Investigating Constituent Values and School Policy

Abstract

Using a sociopolitical perspective to understand the alignment of community values and school policies, we conducted focus groups in three geographically close but economically varied neighborhood in one Midwest urban area. The article presents findings related to constituent values, social capital, and school policies, including charter school policy, NCLB, and busing.

Keywords

educational policy school–community relationship micropolitics social capital

Urban school districts serve communities that have great economic, cultural, and ethnic differences, giving rise to varied values regarding the purpose and aims of public education (Gutmann, 1987; Labaree, 1997). Citizens expect public school districts to represent their values (Berkman & Plutzer, 2005). Yet initiatives like charter schools continue to press on districts, creating funding, enrollment, and resource challenges many districts are struggling to meet. Why has the exit strategy (Hirschman, 1970) had such a hold on parents and students in urban settings? By examining the values (i.e., goals and purposes of public education) of citizens in a city where there is both a high rate of charter school enrollment and a newly concerted effort to meet the needs of the most troubled neighborhoods, we aim to uncover the various values among constituents and schools, how those values align with school policies, and the potential of citizen values to drive change in schools. We also aim to explore ways district leaders can move forward in recapturing the interest and support of their constituents.

Theoretical Framework

We apply sociopolitical theory to understand the alignment of values among various communities, district policy makers, and educators. In particular, we use a micropolitical perspective (Bjork & Lindle, 2001; Malen & Cochran, 2008) that encompasses theories of value conflict, representation, and social capital to examine how various constituent values are understood and represented in the urban school district.

The first part of our framework embraces a political perspective to better understand citizens’ values or conflicting values for public education and how those values are represented in education policies and decision making. We use the term values to describe purposes and aims respondents have for public education (Gutmann, 1987). Although we understand individual values are multidimensional and may at times be subject to trade-offs or conflicts, we also understand that American citizens are relatively stable in their values (Saris & Sniderman, 2004; Schwartz & Bilsky, 2004). We believe that understanding constituent values about schools will help us identify how school policies may better align with the goals and purposes constituents’ hold for public education in their communities and how policies might foster greater civic engagement for the purpose of improving neighborhood schools.

To take this a step further, we also consider how constituent involvement in the policy process might foster greater civic engagement for the purposes of improving neighborhood schools. For example, Marshall (2004) argues that citizen participation in the coproduction of local public goods “increases government’s responsiveness to citizen needs, ideas, and preferences, and leads to fewer complaints and misunderstandings on the part of residents” (p. 242). Furthermore, Marshall argues that citizen participation increases residents’ satisfaction and support of local government.

How citizens engage in the political processes of schools, however, depends in large part on the way power is structured in schools. Malen and Cochran (2008) conducted a review of research around the micropolitics of education and found that in most cases, “professionals have the relative power advantage” (p. 168) in schools, and where parents, specifically middle-class and upper-middle-class parents, gain power, “they do so primarily through private agreements that reflect and reinforce their privileged position . . . and through tacit or explicit threats of exit” (p. 168). The exit strategy (Hirschman, 1970) has gained momentum through the development of charter schools, which are public schools free of many of the restraints of public school districts designed to directly serve the interests of parents. Literature on charter schools to date suggests charter school policy raises questions of equity, access, and quality (Buckley & Schneider, 2007; Institute on Race and Poverty, 2008; Renzulli & Evans, 2005). Yet the policy also presents opportunities to alter school power structures.

A political perspective does not go far enough, however, in understanding how the values of individuals intersect in district policy. To better understand both the variances and the opportunities of community values in diverse neighborhoods within the district, we rely on Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) social ecology framework. In many ways the success of education at both an individual and societal levels is based on what Bronfenbrenner described as the linkages between these systems—the ability for individuals to recognize and act on information across these different, sometimes competing systems. Stronger linkages between local activity settings and social systems leads to increased social capital among stakeholders, allowing individuals within a community to better advocate for their individual needs within the context of a common mission such as educating children (Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 2001). We see linkages between different ecological systems (e.g., neighborhoods, schools, boards of education, state and federal policy makers) being affected by the values various stakeholders hold for public education. Research by Narayan (1999) suggests that success in implementing new ideas and services in marginal communities is dependent on understanding the inherent difficulties in these linkages.

