“You’re Not Going to Call the Shots”

Abstract

Researchers and policy makers overwhelmingly stress the harmonious nature of parent involvement. Researchers have focused on individual forms of parent involvement, yet collective efforts of parents in parent-teacher organizations (PTOs) are a key dynamic in schools. Drawing on a case study of an elementary school in an upper-middle-class community, we show that very high levels of parent involvement led to many conflicts. There were three main sources of these routine conflicts. Parents and educators had different priorities—parents favored a warm, friendly, and nonbureaucratic environment while the principal favored an orderly, safe, and bureaucratic environment. There were battles over authority, particularly over the planning of events. And finally, the PTO was a volunteer organization with high levels of turnover, weak lines of communication, and minimal training. This case study suggests the need to reconceptualize our models of family involvement in schooling.

Keywords

family school middle class parent involvement parent participation principal PTA

Sociology of education has seen a significant growth in the amount of attention devoted to parent involvement in schooling. A large body of research links children’s academic performance to parental involvement in schooling (Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler 1997; Henderson 1987 for a review). Also, a plethora of policy measures are aimed at increasing parental involvement on school grounds (Epstein 2005; Lake and Billingsley 2000). By focusing on the individual-level benefits of parental involvement, these research and policy efforts have underemphasized two key aspects of parents’ role in schooling: parents’ collective involvement (i.e., through participation in parent organizations) and the structural conflict that such collective involvement can create between parents and administrators.

In this article, we use data from a qualitative study of one elementary school in an affluent suburb of a large northeastern city. The school, Oak Park Elementary, has a very active Parent-Teacher Organization (hereafter PTO). We show that there were many conflicts between parents active in the PTO and the school administrator.¹ There were conflicts over decisions about how the school would be run, including the level of friendliness of the school staff, the organization of recesses, and the character of fundraising projects. These decisions, seemingly minor, affected all students and sometimes school staff members.

In this article we suggest that conflicts between groups of parents and administrators are common and, more importantly, that these conflicts are collective. The conflicts we observed often developed during the planning and execution of PTO events. The conflicts did not appear to be tied to the personalities of administrators or idiosyncratic concerns of individual parents. Instead, they were patterned, repetitive, and hence structural in nature. These conflicts were linked to the position of the principal in the school, on the one hand, and the position of parents (i.e., as volunteers) on the other. We highlight three types of conflicts. First, the dependency of the PTO on the principal, as well as the multiple steps in the development of PTO events, created opportunities for conflict. Second, PTO members and the principal disagreed over who had the authority to decide key aspects of PTO events. Third, while parents and administrators had some shared general goals, they often had different priorities. All in all, we observed frequent conflict between PTO parents and the principal. Since the principal was adamant that the PTO leaders would not “run” the school, the principal devoted significant time and energy to negotiating with the PTO.

Literature Review

The study of parent involvement in schooling has proliferated, yet it has developed unevenly. We find limitations in the literature in three ways.

First, most of the studies remain focused on understanding the contribution that individual parents can have on their child’s academic performance. Parent involvement in the home, helping with homework, language interactions, and conversations with children about schoolwork have been associated with improvements in children’s academic performance (Epstein and Sanders 2000; McNeal 2001; Senechal and LeFevre 2002). Although parent-teacher groups have long had a strong presence in schools, research on schools has not sufficiently developed the role that parent groups play in shaping the daily life of schools and the work of school administrators. There is evidence that early in their history, fundraising was an important function of parent groups (Cutler 2000). Also, some early (male) school administrators banned parent-teacher groups from participating in fundraising because of their fear it would put too much power in the hands of parents (Woyshner 2003). Today, fundraising remains an important part of the work of parent groups (Addonozio 2000; Brunner and Imazeki 2004). Parents produce many highly ritualized school events, including spring fairs, book sales, and cultural assemblies (Wells 2002). Unlike parent involvement in the home, PTO activities are often nonacademic and tend to involve the entire school community. These collective PTO activities, such as gift-wrap fundraisers, extracurricular activities, and petitions, have been downplayed even though these activities serve an important function in some schools. Organizing these activities is part of the core mission of PTOs and comprises the majority of their efforts. These activities also raise the possibility of conflicts between parent volunteers and the administrators. For example, Lewis and Forman (2002) reveal that there was resentment when the parent-teacher organization fundraiser and the teachers’ fundraiser were scheduled at the same time of year. Overall, however, the literature in the sociology of education on the PTO has been scant.

Second, although there are certainly discussions of conflict between parents and educators (Comer and Haynes 1991; Becker 1963; Goldring and Shapira 1996; Lightfoot 1978; Swap 1993), with a few exceptions (discussed below) researchers portray these conflicts as temporary, unnecessary, and amenable to resolution through improved attention to communication (Epstein 1990; Protheroe 2006; Wanat and Zieglowsky 2010). Many—if not most—of these studies stress the possibilities for fruitful cooperation. These studies also focus on relations between parents and teachers. Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot, for example, writes “the greater the difference between family and community culture and school norms, the greater the need for parents and teachers to work hard at knowing one another” (Lightfoot 1978:189). Swap (1993) also signals an awareness of conflicts between parents and educators; she stressed that a true “partnership” is rare. But Swap is also optimistic that careful communication and program intervention can dissipate tensions. Similarly, a number of scholars discuss the barriers and misunderstandings that arise (Comer and Haynes 1991; Epstein 1995). They are aware of conflict as an important dimension of parent involvement in school. Nevertheless, these researchers and practitioners suggest that with training, effort, and policy interventions, conflicts between parents and teachers can be ameliorated. Waller’s (1932) fundamental insight portraying parents and teachers to be “natural enemies” due to the particularistic concerns of parents and the universalistic priorities of teachers is not a common theme in the literature. Waller’s point is that the conflicts are patterned, repetitive, and inevitable, or, put differently, structural. To be sure, Lareau ([1989] 2000) also identifies deep divisions between parents and teachers. Fine (1993) stresses conflicts between educational groups, pointing to the disproportionate power of the main office. But these works are relatively unusual.

