Does Ethnicity and Language to the Degree of Parent Involvement in Schools Essay

Many recent studies have indicated that parent involvement can make significant differences to outcomes at schools. Why some parents become involved more than others in their children’s education has been the subject of past studies, and ethnic minority status (especially Black and Hispanic) have been associated in the past with poor involvement compared to whites. But other studies have shown completely opposite conclusions i. e. parental involvement is higher in ethnic groups than whites. The critique: This questionnaire study of teachers and parents was a multi-dimensional investigation into the role of ethnicity in parental involvement in schooling found that Black parents perceive that they take a more active role in their children’s schooling than any other ethnic group. By contrast the teachers’ perceptions on the issue were drastically opposite – teachers reported much lower levels of alliance with Black parents than White or Hispanic parents. The fact that fewer than 4% of teachers in this study were blacks probably has been a significant factor in this regard. One of the main weaknesses of this study is a lack of verifiability – it was entirely based on questionnaires, without any involvement of students themselves. Secondly the fact that the population consisted entirely of low-performers may have introduced a source of bias in the study. There were also inadequate measures of ruling out the effect of other confounding factors e. g. education level, incomes of households which made it difficult to compare ethnicity properly. Finally, some ethnic groups returned more questionnaire than others, making it difficult to conduct a like for like study. Conclusion : More studies are needed, carried out in a more rigorous method, before the true effect of ethnicity on parental involvement with schools can be established.