Community linkages are also important as we look toward how school governance, school decision making, and school policy can better represent constituent values. We consider the role citizens and local leaders play in bridging the values of constituents with the policies and practices of schools. Marshall (2004) contends that the power citizens have to make change within their neighborhoods depends on the context of their environment and whether they have access to decision making. The idea that those with resources create a partnership with citizens in need is similar to what Woolcock and Narayan (2000) term synergistic capital, although these authors focus on the role of community-based organizations and nongovernmental organizations. In other words, those actors who have the power and influence provide the resources and support for citizens to make the changes that will better meet their needs. Synergistic social capital centers on providing institutional resources to empower citizens.

Malen and Cochran (2008) point out that in the micropolitics of schools, school leadership tends to “avoid, suppress, or contain conflict and to protect established interests” (p. 168). Therefore, if we are to better meet the needs of all students, it is vital to understand how constituent values and school policies align and the potential for effecting positive change within a school community.

Data and Method

To understand the values that citizens hold for public education, we embarked on a study of three distinct neighborhoods in a city in which a large portion of students enroll in charter schools. The average household income for the city is US$29,514. The average house value is US$126,487. About half of the residents of the city (52%) are White, 43% are Black, and 1.6% are Hispanic. The three neighborhoods selected for this study included what we call Eastside, an impoverished neighborhood on the city’s east side, in which 36% of the population is living below the poverty level. The median income for the neighborhood is US$21,672. Most of the residents in the neighborhood do not have a college education, and many residents have not completed high school.¹ Racial make-up of the neighborhood is 89% White, 5% Black, and 3% Hispanic.

The second school community, we call Twin Rivers, bridged two distinct neighborhoods, including an area where many of the city’s middle-class professionals live and a traditional, blue-collar neighborhood with many retirees. The professional neighborhood has an average household income of US$48,603, compared with the neighboring community, which has an average household income of US$28,508. Residents living below the poverty level in the neighborhood amount to 4.3% of the population, compared with 9% next door. The average home value in the professional neighborhood is US$191,508, compared with US$141,825 in the neighboring community. The majority of adults in the professional neighborhood have a high school and college education, including a large portion with professional degrees. Most of the residents in the neighboring community have a high school diploma, but few have a college education. Racial make-up in the area is 80% White, 15% Black, and 2% Hispanic for the professional neighborhood, and 95% White, 2% Black, and 2% Hispanic for the neighboring community.

The third school site in the study was in an upper-middle-class suburb of the city, just outside the inner city, we call Hillside. Median household income for this neighborhood is US$45,000, with 28% earning between US$50,000 and US$75,000. The percentage of residents living below poverty level is 3.2. The neighborhood is 95% White, with 1.7% African American.

We used an ethnographic focus group methodology (Schensul & LeCompte, 1999) to better understand respondents’ values regarding public schools, particularly in relation to the cultures of their neighborhoods. Each focus group had between 9 and 12 participants who were recruited through fliers at the schools and through a snowball method of asking participants who else might be interested in attending. Included in the focus groups were parent and nonparent residents, community leaders, teachers, and school leaders.

The three focus groups were taped and transcribed. Our team of researchers employed group discussion and research memos to increase reliability (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998; Miles & Huberman, 1994). As we could not be “blind” in our coding, we employed “formal, systematic monitoring of self” as a way to manage subjective interpretations (Peshkin, 1988). We also coded as a team and individually to ensure internal validity, and we regularly asked each other to return to the data themselves for direction, to acknowledge the lens through which we saw the data, and to assume different perspectives (Fine, Weis, Weseen, & Wong, 2000).

To code the transcripts, we conducted a “contextual analysis” (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986) in which we read the transcripts multiple times together and independently to develop coding categories of issues of politics and power; organizational engagement; community engagement; value congruence (between community and school policies and practices); and value dissonance (between community and school policies and practices). We established evidentiary warrants (Erickson, 1986) for the assertions we made by repeatedly reviewing the transcripts to test validity of our assumptions, seeking both affirming and disconfirming evidence.

We examined constituent values in relation to the individual respondent’s particular position (i.e., parent, teacher, administrator, business representation, taxpayer) as well as to the collective community response to better understand the political and social capital dimensions of this research. The analysis of data includes several layers of coding: an examination of values within each of the neighborhood focus groups; an examination of values across the different neighborhood focus groups; an examination of values by position within each of the focus groups; and an examination of values by position across focus groups. Finally, our analysis includes an examination of relevant school policy in relation to stakeholders’ interests.