Structural conflicts between principals and groups of parents have also received limited attention, particularly in terms of understanding the concerns of groups of parents as they seek to challenge school policies. A number of studies in the arena of principal leadership have sought to illustrate the challenges principals face; management of parents is one important task. Indeed, in a series of studies, Ellen Goldring (1993, 1996) has documented principals’ work with parents. She finds that schools where principals do not “survive” are characterized by “disagreement about the areas and boundaries of parent involvement” (Goldring 1996:351). These studies shed less light on the perspective of middle-class parents. Studies of conflicts between groups of parents and administrators that illuminate the concerns of parents and administrators are rare (Martinez-Cosio 2010) or dated (Rubin 1972).² Nor has there been sufficient attention to how the routine functioning of the PTO can create repeated opportunities for conflict with the principal.

Third, the focus on social class differences in parent involvement, particularly collective forms of parent involvement, is also incomplete. Considerable attention has been devoted to showing class and race differences in parents’ participation in schooling (Brantlinger 2003; Diamond 2000; Diamond and Gomez 2004; Griffith and Smith 2004; Lareau [1989] 2000; Reay 1998; Lareau 1987; Valdes 1996).³ Some researchers have suggested that parent involvement reproduces social inequality across families (Lareau [1989] 2000; Lareau and Shumar 1996; McGrath and Kuriloff 1999). As a result of this class difference in the frequency of parents’ participation, numerous studies have sought to develop programs to increase parent involvement in schooling (Comer and Haynes 1991; Epstein 1995, 2005; Warren et al. 2009). While there are certainly signs that middle-class parents have a forceful presence in schools, most of the attention has focused on middle-class parents seeking to improve the educational experience of their own children (Demerath 2009). These studies focus on conflicts over educational matters (see McGrath and Kuriloff 1999; Lareau [1989] 2000, 2011), which can be contentious and marked by disrespect. In a study of five teachers in Israel, Addi-Raccah and Arviv-Elyashiv (2008) point to tensions and endemic conflicts in parent-teacher relations. Studying a school with a population of affluent families, the authors suggest that teachers had an “ambivalent” relationship to parent involvement (see also Crozier 1999; Pomerantz, Moorman, and Litwack 2007). Teachers favored parent involvement but also felt “vulnerable” to parents who “scrutinized their work and encroached on their professional domain” (Addi-Raccah and Arviv-Elyashiv 2008:394). There are some signs of parents seeking to intervene in educational matters such as pressuring administrators to terminate a new teacher who was not to their liking. As one teacher reported: “Parents are not afraid. They have no inhibitions. The school is theirs. We serve them” (Addi-Raccah and Arviv-Elyashiv 2008:401). Hassrick and Schneider (2009) report that parents engage in surveillance. The literature suggests that middle-class parents express a sense of entitlement, particularly in academic matters, but there is less attention to the collective form that PTO interactions may take.

In sum, we find limitations in the literature in three ways. First, most studies have looked at parent involvement with individual children, downplaying the collective role of parents in PTOs. Second, studies have often (but not always) underestimated the enduring nature of conflicts related to parental involvement in schooling, particularly in interactions between parents and principals. Much of this literature stresses that increased communication can significantly reduce parent-principal conflict. Third, much of the literature focuses on parent involvement initiatives in low-income schools; there are fewer studies of collective parent involvement in middle-class communities.

Data and Method

Our research is based on a case study of Oak Park Elementary School and PTO (all names are pseudonyms). We draw from 24 in-depth interviews and five months of participant observation at school events held during the school day and after school hours. Interviews were conducted with the 2 superintendents that worked at the school district during the time of our observations, the school principal, and 21 parents.

This study is part of a larger study about the role of schools in parents’ decisions about where to live and parents’ level of satisfaction with their school. Since many parents mentioned the active PTO as a key feature of the school, we conducted interviews with PTO committee chairs. The first author gained entre into the elementary school after extensive negotiation with the superintendent (who declined to authorize classroom observation but permitted observation of the school and interviews). The superintendent selected the elementary school; the principal was welcoming. While observing at the school, we noted the important role that the PTO played in school activities and began interviewing parents who were actively involved in the PTO.⁴ We sent an e-mail letter to PTO committee chairs through the PTO president. We then contacted committee chairs by phone and e-mail to request interviews. In a handful of cases, parents expressed a willingness to participate, but due to scheduling difficulties, the interview never took place. No parents refused outright.

Interviews lasted about two hours and were usually conducted in people’s homes. School officials often preferred to participate in interviews in their private offices. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. We provided an honorarium of $50 to the parents who participated in the interview; we made a donation of $300 to the school. Educators were not given an honorarium. In addition, at the request of the PTO, we helped the PTO prepare an informational “welcome packet” for new parents. During interviews, we also collected information for the welcome packet.

