
Appalachians. Garlington (1991) found similar attitudes in a project with
inner-city Baltimore families whose children were in the middle grades. She
dismisses the stereotype of parents who do not care about their children's
schooling, pointing out that when they have the confidence to become advocates
for their children, the parents no longer feel "invisible, voiceless, and
The myriad of ways schools attempt to
encourage parent involvement and fulfill their responsibilities to parents is
described in five types by Epstein (1992). These are:
Basic obligations of families: Positive home conditions that support learning
are a responsibility of families; schools help families become informed and
skillful at understanding their children and supporting their learning at home
through various activities such as parent training and information giving.
Basic obligations of schools: Schools are responsible for communicating with
families about school programs and children's progress, ordinarily through
notices, phone calls, visits, report cards and conferences; schools vary in the
frequency of communications and in ability to make them understood by families.
Involvement at school: Parents assist teachers, children, or other school
personnel as volunteers; schools vary their schedules to encourage such
involvement and recruit and train volunteers.
Involvement in learning activities at home: Teachers request and guide parents
to monitor and assist their children at home.
Involvement in decision-making, governance, and advocacy: Parents serve in
participatory roles and also may become activists through involvement in
advocacy groups; schools help parents become leaders through training, involving
them in meaningful decision-making, and providing information to advocacy
Schools with comprehensive programs encompassing all of these forms of parent
involvement help parents build the conditions at home that support student
learning, and there are hundreds of practices from which to choose.
Since her original research, Epstein has added a sixth form of
involvement--collaboration and exchange with community organizations. In this
form, schools collaborate with agencies, businesses, cultural organizations, and
other groups to share responsibility for the education of children. They make it
more feasible for children and families to have access to these services and
Other researchers define parent involvement on the basis of the direct
beneficiary of the intervention. Parent involvement programs which are meant to
benefit the child focus on parents as interveners, parent/child relations,
stimulating the senses, and parents as classroom aides. Programs with parents as
beneficiaries emphasize emotional support, resource access, parenting skills,
and the like.
The literature on parent involvement summarized by Henderson, Marburger, and
Ooms (1986) describes most school communication as formal and one-way, that is,
from school to home. Also, parents complain that their most personal
communication with s