Schools and their communities: tensions and tradeoffs

In this Chapter I will explore whether parents feel they influence schools' community participation. This topic has been 'hot' in most developed nations throughout the 1990s (overlapping political as well as geographical borders) and also has been a key ingredient in reforms in the new countries of Central Europe. As such, education policy—intended or in practise—provides a context where the politics of education emerges with tensions that arise, tradeoffs made, and is at its most transparent. This chapter reports research from Sydney, Australia, with nearly 100 teachers and 700 families in a neighborhood community (Crump and Eltris 1995a, 1995b). This research is part of a broader work with the Institue for Responsive Education and the League of Schools Reaching Out based at Boston University. The chapter thus reports on the intent and practise of recent policy initiatives designed to refom the connections between school and home into a stronger sense of partnership (See Frutcher et al. 1993)