Oak Park Elementary is located in the suburb of a northeastern city and enrolls about 500 kindergarten to fifth graders. The superintendent boasts that Kingsley is “the premier” school district in the state. He and others report that many parents move to the region because of the school district. The per-pupil expenditure is over $20,000, considerably higher than state and national averages. In addition, the PTO raises funds for the school through nearly 30 yearly fundraisers and activities. The student-to-teacher ratio is about 13 to 1. In the Kingsley school district, one-third of all households make over $150,000 a year, and the median home value is about $300,000. About 10 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, and about 20 percent of students are racial or ethnic minorities.

In 2008, we conducted participant observation at school events from February to June. We observed at school events, PTO-sponsored events, and events cosponsored by the PTO and the school. We also attended monthly PTO board meetings, which were attended by the PTO president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer. We wrote (or in rare cases dictated) detailed field notes after every observation.

About four months into our observations at the school, we began interviews with active PTO volunteers, including committee chairs and board members. By interviewing board members and parents who chaired particular events, our aim was to capture the perspectives of parents who were key leaders in the school (board members) as well as parents who were active volunteers. We interviewed 20 mothers and 1 father (see Table 1 for demographics of interviewees). The gender breakdown of our sample matches the proportion of men involved in organizing PTO activities at Oak Park. Of the 45 committees in the Oak Park PTO, one father chaired a committee and two served as co-chairs with their wives. Fathers also had important roles in a few activities, such as cooking pancakes for the pancake breakfast or scooping ice cream at an evening PTO event. Despite the significant gender imbalance in parents’ participation, we use the term parent rather than mother to be more inclusive. In addition, the role of gender in creating an imbalance in parents’ participation in children’s activities is beyond the scope of this article (for a fuller discussion of these issues, see Griffith and Smith 2004; Reay 1998).

Table 1.

Demographics of 21 PTO Committee Leaders

Employment status	Name	Education	Occupation^a	Spouse’s education	Spouse’s occupation	Household income^b	Race
Employed	Jo	College	Engineer	MA	Engineer	100-250	White
FT	Tim	MA	Engineer	College	Engineer	100-250	White
	Laura	MA	Consultant	JD	Lawyer	100-250	White
	Kim	MFA	Advertising	College	Business management	100-250	White
	Lisa	College	Teacher	JD	Lawyer	100-250	White
	Beth	MD	Physician	MD	Financial management	250+	White
	Jane	PhD	Consultant	College	Upper level management	100-250	White
Employed	Carrie	MA	Psychologist	MD	Physician	50-100	White
PT	Karen	MA	Teacher	PhD	Professor	100-250	White
	Wendy	High school	Clerical	High school	Landscaping	< 50	White
	Lynn	AA	Business owner	n/a	n/a	100-250	Black
	Joan	MA	Teacher	College	Financial management	100-250	White
	Kerry	AA	Artist	High school	Sanitation	50-100	Black
Not employed	Sally	Some college	Retail manager	Some college	Landscaping	< 50	White
	Terri	College	Advertising	College	Banker	Unknown	White
	Patty	College	Business owner	College	Consultant, self-employed	Unknown	White
	Diane	Some college	Paralegal	MBA	Marketing	100-250	White
	Susan	College	Upper level management	MD	Physician	100-250	White
	Lisa T	MBA	finance	MBA	Financial management	250+	White
	Renee	College	finance	MBA	Consulting	250+	White
	Tammy	AA	Paralegal	JD	Law firm, self-employed	250+	White

In cases where participants are not employed outside the home, the occupation refers to previous occupation.

In thousands.

We analyzed the data inductively and deductively. We began reading literature on home-school interactions and then collected data on interactions between the parent-teacher group and the school. Once themes began to emerge in the data, we refined the interview guide and began following these themes in their data collection. For example, the frequency of interaction between the PTO and the principal led us to focus on these interactions in subsequent participant observations and interviews. During data analysis we looked for themes that emerged from the interviews and field notes. Themes that appeared included reasons for volunteering, conflict with other parents, conflict with administrators, and time spent volunteering. We also looked for disconfirming evidence to challenge the themes (Miles and Huberman 1994). Field notes and interview transcripts were coded twice; they were hand-coded by the second author during data collection. A research assistant coded a subset of interviews a second time using qualitative analysis software (Atlas.ti) at the completion of data collection to check for accuracy.

A Note on Social Class

Since ethnographic studies are so labor intensive, they are often focused on one case. Ethnographers must make hard choices. In this article, we restrict our research to the case of one elementary school in a district where approximately 70 percent of residents have a BA, median income is over twice the national median income, and home prices (in 1999) averaged over $300,00. Although there was some variation in family background of the students, overall it was an upper-middle-class community. Our selection was partially linked to the pattern in the literature showing very high levels of parent involvement in middle-class communities and a dearth of parent involvement in working-class communities (Brantlinger 2003; Lareau [1989] 2000). Warren and colleagues, for example, note that in low-income urban schools, “precious few can claim large numbers of parents participating as powerful actors in the school community” (Warren et al. 2009:2210). By contrast, mothers in upper-middle-class communities often do not hesitate to intervene; they may also display a sense of entitlement in the process (Brantlinger 2003; Lareau 2011). The case of an active PTO has a conceptual advantage because it allows us to observe the collective work of parents, which might otherwise be more difficult to isolate. Indeed, according to many policy makers and educators, the energetic character of the PTO constitutes the ideal form of parent involvement programs. Still, we are aware that the amount of conflict between parents and the principal is likely to be higher in this school than other schools. We suspect that as parents are more actively involved, there are more opportunities for collective conflict. A full investigation of these issues remains outside the scope of this article.