Limitations

The focus group methodology allowed for in-depth discussion of community values and school policies and practices, but we recognize focus group research is limited to a small number of participants in a small number of focus groups. We attempted to populate the focus groups with a variety of stakeholders to capture multiple perspectives, but we recognize not all community voices are represented in these focus groups. However, given the limitations, we did find interesting and important differences in values across the three communities. These differences suggest that community values play a role in the support and engagement of citizens in their local schools and the type of school policies communities embrace.

Findings

Our research unearthed both the policies that affected the education of local neighborhood youth and the values of the neighborhood in relation to those policies.

The Policies

There are several policies that affected the education of students in the neighborhoods. The Eastside neighborhood seemed most affected by the district’s busing policy, the state charter school policy, and the district’s interest in establishing neighborhood schools. Choice policy also affected Twin Rivers, and the testing and standards expectations of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) affected all three neighborhoods, although participants in the mixed school community and the suburban school community spoke more frequently about NCLB.

Since 1972 when the state Supreme Court ordered the district to desegregate its schools, the majority of children in the district did not attend a neighborhood school. Most children were bused to schools outside of their neighborhood to better integrate all of the schools within the city. The district countered the busing policy with a school choice policy that offered parents an opportunity to apply for enrollment in district magnet schools. As 30 years of the desegregation order was coming to an end, the district was looking to make a change in its busing policy, developing a series of neighborhood schools within the city. One of the neighborhoods targeted for a neighborhood school was Eastside.

The state’s charter school policy also was an important policy in some of these neighborhoods. The charter school policy allows interested parties to develop alternatives to public district schools, provided they develop an acceptable plan, a governing board, and are sponsored by an appropriate sponsoring organization. In this particular city, business and community leaders were looking at the charter school policy as a way to provide educational choice to parents who were leaving the city for other options. Today, nearly 30% of public school students in the city are enrolled in charter schools.

Finally, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, a policy that requires schools to show academic excellence through regular testing and accountability measures, emerged as a policy of importance in some of the focus groups. NCLB has had an effect on the values placed on schooling in some neighborhoods. The policy also contributed to issues related to student mobility and school choice through its provision to allow students from “failing schools” to move to other schools within the district.

Community Values

We saw differences in the values across focus groups, which corresponded to various responses to school policies.

Eastside

The Eastside focus group consisted of 12 participants ranging from community leaders (3), senior citizens (2), parents (3), former parents (2), and teachers (2) in the school. The group was made up of 6 women and 6 men. Given the ethnic make-up of the community, there was little ethnic diversity and no racial diversity represented. All participants were White.

Participants were unanimous in their expressions of importance for certain aspects of schooling. For example, all of the participants discussed health and safety in schooling as important in the impoverished Eastside neighborhood community. All participants also spoke about the value of a reciprocal relationship between the school and the neighborhood, with the four parents in the group articulating the importance of being involved in their children’s education, and two residents who did not have children discussed the value of the school being active in the community. Whereas the three community leaders in the group discussed the need to raise test scores and reading levels in the neighborhood school and to meet proficiency standards, the other participants expressed less interest in the pressures of NCLB than the district’s busing policy, the charter school policy, and the move toward neighborhood schools. The following exchange among parents in the focus group exemplifies the safety concerns participants had related to busing students to various schools.

Parent 1:

(The school district) decides where they want the children picked up by the buses, and we set these kids out on the street corners all throughout the community . . .

Parent 2:

At 6:00 in the morning.

Parent 1:

. . . and the district doesn’t know that there is a sexual offender that lives in the house right where they got their bus stop. It’s not within a thousand feet of a school so they can live anywhere they want and the school board doesn’t know that there’s a sexual offender lives in that house that’s looking out the window every morning at the little kids waiting there. And the same way with drug houses. They don’t know that’s a drug house and have you ever tried to get (the district) to change a bus stop?

Parent 2:

What about the kids who have to walk and don’t get buses?

Parent 1:

One of the things about a neighborhood school is they don’t have to be set out at that street corner at 6 in the morning and that is what drives a lot of parents to you know (leave the district).

The respondents in this neighborhood appear to put a high value on the school–community relationship. Six of the respondents noted that the lack of relationships with the community was the cause of dissatisfaction with the district schools. As one parent commented,

You know, I am not a perfect parent, but when it comes to my kids I am very involved. I want to know what I can do to help my child. He is with you during the day. What can I do to help him at night. I never had that (in his former school). Here I walk through the door and Miss X knows me. You know, the teachers say this is what we need to do together.

The initiative to develop a neighborhood charter school was led by a community service director, a city employee who was assigned to the neighborhood to help raise the quality of living for the residents there. To assess the need in the neighborhood, the director had her staff survey the residents. What she found was an interest in focusing on the children.

