Reframing Parent Involvement: What Should Urban School Leaders Do Differently?

Abstract

In this article we critically examine how teachers and administrators in an urban high school identify and consider the challenges to parent involvement without either engaging in or disrupting normative constructions of the term parent involvement. It is in this unintentional misconstruction of the notion of parent involvement that school leaders most often perceive Black and Hispanic parents in urban schools. Our aim is to trouble this hegemonic view and to offer alternative ways of knowing and practice in order to increase parent involvement and student achievement.