A Case Study: Oak Park Elementary and PTO

Oak Park Elementary School is a one-story stone building bordered by an expansive grassy field; it has been recently renovated. The main doors are equipped with a camera and automatic lock that allow the office staff to view and buzz in visitors. The lobby is lined with windows and filled with natural light. A mural made of ceramic tiles spans the main entryway; it was created by school children with the help of PTO volunteers and a local artist. Animal drawings are embedded in the floor tiles of the lobby. Gleaming oak benches line the area where visitors sit and children line up for school buses at the beginning and end of each day.

Parents who visit the school are required to sign in and wear a sticky nametag labeled “VISITOR.” Two secretaries sit in the office some distance behind the counter. To talk to parents, they usually need to get up and walk to the counter. The principal’s office is at the back of the main office. Down the hall, there is a spacious library, where parents volunteer for two hours a day. The library has new carpeting, blond wooden tables, and tall bookshelves. Overall, the school is spacious, clean, and orderly.

Mrs. Linda Torres, the principal, is a petite Hispanic woman in her late 50s. She typically wore a stylish skirt suit and bright white tennis shoes. She was quick to tell parents that she was bilingual and spoke both English and Spanish. She had a quick smile and friendly face. She placed a premium on order. For example, at the beginning of student assemblies she held her right pointer finger over her lips, raised her left arm in the air and used these fingers to count to three. She looked decisively around the auditorium; the 300 children in the room quieted down. She did not yell, but she was seen as strict and unfriendly by many parents. Other parents stressed that she knew the names of all of the children. She had been at Oak Park for 10 years and has been a principal for nearly 30 years. She was scheduled to retire in the middle of the academic year after we conducted our fieldwork.

Near the entrance of the school, the PTO has its own office. The PTO office is a narrow room (about 15 feet by 6 feet) filled with sturdy shelves holding boxes of art supplies, leftover toy prizes, tablecloths, plastic ware, crayons, paper goods, oversized games, and poster board announcements for past events. The PTO has over 30 different “committees” listed in the school directory. The committees are titled after the various events headed up by the PTO (Table 2).

Table 2.

Selected PTO Activities at Oak Park School

Collating of first-day packets

Fall welcome back party

Home room parents

Library helpers

School tours for prospective parents

Bingo evenings

Pancake breakfasts

Curriculum advisors

Artist in residence

Meet-the-author

Lunch helpers

Raffle to spend time with a teacher

Book fair

Oak Park Talent show

Pizza party

Box top collection

Gift wrap sales

School garden

Garden sale

Lunch for teachers during Educator Week

Children as authors

Chess club

Movie night

Roller skating nights

Oak Park ball

Spring carnival

Teacher appreciation lunch

Through these fundraising activities, the PTO made a very large financial contribution to the school. Most years the PTO raised over $10,000 per year and had a surplus that is carried over from previous years. These funds were used to produce elaborate cultural assemblies, which brought professional musicians, actors, historians, and performers to the school. In some cases, the assemblies were coordinated with a classroom lesson. The PTO also gave about $500 to the main office to assist children from low-income families in attending school field trips and events. The PTO also purchased classrooms supplies using a “wish list” that teachers create at the beginning of the school year. In addition, every few years the PTO used a portion of their budget surplus to give a large gift to the school (e.g., previously they spent several thousand dollars on a “state-of-the-art” sound system for the auditorium). The surplus mounted to as much as $40,000.

In addition to raising money, the parents in the PTO also contributed to the school by volunteering a substantial amount of their own time to help the administrators with key school events. For example, PTO volunteers assembled the 20-something page first-day-of-school orientation packet the week before the beginning of the school year. In all these ways, the parent volunteers provided significant resources for administrators.

Findings

The Organization of the PTO: A Recipe for Conflict

In explaining aspects of parental involvement, much of the literature focuses on the characteristics of individual families (Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler 1997). Less attention has been given to the collective character of involvement, particularly the role of parent groups in schools. Previous studies have not sufficiently assessed the level of intricate coordination and communication required of parents and schools in running events and fundraisers and the opportunities for conflict that this coordination process can produce. At Oak Park Elementary, there were many instances when the structure of the PTO as a volunteer-run group collided with the more bureaucratic school.

Box Top Recess: “I Just Assumed the Teachers Would Be There”

The PTO was dependent on school administrators and staff to make events run smoothly. Events that parents planned and ran often required the involvement of school staff and the approval of the principal. For example, janitors cleaned up after events that were held on school grounds. Teachers, aides, and administrators often supervised events along with parents. And the principal approved all flyers that were given to children during school hours. Thus, it was difficult for parents to run truly independent events. PTO events had to be coordinated at crucial moments with educators.

The coordination between loosely organized parent volunteers and a highly bureaucratic school was difficult. The school was a complex environment. There were many rules that had to be followed to protect the health and safety of the children, a tight bell schedule of classes and breaks, and numerous changes in the school schedule (e.g., due to snow days and teacher in-service days). There were also multiple activities occurring simultaneously in the school (as when a school fair and a PTO-sponsored extra recess from a fundraising event took place at the same time). In addition, the school was liable for any mishaps that occurred on school grounds.

The PTO was significantly less bureaucratic. It was a volunteer organization with very high levels of turnover. The PTO sometimes had trouble recruiting parent volunteers to run events. In interviews, parents reported being drawn into working on PTO events immediately before a deadline. Often volunteers had limited information about school policies and were not fully apprised of the steps involved in executing the PTO event. The lack of knowledge by PTO parents would have been inconsequential for parents’ relations with the principal if the PTO had independence in the execution of events. Yet, the PTO lacked such autonomy.

