Parental engagement in a school district in crisis examining sch

University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 Parental Engagement in a School District in Crisis: Examining School Reform through the Lens of Family Involvement Kathryn McGinn University of Pennsylvania, kcmcginn@gmail.com Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.edu/edissertations Part of the Education Commons Recommended Citation McGinn, Kathryn, "Parental Engagement in a School District in Crisis: Examining School Reform through the Lens of Family Involvement" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations.edu/edissertations/778 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons.edu/edissertations/778 For more information, please contact repository@pobox. Parental Engagement in a School District in Crisis: Examining School Reform through the Lens of Family Involvement Abstract This qualitative study examines a five-year period of reform in a small, urban district during a time of crisis, using the issue of parental engagement as a lens through which to focus the analysis. While leadership in the Clarksville School District changed dramatically from 2007-2012, most parents remained in the community.

As one of the few constants in the district, parents have been both blamed for all the district's problems and cited as the key to possible solutions. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on family involvement at the individual, market, and policy levels. Using interviews, observations, and document analysis, I investigate both the opportunities for and barriers to parental engagement that exist in the district at each of these three levels. Drawing on Bourdieu's theories of power, this dissertation also considers why certain forms of participation are privileged over others, how an environment of school choice impacts parental engagement, and what potential parents have to contribute to policy-level change given different leadership structures in the district.

Ultimately, my findings show that--contrary to popular opinion--many Clarksville parents put forth a great deal of effort to be involved in their children's education, despite the multiple barriers that they encounter. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Education First Advisor Sigal Ben-Porath Keywords Parental engagement, School reform, Urban education Subject Categories Education This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.edu/edissertations/778 PARENTAL ENGAGEMENT IN A SCHOOL DISTRICT IN CRISIS: EXAMINING SCHOOL REFORM THROUGH THE LENS OF FAMILY INVOLVEMENT Kathryn McGinn A DISSERTATION in Education Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillments of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Supervisor of Dissertation: __________________________________ Sigal Ben-Porath, Associate Professor of Education Graduate Group Chair: __________________________________ Stanton Wortham, Professor of Education Dissertation Committee: Sigal Ben-Porath, Associate Professor of Education Katherine Schultz, Dean of Mills College of Education Stanton Wortham, Professor of Education For my dad. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have been incredibly lucky to have the support of so many people during this process. First, of course, I want to thank the members of my committee.

I never would have completed this dissertation without the help of my advisor, Dr. Sigal Ben-Porath. Her analytic insights, practical advice, and unfailing encouragement were immeasurably valuable. I cannot thank her enough for being so accessible and generous with her time.

I also owe a huge thanks to Dr. Katherine Schultz who provided so many incredible opportunities for me while I was at Penn, and who gave me so much guidance during my course of study. In addition, thanks are due to Dr. Stanton Wortham, who provided extremely helpful feedback about my dissertation.

I also want to thank Dr. Veronica Aplenc, who shared professional and academic advice that was invaluable to my future plans. As if the opportunity to work with all of these scholars at Penn was not enough, I also had the good fortune to meet some amazing friends while I was in school. I want to thank Vivian Liu and Jacqueline Van Schooneveld for always being willing to listen, commiserate, and laugh about our experiences.

I could not have made it—and would not have wanted to make it—through graduate school without their friendship. I also want to thank Valerie Davis and Rachel Lintgen, the two best English teachers I know, and two of the best friends I have. I was lucky to be able to work with them and learn from them when I taught in Philadelphia, and I was equally lucky to have their support as I wrote my dissertation. So much of my work for my dissertation was informed by the time I spent at the Truancy Intervention Center in Clarksville.

I wish I could thank the staff by name, as iii they welcomed me to their office as if I were part of their family. Their dedication to the children of Clarksville is inspiring, and I admire how they stay positive throughout all the difficult changes in the district. My family also provided vital support for me. My sister, Dr.

Kerry Luse, showed me what it takes to complete a Ph. gracefully, and I am so impressed by the work that she does now as a professor of mathematics. Whenever I am in danger of taking myself too seriously, Kerry and the rest of the Luses are there to remind me that graduate school is just school, after all. I look forward to spending more time with Kerry, Dave, Andrew, and Ellie now that I am done.

I cannot thank my mom, Marilyn McGinn, enough for all the support she has given me over the years. In addition, she was one of my first models of what it means to be a creative and engaged teacher. I wish my dad was here to thank today, as he was my most enthusiastic supporter as I began graduate school, and he emphasized the value of learning for its own sake throughout my educational career. He always believed in me, and I miss his calm presence and his intellect.

Finally, I want to thank David Luet, my partner in the truest sense of the word over the last two years. He has listened to more than his fair share of worries, provided encouragement along with technical support, and prevented me from eating nothing but carbs during the most stressful phases of writing my dissertation. Throughout it all, he has been writing a dissertation of his own. His dedication to his scholarship has been a model for me, and I truly do not know what I would have done without his compassion, sense of humor, and thoughtfulness.