Everybody is very poor here and very uneducated. About one third of the folks in the neighborhood do not even have a high school graduation, which corresponds to the poverty rate and underemployment rate. So we began to have a sense of who we were and our job was to help break the cycle of poverty and when it dawned on us that the fifth graders couldn’t read then we said this has got to change.

Although community leaders used an academic rationale (i.e., low reading levels of neighborhood students) to push for a district charter school in the neighborhood, the values that stakeholders expressed for the school had less to do with academic achievement than with the health and well-being of the students and the development of community within the neighborhood. As one of the teachers in the community school responded,

I think that the dissatisfaction that parents feel and community feel is a total lack of control of anything that has to do with their child’s education. That’s why they make a choice to move to a charter school because at a charter school you are a customer at a charter school and your children are a product of that customer relationship.

Community leaders’ were not successful at first in convincing the district of the need to develop a district charter school so they began working with neighborhood residents to design and develop an independent charter school that would better attend to the values and interests of the residents. After 4 years, the district and charter school came to an agreement, and the school now operates as a district magnate school with its own governance structure and advisory council. The service director put it this way:

It’s a flat structure in which the school community is made up of kids, parents, faculty, administration and board. And it’s just a very open collaborative model with the core of it as what’s best for kids. And it’s real local. That’s how communities function.

The district built a new building in the neighborhood to house the school, and a year after merging with the district, residents in the focus group reported satisfaction with the new school. Parents took pride in the “family” culture of the new school, the school’s attention to teaching students to be respectful and kind, a focus on giving back to the community, and the school’s treatment of both the students and parents as individuals. For example, one parent said, “I have never felt more comfortable at a school, I walk through that door everyday. Everybody knows me, knows my kids. They include me in everything.”

Residents without children in the schools discussed the school’s efforts to bring community into the school and to teach the students to respect the community in which they live. Said one teacher about an early community discussion about the goals of the school:

It wasn’t about (having) “A” students go to Harvard. It wasn’t about, you know, the best academic kids that we could generate. It was about creating the best person leaving the school who had the ability to solve problems, had the ability to stand on their own two feet.

There is also evidence that the engagement of citizens in developing a neighborhood school has helped to develop social capital in the neighborhood for both parent and nonparent engagement in the schools, creating a community power structure in a school community where in the past few residents had a voice. There remain questions as to whether the new power structure can be sustained in the midst of district policies and practices, but after a year within the district, evidence suggests the neighborhood’s voice in decision-making remains strong.

Two Rivers

The Two Rivers focus group was the smallest of the focus groups, with 9 participants. All of the participants were women, primarily White, although the school principal was African American. The women’s ages varied from mid-20s to late 60s. Focus group respondents represented both of the Two Rivers neighborhoods.

One of the challenges the school principal noted in working with this mixed community was that very few people from the professional and retiree communities interacted with the school, and it is hard to get community participation in school events and activities. The focus group participants noted that the school also has a difficult time garnering support for millage campaigns.

There appeared to be a value placed on neighborhood schools in this community not only for creating a consistency in schooling but also to create a level of support and engagement of the community in schools. District policies like busing and school choice were seen as policies that “break up” the neighborhood, although three of the younger, wealthier parents alluded to the value of being able to choose a school for their children. Participants also addressed NCLB as a policy that focuses on “scores” over “skills,” creating a dissonance of values with the community.

Busing

A retiree in the neighborhood recalled sending her children to the neighborhood school.

My children were in 4th and 6th grades and bussing was mandated in the city. At that point that’s when the neighborhood concept switched. But, when I went to school, it was a neighborhood school and my kids went to the same school that I went to. But then when they reached 4th and 6th, that is when busing started and that split it up.

She explained that neighborhood schools meant the school was “in the middle of your neighborhood, and everyone walked to school. Everyone was pretty much the same economic background, ethnic background and just where that neighborhood school was.”

A teacher in the group identified the difficulty in getting parents to volunteer and engage with the school when families come from a variety of neighborhoods and have children in various schools.

I have so many kids in the room every year whose siblings go to all different schools and it’s different bell times and you know, parents, some of them don’t have cars and whatnot. It is difficult for them to come up here and be involved and get to know them. They have kids at different schools, so it’s tricky.

