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Barriers to parental involvement in an urban parochial school

Current literature and research in education underscores the importance that parent participation and involvement play in a child's academic progress and successful educational experience. The importance of involvement has been traced through all educational levels from preschool through high school and in both American and foreign academic settings. American educational reform movements focus on efforts to restructure our schools to include all interested parties in the decision making process. Crucial to this restructuring is an active parental component. If schools are to overcome this crisis of public confidence they must work with the community, including its citizens and business members, to meet the unique individual needs of their setting. No where is this involvement more crucial than in America's inner-city, urban neighborhoods. However, it is here where we have seen minimal parent-school contact. This study explored parental involvement practices in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, inner city parochial school setting and attempted to identify and analyze the various barriers which prevent a more involvement role for our inner city parents even in this selective setting where the element of parental choice and monetary investment became evident. The descriptive study utilized a questionnaire format to identify these barriers to participation and compare the responses across various racial groups including Hispanic, African American, Native American, White, and Asian American.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-8013
Date01 January 1991
CreatorsMastaby, Kathleen Ann McCarthy
PublisherScholarWorks@UMass Amherst
Source SetsUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
SourceDoctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest

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