Indeed, in the execution of PTO events there was a pattern of dependency on school officials and weak lines of communication among volunteers. The Box Top recess, a PTO event, highlights how this dependency led to conflict. Laura, a part-time consultant and mother of one, previously ran a flea-market fundraiser that was, in her words, “a nightmare.” It required approximately 250 hours of work and raised $1,700, which she saw as very little money. (In her business, she earned $75 per hour, making this a $20,000 expenditure of her time.) Rather than do it again, she was enthusiastic about running a fundraiser where children collected General Mills Box Tops. (She thought it would be less work for her and raise more money for the PTO.) Children would bring in box tops; they would be collected in shoeboxes. In order to motivate students to participate, she suggested a reward recess for those who raised the most money. As was often the case, this innovative idea required various negotiations. Laura spoke to PTO board members to get approval for the box top fundraiser. After some negotiation with the principal (who wanted to avoid having students in the same grade level competing with one another), they agreed that the extra recess would be rewarded to the grade level that collected the most box tops. The collection began and with “not that much effort” the event raised over $700.

Attempts at coordinating the reward recess generated considerable tension between the PTO and the principal. Laura needed to recruit parent volunteers to staff the special recess. Since the recess was to be held during instructional time, the principals and teachers were involved in scheduling. Laura e-mailed the principal about the recess but did not get a response. As Laura complained in her interview:

The extra recess period was a nightmare to get scheduled. It was one of those, who’s in charge? You know [Principal] said she was going to coordinate it, but then she forgot all about it. And I had to nudge her several times. The teachers weren’t responding when I would e-mail them and say, “When is a good time to do it?”

The end of the school year was looming. Laura felt obliged to plan the extra recess they had promised the children. Laura ultimately contacted the PTO president, who nudged the principal to schedule the event. What began as a friendly request became a face-to-face encounter in which the PTO president demanded the principal’s cooperation. Field notes from a board meeting showed the PTO president describing her frustration:

PTO president says, “They were supposed to have this reward. [Laura] wrote the principal and never heard back. She wrote the office and never heard back. Then I saw [the principal] and I said, ‘It needs to happen; the kids have been asking about it!’”

The PTO president was no longer asking for the principal’s cooperation but letting her know that this “needs to happen.”

Both parents and the principal were disappointed with the ultimate outcome of this event. The recess was run by parent volunteers. The principal was out of town due to a death in the family and therefore not at school. The day of the recess it rained and the recess was moved indoors at the last minute. The physical education teacher was tied up with another school event but left six balls out for the group of 80 children. The substitute principal had the event on his calendar, but he did not know to check on it. The principal requested six to eight parent volunteers; Laura was only able to recruit five parent volunteers to supervise 80 second graders. Although school policy was that PTO volunteers were not to bring younger siblings to PTO events held during the school day, some parents did. The parent volunteers did not organize the children into formal games; some parents reported that parents were talking on the sidelines as children ran around the gym. The son of Patty, a stay-at-home mother who served on the PTO board, was injured during a game of “tackle basketball.”

In the board meeting following the recess, Patty, the mother of the boy who was hurt, was livid. According to field notes:

Patty is very upset. She has been calm and relatively quiet through the meeting but now her voice is rising and she is looking agitated. “My son was there and there were 80 second graders and when parents come to school they are not supposed to bring siblings but there were siblings. The parents were watching the siblings and chatting with each other. There was not any staff around.” (field notes)

In Patty’s perspective, the parents that were supervising the event were to blame.

Limited communication contributed to this chaotic outcome. Neither the mother who organized the recess nor the co-president who urged the principal to schedule the recess were present at the recess. Parent volunteers present at the recess reported that they assumed school staff members would also supervise the event and that they were not apprised of the principal’s absence that day. As noted in field notes from the same board meeting:

Kim, the other co-president of the PTO says, “I just assumed that the teachers would be there.” Patty [the mom whose son was also hurt] says: “The teachers should have been there.” Another mom asks: “Where were the teachers?”

The parents assumed that the teachers would have taken responsibility for supervising this event.⁵ For her part, the principal presumed that the parents would supervise the children since it was a PTO event. When a child was hurt, however, the principal took responsibility.

In an interview, Patty recounted her shock at the incident that occurred. She noted the marked difference between the reward recess and staff-run recesses:

Generally every time anything [happens to him] we’ve had the nurse call us . . . I was surprised with that kind of incident that we didn’t have some sort of school report and that’s when I said [to my son] “Well, what teacher was there?” [He said] “No teacher.” [I asked] “Was the head woman from the school there? Nobody from the school was there.” And then that was so astounding to me [that] I didn’t believe him. Even though he’s a very verbal kid, I kept asking him “There had to be somebody from school there. Who was it?” And he said “No, just moms.”

As Patty noted, if there had been a staff member present, the school nurse would have contacted her. Instead, parents handled the event. They never told the school nurse. Thus, school policy was not followed. Furthermore, several weeks later, our interview with Laura (who had organized the recess) revealed that she was unaware that a child had been hurt. She did know that one parent complained that the recess was “chaotic,” but she said that the other parents thought it was “fine.” (We did not inform her otherwise.)

