"They're Going to Tear the Doors Off this Place": Upper-Middle-Class Parent School Involvement and the Educational Opportunities of Other People's Children

Abstract

This study explores social class and racial differences in parents

Parental Involvement Practices in Formalized Home–School Cooperation

“…Hallgarten (2000) (as cited in Hanafin & Lynch, 2002) finds that parental involvement is less of a protective barrier than a lever to maximize the potential of the already advantaged. It is therefore fair to question whether parental involvement, in its current form, is in fact a good thing, as other researchers have also done (Crozier, 2000;Hallgarten, 2000;Hanafin & Lynch, 2002;McGrath & Kuriloff, 1999;Reay, 1998;Vincent & Martin, 2000). Exercising the educational role as parents has a positive effect on children's grades, and since parents with higher education are more apt to exercise their educational role than parents with less formal education, parental involvement becomes a mechanism for social reproduction, and more of the same will only serve to enhance the differences between pupils from different social and cultural backgrounds.…”

Mixed‐income schools and housing: advancing the neoliberal urban agenda

“…The assumption that the presence of middle-class parents will benefit low-income students is also questionable in light of evidence showing that middle-class families deploy their material and cultural resources to secure educational advantages for their children (McGrath and Kuriloff 1999;André-Bechely 2005), particularly in the context of school choice (Ball, Bowe, and Gewirtz 1995;Fuller with Orfield 1996;Ball 2003;Butler with Robson 2003). There is also evidence that middle-class parents seek to insulate their children from lower achieving students and lower income students of color (Sieber 1982;Oakes et al 1997).…”

Breaking barriers or locked out? Class-based perceptions and experiences of postsecondary education

“…Early differences are exacerbated as children with more cultural capital are "better able to decode the implicit 'rules of the game'" to their advantage (Aschaffenberg & Maas, 1997, p. 573). Advantaged parents' "self interested" practices "defend and further their class interests" (Ball & Vincent, 2001, p. 181), such as advocating tracking schemes that help their own children (McGrath & Kuriloff, 1999). Linguistic subcultures learned in the family (affecting whether children are taught to question or defer to authority figures) advantage middle-class children, who grow up with a greater sense of entitlement and confidence than their less advantaged peers (Lareau, 2003).…”