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Voices in Urban Education
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Engaging Communities
VUE Number 13, Fall 2006
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:
Creating Demand for Equity: Three Theories for Transforming the Role of Parents in Schools
By LaShawn Routé-Chatmon,
Katrina Scott-George, Anne K. Okahara,
Emma Fuentes, Jean Yonemura Wing,
and Pedro Noguera
> Author biographies
Countering a widespread misperception about families of color, an initiative to close achievement gaps at Berkeley High School demonstrates that parents will work hard to improve education for their children.
Parents are frequently cited as the ultimate cause of disparities in student achievement. As a child's first teacher, parents generally have a strong influence on learning during early childhood. These influences, clearly manifest in the development of early literacy skills (Adger, Snow & Christian 2002), shape the intellectual foundation for future cognitive development. Parental influences on learning and academic achievement do not end after infancy but continue throughout adolescence. Several researchers have shown that the educational and socioeconomic background of parents plays a decisive role in the formation of student attitudes and habits toward school (Lareau 2000; Epstein & Hollifield 1996). Richard Rothstein (2004) has argued recently that middle-class, college-educated parents provide their children with such a wide range of advantages that it is nearly impossible for schools to counter the effects to create a level educational playing field.
From the start, the Diversity Project – an effort by teachers, staff, students, parents, and researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, to address the racial disparities in academic performance at Berkeley High School in Berkeley, CA – recognized that parents play an important role in shaping the educational experiences of their children. However, unlike researchers who perceive working-class parents and parents of color as a hindrance to the achievement of students, we believed that under the right conditions, these parents could play a powerful role in advancing their children's educational interests. In addition, because we understood that the achievement gap at Berkeley High School was not merely an educational issue but also a political one, we understood that no change at the school would be possible without the active involvement of parents.
We wanted parents to be genuine partners in the educational process. We wanted their concerns to be taken seriously, and we wanted to make it possible for them to work with other parents to create popular demand for the type of transformational education they wanted to see for their children.
This article analyzes the role of parents in the Diversity Project. We examine how parents of color at BHS went from being marginal and excluded from the educational process to becoming active participants in decision making at the school. The experience of parents in the Diversity Project is in essence a story about the politics of equity and the politics of empowerment.
Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc., from Unfinished Business: Closing the Racial Achievement Gap in Our Schools, by Pedro Noguera and Jean Yonemura Wing. Copyright © 2006 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. This book is available at all bookstores, online booksellers and from the Wiley web site at www.wiley.com, or call 1-800-225-5945.
Archives
Engaging Communities
VUE Number 13, Fall 2006
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:
Creating Demand for Equity: Three Theories for Transforming the Role of Parents in Schools
By LaShawn Routé-Chatmon,
Katrina Scott-George, Anne K. Okahara,
Emma Fuentes, Jean Yonemura Wing,
and Pedro Noguera> Author biographies
Countering a widespread misperception about families of color, an initiative to close achievement gaps at Berkeley High School demonstrates that parents will work hard to improve education for their children.
Parents are frequently cited as the ultimate cause of disparities in student achievement. As a child's first teacher, parents generally have a strong influence on learning during early childhood. These influences, clearly manifest in the development of early literacy skills (Adger, Snow & Christian 2002), shape the intellectual foundation for future cognitive development. Parental influences on learning and academic achievement do not end after infancy but continue throughout adolescence. Several researchers have shown that the educational and socioeconomic background of parents plays a decisive role in the formation of student attitudes and habits toward school (Lareau 2000; Epstein & Hollifield 1996). Richard Rothstein (2004) has argued recently that middle-class, college-educated parents provide their children with such a wide range of advantages that it is nearly impossible for schools to counter the effects to create a level educational playing field.
From the start, the Diversity Project – an effort by teachers, staff, students, parents, and researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, to address the racial disparities in academic performance at Berkeley High School in Berkeley, CA – recognized that parents play an important role in shaping the educational experiences of their children. However, unlike researchers who perceive working-class parents and parents of color as a hindrance to the achievement of students, we believed that under the right conditions, these parents could play a powerful role in advancing their children's educational interests. In addition, because we understood that the achievement gap at Berkeley High School was not merely an educational issue but also a political one, we understood that no change at the school would be possible without the active involvement of parents.
We wanted parents to be genuine partners in the educational process. We wanted their concerns to be taken seriously, and we wanted to make it possible for them to work with other parents to create popular demand for the type of transformational education they wanted to see for their children.
This article analyzes the role of parents in the Diversity Project. We examine how parents of color at BHS went from being marginal and excluded from the educational process to becoming active participants in decision making at the school. The experience of parents in the Diversity Project is in essence a story about the politics of equity and the politics of empowerment.
Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc., from Unfinished Business: Closing the Racial Achievement Gap in Our Schools, by Pedro Noguera and Jean Yonemura Wing. Copyright © 2006 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. This book is available at all bookstores, online booksellers and from the Wiley web site at www.wiley.com, or call 1-800-225-5945.
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