The church pastor indicated a value around having a common space for neighborhood students, although she identified a value of equity throughout the district. The two appeared in conflict as she discussed them:

I like the idea of a neighborhood school because I think we need a sense of place. As a pastor, I am responsible to a parish. That’s why we are involved with this school because it is in our parish and ultimately it doesn’t matter where kids come from, they’re here, and we have a responsibility to that. But we need that sense of place. We have lost that in so many ways. But how are you supposed to provide any kind of positive outcome for the whole of (the district) when you have such disparity in resources whether it is monetary or parental or whatever.

School choice

While several participants discussed the value of neighborhood schools and of students learning to be part of a local community, respondents also expressed a value for school choice. Two parents from the wealthier neighborhood discussed their use of the choice policy. One said that while she went to the neighborhood school, her children now attend the district’s art school, a magnet program. Another talked about the fact that she was bumped from the neighborhood school because of the stipulation in NCLB that students from “failing schools” can choose another school in the district to attend. She contested and by using the threat of exit, managed to get her children back into her school of choice, which happened to be the local neighborhood school. She explained,

We live right across the street, and we were not allowed to come here because they were already full. I was there the first day of registration, the first one in line, and was told they’re full. What has come about because of NCLB and some of the other things is that if other kids that are in a school that’s maybe not doing as well, they have that choice to come here. So (the school) bumped me, me living right in the neighborhood from having my child go here. So, we had to go to another school, and I can honestly say we were less than thrilled with it. And the only way that we got our kids back into this school, I finally after many meetings, I had to say here it is, we either get in next year, both my kids, or we are going to send them to private school, and then we were finally approved.

One parent made the choice to move back to the neighborhood and enroll her children in the district school.

We made the choice to give it a try, you know, let’s don’t give in to what all of these stereotypes are and let’s go. And we got to (this school) and it was (the city’s) little best kept secret. And it was really wonderful. As we started going through the school, we realized there were so many more things they were getting rather than just an education. They were getting exposure, culture. Things that other kids were not getting at other schools. They were seeing the other side of the coin. They were seeing kids who had less than them. They were learning about doing things to help somebody, somebody that didn’t have something. The more that happened, the more we decided to stay.

The school principal observed that parental choice is popular in the district in part because it offers a sense of control over the safety and well-being of their children.

When parents are asking me about my school and what happens at my school, they are not necessarily just concerned with what are my test scores. Parents are concerned, are the kids safe, are their kids treated with respect when they come into the school, you know what I mean. Unfortunately, with NCLB and giving parents all of this choice . . . it’s like going to the Country Buffet, too many choices. Every difficult situation doesn’t mean run to another school. You know if you don’t stay and really find out what the problem is, you can go to that (new) school and end up with the same problem. Often times, you get a whole lot of kids who have gone to private school and had a bad experience and they came back because you’re not going to pay for a bad experience. Even the poorest most disadvantaged parent wants certain things from their school or for their child. (They want) the school to be safe and to go somewhere where people like them and want them to come back. And when they walk in, the people are happy to see them when they walk in.

Community support

There was a consensus in the focus group that many of the families in the wealthier part of the neighborhood send their children to private schools. These parents along with the professionals who do not have children and the retirees have very little connection, if any, to the neighborhood school. The school principal and several of the neighbors indicated this is a problem when it comes to supporting the school either as volunteers or as voters. Said one parent, “I have seen signs in neighborhood yards that say, ‘Vote no on the levy.’ I mean they make their own signs and put them in the yard. They are private school families that I know that live in the houses.”

One of the parents from the wealthier part of the community indicated that part of the antitax sentiment has to do with a perception of waste and inefficiency in the district.

I think in this particular district there has been a history of what the taxpayers may view as bad decisions on the part of the school board. For example, when one superintendent left there was a large severance. I know there were a couple buildings purchased downtown and the taxpayers saw that and they thought what in the world am I paying all these high taxes for. The district isn’t using the money the way it should be used. So I think in this community, there is a perception of waste or poor decision making.

NCLB

Dissonance between school policy and community values was evident when respondents discussed NCLB. One parent noted the difference between “skills” and “scores.”

From the parent perspective, I don’t look at it as math skills. I look at it as math scores. Reading scores. To me, NCLB equates to scores, not skills. I think it is a hard choice to make because I think NCLB is well intended but the way it is put together, the way it is implemented, I think there is too much pressure that goes back on the schools to achieve those scores and then the penalties that come with it if you don’t.

