Engaging low-income parents in schools: beyond the PTA meeting

Considerable literature on K-12 education has lauded parental engagement, suggesting that student academic success increases when parents are included in the educational process of their children. Yet research results suggest that low-income parents fail to engage in their children's academic life. Consequently, K-12 schools struggle with the question of how to effectively involve and engage low-income parent populations. The struggle for schools to engage low-income parents is due in part to the lack of research on the ways low-income parents engage in schools and the overreliance of traditional typologies of parental engagement that are heavily based on Epstein's Framework of Parental Involvement (1996). Through a case study of The LEAP Academy University Charter School in Camden, New Jersey, this study focuses on examining the ideas of Epstein to determine if they are valid in the case of an urban charter school serving low-income families. This qualitative study explores how low-income parents engage in the academic lives of their children, examines how the economic and social implications of traditional typologies of parental engagement affect engagement levels of low-income parents in public charter schools, and details innovative strategies used by a charter school to garner high levels of engagement from its low-income parent population. Using literature on parental engagement, school reform, and theories of social capital, the study examines the creation of social capital in the form of education-related social networks among the LEAP Academy low-income parent population. This inquiry seeks to provide new findings and policy implications for schools that struggle with engaging their low-income parent populations, underscores a need for the augmentation of traditional definitions of parental engagement, provides evidence for the role community-based urban schools can play in the community development process, and identifies suggestions for future research.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Wendy Osef