Home Is a Prison in the Global City: The Tragic Failure of School-Based Community Engagement Strategies

Abstract

Historically, schools serving impoverished families trapped in America's urban "ghettos" have been resistant to community participation. Enhanced participation is critically needed, however, if long-term urban school-reform projects and efforts to develop more empowering, community-supporting forms of pedagogy are to succeed. This article examines the most influential and/or promising efforts to foster more authentic engagement between schools and inner-city communities. The author finds that while efforts to develop school-based models have largely failed, a range of community-based efforts remain promising. If educators, scholars, and policymakers are truly interested in improving school-community relations, then they will need to become more deeply informed about community forces and structures and more directly involved in efforts to strengthen community organizations.

Building a Political Constituency for Urban School Reform

“…Put bluntly, what sense does it make to try to reform urban schools while the communities surrounding them continue to decline (Warren, 2005)? Small, incremental improvements in schools will do little to alter the individual life chances of inner city students; real gains are more likely through collective mobilization (Schutz, 2006). In other words, traditional school reform ignores issues of power.…”

Supporting Southeast Asian American Family and Community Engagement for Educational Success

“…They highlight educators' unwillingness or inability to work with parents (Olivos, 2006), linguistic differences (Zentella, 2005), and schools' lack of strategies to involve families in setting academic goals and expectations (Miretzky, 2004). U.S. school systems have operated under a traditional view of parental involvement, whereby parents play an accommodating role in promoting school goals (Schutz, 2006).…”

“…She identifies six types of parental involvement, which include parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decisionmaking, and collaborating with community members (Epstein, Sanders, Salinas, Simon, VanVoorhis, & Jansorn, 2002). Her first five categories focus solely on parents and collaborating with community members was added only recently, after some research (Schutz, 2006). This middle-class model of parental involvement defines activities that involve parents in supporting school interests.…”

“…Epstein's framework lacks an analysis of the power dynamics that exist between parents and schools (Lareau & Shumar, 1996;Schutz, 2006). In some situations, particularly in lowincome immigrant and minority communities, parents do not know their rights or responsibilities in terms of their children's education.…”

8 Positive Change and Scholastic Education

“…c) Clear goals: learning goals that are clear (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) and designed or embedded into the activity (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). d) Importance/relevance of the activity: Importance or relevance of the activity to one's self (Tomlinson, 1999) or larger community (Damon, 2008;Schutz, 2006), often in the context of real world issues or community service as with experiential or problem-based learning. e) Assessment and expectations for mastery: The clear expectation that obtained competencies will be demonstrated, performed, or assessed in a way regarded as mutually meaningful to both student and instructor, and for a level of performance that is within reasonably high standards for mastery or competency (APA, 1997;Wiggins, 1993).…”