She continued to note her value for a sense of community and belonging:

I just think what motivation does a child have for high achievement if there is nothing to achieve for? The community is the grounding for that, the culture is, I think in a large part is what shapes that motivation then to achieve. I would much rather my child be well rounded and I think the achievement will come out of that.

Hillside

The Hillside focus group consisted of 12 participants, all White. Participating were 9 women and 3 men. Included in the group were the school principal, a district representative, two senior citizens, a pastor, and seven parents.

All of the respondents from the Hillside focus group expressed pride and satisfaction with their neighborhood school. The values they identified were similar to those in the other communities, but here there appeared to be more value alignment in with NCLB. Many respondents indicated both pride in the school’s high achievement status on state standards and expectation that the school and district will continue to be seen as academically excellent. Seven of the 12 respondents spoke specifically about their expectations for excellence. Those respondents included district and school representatives, retirees, and several parents. There appeared to be little connection to school choice policies because respondents indicated that families in this school do not leave the school. Respondents also expressed value in maintaining the “Hillside way” as demographics in the district and their school community began to change.

NCLB

Unlike respondents in the other two communities in our study, Hillside respondents expressed value alignment with the goals and practices of NCLB. There was consensus among respondents that the expectation among parents is that the school and district will be rated highly, and if that expectation is not met, parents and residents in this district express their dissatisfaction and push on the administrators and teachers to do better. The district representative in the group described a fall in the district rating that surprised the district and community.

We were slapped this year with our report card rating. (We) would have had an excellent with distinction rating but our ESOL kids did not meet AYP and we are in continuous improvement so we have got to look at what we are going to do for our student so they are achieving, but not at the expenses of the other 97% of kids who do great on the tests.

The school principal also commented, “We feel bad. We feel like we have let (the community) down. It is hard. In so many ways we did better that we have ever done before.”

Several parent respondents said they were “upset” with the news. One of the parents described his reaction to the school rating:

From my perspective as a parent, I called the superintendent’s office talked to him and asked him about that and was then educated on why our rating was what it was. And I felt the leadership was there, and there was a plan that was going to be put in place to correct that, so I was ok with it. I know what we have here. And from my perspective, it is a test of the leadership.

The Hillside way

Eight of the respondents in the focus group talked about the “Hillside way” and the importance of maintaining a “standard” of behavior as the demographics of the suburb change. A father of a high school student put it this way:

We kept a log of former Dayton students that come through the apartment complex. It’s something, I want to say this right. I am not politically correct. They didn’t come from a Hillside-type home but it’s like they had no idea stealing was wrong. That is a big deal and they never picked that up at school; that is one of those moral issues.

Said another parent,

I also believe that Hillside has made an effort to correct that by bringing counselors into the school, not school counselors but you know, private counselors. The counselors of the school work closely with the south community. When they see there is an issue developing they don’t wait ‘til it’s too late. They get on it and they try to come up with a solution for it quickly.

The school principal noted that there is a lot of agency collaboration across Hillside to serve Hillside students, and although the economic diversity in the district is relatively new, she does not see the quality of the district declining.

What I love about Hillside is every person who moves here whether they are living in the Chimneys subsidized housing or in million dollar homes, they work together. We take care of our own. There are projects and programs, and there are things that go on within our schools to take care of our own and in our community to take care of our own. That is why I feel confident that Hillside will never go the way of some first ring suburbs that experience a change in quality.

One of the teachers commented on the economic diversity in the district and noted that helping the low-income families in the district requires greater cultural understanding. “We have a lot of Hillside parents that are faced with the same (economic) issue, but Hillside (schools) have the clothing room and they are really trying. You are looking at a whole other culture.”

Among focus group participants, there was a strong sense that there is a set of values shared by residents that set the standard for any new members coming into the community. Respondents said these values center on ideas of safety, discipline, and respect. Several parent respondents also noted that there is an expectation that teachers will respect students. Said one mother, “One thing we always ask at every parent teacher conference is about showing respect. And it’s really big, because if you give respect to our kids you are going to get it back. The teachers show respect.”

The value around safety was shared among focus group participants, although one parent, a newcomer to the community, expressed interest in tighter security. The school respondents and other community members talked about the effectiveness of the school’s practice of “heightened awareness,” in which teachers, administrators, and other parents keep an eye out for strangers in and around the building. Three of the parents talked about how they “got in trouble” with the school for not checking in with the office when they were in the building. A pastor whose church is across the street also noted that he was reported to the police for standing outside the school when he was checking on some commotion in the neighborhood.