That these last two years of graduate school have been my two happiest years in memory is because of him. iv ABSTRACT PARENTAL ENGAGEMENT IN A SCHOOL DISTRICT IN CRISIS: EXAMINING SCHOOL REFORM THROUGH THE LENS OF FAMILY INVOLVEMENT Kathryn McGinn Sigal Ben-Porath This qualitative study examines a five-year period of reform in a small, urban district during a time of crisis, using the issue of parental engagement as a lens through which to focus the analysis. While leadership in the Clarksville School District changed dramatically from 2007-2012, most parents remained in the community. As one of the few constants in the district, parents have been both blamed for all the district’s problems and cited as the key to possible solutions.

Therefore, this dissertation focuses on family involvement at the individual, market, and policy levels. Using interviews, observations, and document analysis, I investigate both the opportunities for and barriers to parental engagement that exist in the district at each of these three levels. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of power, this dissertation also considers why certain forms of participation are privileged over others, how an environment of school choice impacts parental engagement, and what potential parents have to contribute to policy-level change given different leadership structures in the district. Ultimately, my findings show that— contrary to popular opinion—many Clarksville parents put forth a great deal of effort to be involved in their children’s education, despite the multiple barriers that they encounter.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………. 1 Chapter 2: Literature Review………………………………………………. 10 Chapter 3: Theoretical Framework…………………………………………… 46 Chapter 4: Methods…………………………………………………………… 57 Chapter 5: Parental Engagement at the Individual Level……………………. 80 Chapter 6: Parental Engagement at the Market Level…………………….

127 Chapter 7: Parental Engagement at the School Governance and Policy Level. 178 Chapter 8: Discussion………………………………………………………… 225 Chapter 9: Conclusion………………………………………………………… 243 Appendix A: Interview Respondents, 2007-2012……………………………. 259 Appendix B: Interview Protocols……………………………………………. 264 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1: Research Questions and Data Collection Methods…………………… 61 Table 4.2: Interview Participants by Stakeholder Groups………………………… 64 Table 4.3: Board Meetings Attended by Academic Year………………………… 67 Table 5.1: Parent Participants in Stakeholder Interviews, 2007-2012…………… 84 Table 6.1: State Standardized Test Scores at Elementary Schools in Clarksville, 2011-2012……………………………………………………………… 143 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Illustration 4.1: Example of Coding Process…………………………………… 74 viii Chapter 1: Introduction Overview In his first State of the Union address in 2009, President Obama outlined several education initiatives, adding the following caveat: “These education policies will open the doors of opportunity for our children, but it is up to us to ensure they walk through them.

In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a parent, for a mother or father who will attend those parent-teacher conferences, or help with homework, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, read to their child” (“Remarks of President,” 2009). Three years later, Rachel Steward, a teacher from the beleaguered Clarksville School District, sat with the First Lady during the President’s 2012 State of the Union address.1 Steward was invited because she, along with all the other teachers in Clarksville, had agreed to work without pay in a bankrupt district unable to compensate them. While teachers were—appropriately—hailed as heroes for their sacrifice, there was plenty of blame to go around for the district’s financial and academic woes. An article in a local newspaper2 identified popular culprits for the district’s problems: “Some say Clarksville has been unfairly used as a political football and education lab since at least 1994, when the state took control.

Others blame incompetent administrators and a dearth of local leadership. Still more cite parents who do not understand the system or care enough about good-quality education for their children” (January 23, 2012). Indeed, stakeholders as varied as the President of the United States to district administrators to 1 The names of all people and places have been changed. 2 Throughout this dissertation, I note when information comes from newspaper articles, and I include the date of publication.

However, I omit both the author’s name and the newspaper’s title in order to preserve the anonymity of the district under study. 1 parents themselves increasingly cite low levels of parental engagement as a major source of the myriad of problems that plague poor, urban districts like Clarksville. The case of Clarksville is not unique. Since 1989, state takeovers of local school districts have occurred in “18 states and 12 of the nation’s largest cities” (Black, 2008, p.

About half of the states in the United States have statutes that allow for takeovers of failing districts, and under No Child Left Behind, schools that continuously fail may be turned over “to the State educational agency, if permitted under State law and agreed to by the State” (United States Department of Education, 2005). In fact, state takeovers have become a more common reform since the early 1990s, and they have grown broader in scope, with state governments taking charge of academics in addition to fiscal and managerial responsibilities (Wong & Shen, 2001). While No Child Left Behind cites state takeovers as one option for failing schools, the legislation also emphasizes the difference that parents can make when they become more involved in their children’s education. Parental engagement is a major focus of No Child Left Behind, with the United States Department of Education (2004) urging schools and local education authorities to “provide materials and training to help parents work with their children to improve their children’s achievement such as literacy training for parents, if necessary, and using technology to foster parental involvement” (p.

This dissertation, situated in the Clarksville School District, explores what parental engagement looked like in this small, urban district from 2007-2012.