For her part, the principal expressed frustration with the demands of the PTO. She felt that they placed significant demands on her and her staff. She did not feel comfortable asking teachers to use their preparation time to supervise a PTO recess. She was upset. When the PTO proposed another extra recess as a reward for a gift-wrap fundraising effort, the principal did not approve it. Rather, she told the PTO that there would be no more parent-organized “extra recesses” as rewards for fundraisers. Another parent who had not heard about this recess approached the PTO board a month later suggesting another reward recess for the gift wrap sale.

At least some of the conflicts that occurred were linked to structural patterns: The PTO was an all-volunteer organization with limited training, and PTO events require high levels of coordination with school officials. There were multiple people and multiple steps involved in the production of PTO events. For example, the extra recess was suggested and organized by Laura, required the approval of the principal, and was supervised by several other parents (i.e., not Laura or the PTO president who were involved in planning the event and obtaining the principal’s consent). At multiple points, slips in communication could occur.

In short, parent-organized events typically required the involvement of both parents and educators. The involvement of so many different “cooks” in planning and executing events often led to miscommunication and confusion about the division of labor. Few PTO events could be organized with only one interactional moment. As in the case of the box top fundraiser, PTO events—even those that did not take “much effort”—required dozens of e-mails or brief conversations. The PTO organized at least 30 events annually; some of these events (i.e., the talent show, the school fair) were complex and involved the coordination of dozens of parents and hundreds of children. Since the PTO is an all-volunteer organization with high turnover, it is difficult to prevent mishaps in the coordination among parents and educators, particularly administrative staff. Yet the surfacing of this form of conflict, and the difficulty in preventing it, has not been sufficiently acknowledged in the literature.

Ambiguous Lines of Authority

Groups of parents often collided with the principal over the running of the school.

The principal’s jurisdiction over particular programs (Abbott 1988), including lunch and recess, often led to bitter conflicts with parents. Parents challenged the authority of the principal and attempted to delineate their own domains of control. As a result, decisions about how events should be run resulted in bitter battles between parents and the principal. Often when faced with a conflict, the principal drew on her professional standing and authority to resolve conflicts. Indeed, the principal typically had more power than parents in making decisions about school affairs. Parents did succeed, however, in organizing some events relatively independently.

Lunchtime Volunteers: “Wait a Minute, Shouldn’t That Be More of Our Choice?”

Parents volunteered during lunch and recess for first and second grades to help children zip their coats and open “sippy cups.” Many mothers reported it was among their favorite school activities. They could observe how their child interacted with peers. The principal viewed this activity as a way for parents to provide assistance to children. The principal complained that in the prior year parent volunteers in second grade lunch and recess “were congregating and talking among themselves and not really helping during recess time to redirect the children.” Worse, Mrs. Torres felt that the parents were not supportive but would “glare” at lunch aides. She reports:

A couple of them were undermining the cafeteria recess aides. . . . The recess aide would tell the child to do this and the parent would tell the child to do the opposite, you know. [The aide would say] “No, you can’t go to the bathroom.” [The parent could say] “Yeah, I, I told him he could go,” kind of thing.

Mrs. Torres was concerned that parents were using volunteering as a way to observe staff members and report back to other parents about staff members. The principal described a parent complaining about a recess aide:

The icing on the cake . . . was that during an executive [PTO] board meeting, a parent started speaking derogatorily about one of the cafeteria recess aides. . . . And that really hit home to me because she said in front of other parents and she used the recess aide’s name. And more than anything, that convinced me, cut it back, cut it back. I won’t have parents coming in and, under the guise of volunteering, try to watch what’s going on with a particular staff member and then put that out there to other parents.

In interviews, some parents confirmed that they were watching staff members (see also Hassrick and Schneider 2009). Principal Torres responded by ending the program. She says: “I cut the cord this fall and I told them that, the level of involvement that we were getting from the second grade volunteer parents was actually a hindrance rather than a help.”

Even though the principal did have the power to make the “final” decision, this did not mean that parents gave in easily. Parents were incredulous about her decision to discontinue the second grade parent volunteer program. They voiced their disappointment to the principal by inundating her with e-mails and phone calls. In an interview, Susan, a PTO committee chair who was employed full-time in advertising, expressed outrage: “People [are] ready, willing, and able to serve and you’re going to tell them thank you but no thank you?” In an interview, the incoming president of the PTO, Terri, also questioned the principal’s authority to make this decision. She said: “For us it’s kind of like, wait a minute, shouldn’t that be more of our choice? If we want to go and it’s something set up by the [PTO] why, how can she eliminate that?” Terry asserted the parents’ authority over this decision, which she perceived to be under the purview of the parents.

The boundary between parents’ sphere of control and the principal’s sphere of control was hotly contested. In two different PTO meetings, the PTO president expressed concern about the principal’s decision to discontinue parent volunteering during second grade recess. The incoming PTO president tried a number of times to get this rule revised. In a PTO board meeting where the principal was invited, Terri raised the issue with the principal. Terri said she had been “hearing from a lot from parents on this one.” She added that many parents were eager to be volunteers for the second grade lunch. Mrs. Torres pursed her lips, nodded a number of times (as if she was taking it in), and thanked Terri for the information. She did not change the rule.

The principal could and did terminate parental involvement in certain school events. Parents viewed their volunteerism in school events as their prerogative. As in other studies of middle-class families, we found that parents had a sense of entitlement and thought that the school should be more flexible to their needs (Lareau [1989] 2000). This sense of entitlement also led them to pursue their own agenda and plan independent events against the wishes of the principal. As a result, the division of authority between parents and the principal was a reoccurring source of tension. It surfaced particularly in decisions about the nature of fundraising events.