School–community relationship

Whereas the parent expectations appear high for the district, the support the district receives from the community also appears high. Respondents suggested that the support from the community is in response to the district’s efforts at relationship building with the Hillside community. One of the parents commented on the strong support senior citizens give to the schools.

Even the senior citizens want our schools to be good in Hillside. I know the school system has tried to help the senior citizens. Like my dad gets a free pass to the home games and he goes. That is a real benefit to them. That makes them feel like part of the community.

When the district built a new school recently, the district representative said the district made a promise to the community that the new school would serve the entire community, including the local parochial schools, and that the money from the bond issue would also be used to renovate other buildings in the district.

All of the focus group respondents in this community appeared to place value on the community-nature of the school, the support it receives from the community, and the engagement of neighborhood residents in school activities. A district-level employee put it this way: “People feel comfortable coming to the activities. You can’t find a parking space around here. Grandparents day, good grief, you might as well walk even if you live a couple miles away.”

A retired neighbor who does not have children in school noted the value placed on the school–community relationship extends beyond the school and neighborhood. Officials from the city of Hillside have created initiatives to bring people closer together.

(In) 2000, they tried to do a better focus and said the school is the center of your little part of Hillside. They got the churches involved and it was kind of a gigantic master plan. It worked for a lot of little reasons. The mayor at the time pushed that big time. The idea was fantastic. Keep the kids walking through the park at night. In the (high school) area, we have the chimneys and the section 8 apartment complexes and that was to draw them in. And it has been kind of successful in that light.

Discussion

This article presents findings from focus groups in three school communities. Values among the three school communities varied across context. In addition, relationships between school representatives, parents, and community members appeared different according to context. These relationships aligned to what Malen and Cochran (2008) found in their recent literature review on the micropolitics of education. In particular, parents and community members who have the highest social capital use their capital to ensure their expectations for education are met. In Two Rivers, we heard how parents from the wealthier community were able to secure their choices for their children’s education, in part by using the threat of exit (Hirschman, 1970). In Hillside, where there was a high level of social capital among parents, there was a strong sense that school administrators and educators were working to satisfy community expectations, and when those expectations were not met, community members used their social capital to voice concerns. Hillside also had the strongest school–community partnerships, similar to what Marshall (2004) termed coproduction.

Those power relationships looked different in the Eastside community, where social capital among parents was much lower. In the Eastside community, it took the leadership of community activists and a community service director to organize and empower citizens to create a better life for themselves and their children. The use of agency resources to empower students is similar to Woolcock and Narayan’s (2000) notions of synergistic capital.

In relation to school policies, we saw more value congruence where there was greater social capital among community members. In the Eastside community, the dissonance between district policies and community values (i.e., busing and NCLB) led community leaders to use the state’s charter school policy to make change, to build social capital among the neighborhood residents, and to eventually redefine the political relationships between the neighborhood community and the school district. The group’s ability to not only create a new school but also merge that school with the district under a new governance arrangements suggests that political structures and relationships can be restructured if there is the right mix of resources, relationships, and community leadership (Woolcock & Narayan, 2000).

In the Two Rivers community, we saw evidence of the dissonance between the values of the various community sectors and the school. School policies such as busing and the choice provisions under NCLB created a disconnect between the residents and the school. Furthermore, the principal noted that challenges of educating students whose parents are in and out of school as a result of the choice and exit options. As the principal suggested, continuous use of exit and choice may not lead to satisfaction if the issues of dissatisfaction are not addressed (Hirschman, 1970). In the Hillside community, we saw value alignment among respondents with NCLB’s message of high academic achievement, or at least high ratings. Competition from charter schools did not appear to be an issue in Hillside, although the district representative indicated there was a large portion of students in the community who attended parochial schools. Yet respondents discussed the choice to attend parochial schools as a value based in religion, not as an indication of dissatisfaction with the district.

In each community, we saw slightly different values related to the concept of neighborhood schools. In Eastside, the values of having a neighborhood school seemed to center on the idea that the parents and community members who needed support were best served from a system of neighborhood services. There was also evidence that the neighborhood residents felt that stronger relationships could be developed between the neighborhood and the school if the school served students from the immediate neighborhood and not students from across the city. In Two Rivers, there was a mix of values related to students attending a neighborhood school and the ability of parents to choose the right school for the student. In one case, we heard about a parent who chose the neighborhood school because it was a good school. Had the school not been considered to be a good school, the parent’s choice likely would have been different. The Hillside respondents expressed the strongest sense of a local identity when they discussed the changes in the areas demographics and the need to educate new families on the standards and values of the Hillside community, or the “Hillside Way.”

Conclusion

As school choice continues to prevail in communities and as socioeconomic changes continue to affect the demographics in school communities, it is important to consider how school leaders and community members can develop the kinds of relationships that will create the structures and support necessary for student growth and development for all students in a community. This research raises the following questions:

How can community’s values be better aligned with school policies to best support student learning? How can long-standing community values shift to accommodate values and needs of new communities?

What is the role of school and community leaders in fostering greater social capital among citizens, particularly those who are disenfranchised from institutions like schools?

How can neighborhood schools be developed in a way that fosters equity in education?

What are the distinctions between coproduction and synergistic capital, and how might these distinctions serve different communities?

How might dissonance between policies and values be reconciled to create more voice in schools and less exit?

This study has helped us identify cultural gaps in what citizens, parents, educators, and policy makers value around public education. More broadly, this work contributes to decision-making practices and policies that help educators and policy makers better meet the needs of the people they serve.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Ann Allen, PhD, is an assistant professor in the School of Educational Policy and Leadership at The Ohio State University, Columbus, United States. Her research interests include the politics of education, educational policy, school governance, and school–community relationships.

Michael Glassman is associate professor of child development in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at The Ohio State University. His research has focused primarily on educational theory, including development of democratic education and integration of Web 2.0 into the classroom.

Lisa Riegel is a doctoral student in the School of Educational Policy and Leadership at The Ohio State University. Her research interests include teacher induction, academic optimism, and school–community relationships.

Heather Dawson is a PhD candidate in the School of Educational Policy and Leadership at The Ohio State University. Her research interests include the intersection of education policy and motivation for teachers and students.

References

Belenky

Clinchy

Goldberger

Tarule

(1986). Womens’ ways of knowing: The development of self, voice, and mind. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Berkman

M. B.

Plutzer

(2005). Ten thousand democracies: Politics and public opinion in America’s school districts. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Bjork

Lindle

(2001). Superintendents and interest groups. Educational Policy, 15(1), 76-91.

Bronfenbrenner

(1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Buckley

Schneider

(2007). Charter schools: Hope or hype? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Coleman

(1988, January). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94(1), 95-120.

Denzin

N. K.

Lincoln

Y. S.

(1998). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Erickson

(1986). Qualitative methods in research on teaching. In Wittrock

M. C.

(Ed.), Handbook on research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 119-161). New York, NY: Macmillan.

Fine

Weis

Weseen

Wong

(2000). For whom? Qualitative research, representations and social responsibilities. In Denzin

Lincoln

(Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research (pp. 107-132). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

10.

Gutmann

(1987). Democratic education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

11.

Hirschman

A. O.

(1970). Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations and states. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

12.

Institute on Race and Poverty. (2008). Failed promises: Assessing charter schools in the twin cities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Law School. Retrieved from http://www.irpumn.org/uls/resources/projects/2_Charter_Report_Final.pdf

13.

Labaree

D. F.

(1997). Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34(1), 39-81.

14.

Malen

Cochran

M. V.

(2008). Beyond pluralistic patterns of power: Research on the micropolitics of schools. In Cooper

B. S.

Cibulka

J. G.

Fusarelli

L. D.

(Eds.), Handbook of education politics and policy (pp. 148-178). New York, NY: Routledge.

15.

Marshall

(2004). Citizen participation and the neighborhood context: A new look at the coproduction of local public schools. Political Research Quarterly, 57, 231-244.

16.

Miles

M. B.

Huberman

A. M.

(1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

17.

Narayan

(1999). Bonds and bridges: Social capital and poverty (Policy Research Working Paper No. 2167). Washington, DC: The World Bank.

18.

Peshkin

(1988, October). In search of subjectivity—One’s own. Educational Researcher,17-21.

19.

Putnam

(2001). Bowling alone. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

20.

Renzulli

L. A.

Evans

(2005). School choice, charter schools, and White flight. Social Problems, 52, 398-418.

21.

Saris

W. E.

Sniderman

P. M.

(2004). Studies in public opinion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

22.

Schensul

J. J.

LeCompte

M. D.

(1999). The ethnographer’s toolkit. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

23.

Schwartz

S. H.

Bilsky

(1990). Toward a theory of universal content and structure of values: Extensions and cross-cultural replications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 878-891.

24.

Woolcock

Narayan

(2000). Social capital: Implications for development theory, research, and policy. World Bank Research Observer,15, 225-249.