Oak Park Ball: “No One Is Going to Tell Us No”

One source of tension between the principal and the PTO was about the degree to which PTO events were inclusive of all of the parents in the school. When the Oak Park PTO learned that another school in the district organized an evening ball that raised over $10,000 for the school, they began planning their own. The incoming PTO president and vice-president, Terri and Michelle, saw the ball as an attractive fundraising effort. They were eager to improve the sense of community in the school and felt a ball would allow parents to socialize “without kids.” At a PTO meeting, other parents noted that some smaller fundraisers were time-consuming and did not yield a lot of money. Patty noted that many parents felt they were being “nickeled and dimed.” After some discussion, the PTO formed a committee of eight co-chairs and began planning the ball a year in advance.

The principal became alarmed when she was apprised of the parents’ interest in planning a ball. She felt that a ball would be exclusionary of families with fewer economic resources. As principal, she felt that all events should be inclusive of all of the families in the school, not just wealthier families. As a result, the principal prepared a lengthy presentation for the PTO executive board. She spoke about what she referred to as the “demographics” of the children that attended Oak Park Elementary. Holding a yellow legal pad for reference, she outlined the rates of free and reduced lunch, the average household income, whether both parents worked, and the income disparity among parents at Oak Park. She explained that some parents would have difficulty participating in the ball due to limited transportation, difficulty obtaining child care, and inability to pay for the cost of tickets or participate in a silent auction. According to our field notes, the incoming president and other board members responded coolly while the principal was talking. Mothers looked bored, occasionally looking around the room or down at the table. The atmosphere was tense. In a later interview, the incoming president expressed her “frustration”:

We introduced the idea [of the ball] and the next meeting we had Linda coming in and sharing about all this information she found out about our demographics. We went “So?” It was like such a waste of an hour of a meeting telling us stuff we already know. We all kind of looked at each other and said, “So what?” You know what I mean? We’re not insensitive, we’re not pompous, but so what? It’s optional.

She added sharply, “You don’t cater to the 10 percent that’s getting free lunches to create your whole community.” The principal and the PTO had different views about the degree to which the PTO should be sensitive to low-income families in the school. The principal’s more universalistic concerns about the entire community of parents clashed with the PTO’s more particularistic concerns about creating community among a smaller group of parents (Lightfoot 1978; Parsons 1959). The principal’s previous experience working in low-income schools may have also shaped her different perspective on how inclusive PTO events should be.

A central feature of the conflict, however, was whether the principal or the PTO had ultimate authority over this fundraising event. Mrs. Torres felt it was part of her duty as the principal to guide the PTO. As Mrs. Torres said in an interview, “I certainly do come out and tell them whether or not I think a fundraiser should be executed a certain way or not.” The PTO resented this intrusion. Mrs. Torres was scheduled to retire midyear. The PTO took advantage of the change in leadership and planned the ball for the month after the principal’s departure. In the interview, Terri, the incoming PTO president, was defiant. She hotly said in her interview:

We’re doing it. We don’t care. Honestly, we don’t care. We’re planning it, we’re scheduling it, we are, because we feel there’s no down side. . . . It’s gonna be a bash. It’s gonna be great. Other schools have done it. It’s worked out great. They’ve raised $11,000. It’s a huge fundraiser. . . . People are clamoring to be the chairs of this committee. . . . For us it’s like, no one is going to tell us no. We don’t care. We’re doing it. That’s one thing we’re like, we’re in a position here to make more decisions, we’re gonna make our own decisions. [emphasis added]

As Terri notes, parents sometimes felt that they had the authority to make decisions.

The ball was held. It was an adult event. Tickets to enter were $10 per person. The organizing committee was comprised of nine parent volunteers. There was food as well as a silent auction, which sold activities, services, and products. There were 80 different sponsors (mostly businesses). Some of the opening bids for these items were well over $100. In total, $5,000 was raised for the school. None of the promotional materials included information about what to do if parents had financial difficulty purchasing tickets. This ball, and the disagreement about it, highlights the enduring conflicts over authority in the planning of PTO events. Both the principal and the PTO felt that they had the right to control crucial aspects of the events. The conflict was characterized by bitter feelings on both sides. The scenario was repeated in many different areas of the PTO, ranging from debates about the kind of food that should be served at PTO events to the appropriateness of competitions among children in the same grade levels during fundraisers. Opportunities for conflict were frequent. Hence, as parents become active in the PTO, the opportunities for friction between parents and educators, particularly over the proper lines of authority, increase. The sociology of education literature has not recognized this important dimension of parent involvement.

Differing Priorities of PTO Parents and the Principal

At the root of many conflicts between PTO parents and the principal were their different priorities for the school. Just as others have noted the differing orientation of parents and teachers toward children, one particularistic and the other universalistic, we found that there were also cleavages when it came to the administration of the school. These tensions arose around school rules and the general ambience of the school. In these types of conflicts, the regular meetings and resources of the PTO played a crucial role in developing the parents’ collective expression of their grievances. Parents and the principal were both concerned with the well-being of children. Principal Torres emphasized maintaining an orderly, efficient, and safe environment. Parents involved in the PTO often complained that the school was too bureaucratic, unwelcoming, and rule-based. Parents sought a more flexible set of rules and insisted that the school be more welcoming, personal, and “fun.”

The Main Office: “I Don’t Need Warm and Fuzzy, I Need Efficiency”

The atmosphere of the school’s main office was a point of contention between parents and the principal. The principal valued having an efficient and organized administrative assistant while parents valued friendliness, warmth, and some flexibility around school rules. The character of interactions between Sue Ellen, the administrative assistant, and parents was a point of conflict between parents and the principal.⁶ The front office was comprised of two middle-aged administrators, Sue Ellen and Kat, who were responsible for running the office and assisting the principal. A committee of parents, the principal, and teachers participated in the hiring of Sue Ellen. At that time, committee members, including parents, decided that Sue Ellen was the best candidate and should be hired. After she was hired, however, many parents began to complain that she was unfriendly and requested that she be fired. As one outspoken parent said, “The [PTO has] been trying to get rid of her for years, she’s so awful.” With the exception of two parents, all of the parents we interviewed spoke negatively about Sue Ellen. Parents complained that she was unfriendly, not helpful, and failed to create a “good atmosphere” in the front office.

Our interview with one married couple, Jo and Tim, illustrates the range of complaints about Sue Ellen. Jo and Tim were engineers and co-chairs of the pancake breakfast committee. Jo said she “get[s] along with Sue Ellen,” making an effort to “read my little rule sheet and [try] to stay out of everyone’s way,” although she later added that it was “kind of walking on pins and needles.” Her husband, who was less forgiving of Sue Ellen’s flaws, flatly stated: “[Sue Ellen] is a bitch, and I don’t care if it’s on tape. She is. And you talk to anybody, and nobody likes her. Nobody likes her.” Other parents also expressed similar concerns about the atmosphere in the main office.

Active members of the PTO encouraged one another to complain about Sue Ellen to the principal. When complaints about Sue Ellen were raised at formal PTO meetings, they transformed from individual complaints into PTO concerns. In a PTO board meeting we observed there was a long, animated discussion of the lack of friendliness of the main office staff. Mothers expressed distress that the atmosphere of the school was not “warm” and “welcoming.” Some PTO members, looking very solemn, noted that it was the first connection parents had with the school. During this discussion, the incoming PTO vice-president, Jen, declared that it was the principal’s responsibility to deal with Sue Ellen’s attitude. Lifting an arm in the air, she proclaimed fervently: It “goes to the top! It’s on Linda [the principal].”

The principal was aware that the parents objected to Sue Ellen and felt she understood their objections:

That [complaint from parents] has resurfaced every now and then, I held my ground on it and I said to the PTO, I said, “You know, I don’t need warm and fuzzy, I need efficiency and I need responsibility, and that’s what this person represents. I have someone else [the other administrative assistant] who’s warm and fuzzy. We’ll balance it out.” Unless there’s absolute rudeness or disrespect . . . we’ll listen. . . . But you’re not going to call the shots as far as who works in our school.

The principal, asserting her authority, was adamant that parents are not “going to call the shots” over hiring. Hence, the principal clearly understood the concerns of the parents. The problem was not one of insufficient communication. Instead, the principal and the parents had different priorities.

In multiple arenas of school life, parents and the principal collided. Given the bureaucratic organization that the principal headed, she sought to have an efficient, safe, and predictable environment. By contrast, parents desired the school to be more personal, flexible, and fun. In short, they wanted the school to be less bureaucratic. Beth expressed an overall concern about the atmosphere during lunchtime:

Fun. Just needs a little fun, it’s dreary in there. Tense, tense, I think it sets the overall tone there. . . . They have to do this manners lunch now; they have to talk in a soft whisper. . . . I find that they also make lunch so unfun.

Researchers on parent involvement have assumed that parents and educators will be able to work in harmony with adequate levels of communication. While we found that they shared the similar generalized goal of doing what was best for the children, their different ideas about how to prioritize the needs of the children was a considerable barrier. Thus, even when working in the best interest of the children, parents and the principal often had very different priorities.

Discussion

Parent involvement in schooling has moved from the realm of academic journals into public policy. Promotion of parent involvement is encoded in the No Child Left Behind Act (Epstein 2005). Parent participation is promoted in countless districts throughout the country. Sociologists of education have played a role in the advancement of parent involvement by highlighting the benefits of it in the analysis of the impact on school performance and in the development of sample programs (Coleman 1987; Epstein 2005). Given this history, it is important that the research literature on parent involvement be as complete and accurate as possible. There are both conceptual and policy issues at stake. Conceptually, sociologists of education need to offer a comprehensive analysis of the core dynamics of social patterns. Practitioners planning to implement policies should be given a reasonable anticipation of the difficulties they might face.

At both a conceptual and a policy level, the literature on parent involvement in schooling must be judged incomplete and, in some cases, inaccurate. Researchers have placed far too much emphasis on the cooperative and positive ramifications of parent involvement in schooling (Epstein 2005; Henderson 1987; Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler 1997). When researchers have highlighted problems in this arena, they have tended to focus on the challenges in recruiting parent involvement, particularly for working-class families, the barriers to parents’ participation, and the communication skills that educators need to develop positive and effective manners of interacting with parents. Researchers have also implicitly suggested that parents and educators are equal partners in this collaboration (Epstein 2005). But the principal has more power than do parents; the relationship is not a partnership between equals. Educators also have different priorities than parents, and there are structural conflicts that surface when schools experience very high levels of parent involvement, particularly the kind of collective parent involvement that parent organizations encourage and facilitate. Our article seeks to draw attention to these conflicts.

Oak Park parents and educators did, have cooperative and productive collaborations at times. The PTO raised valuable funds. Many parents cited the high level of parent involvement as an indicator that the school was high quality. But through the collective character of parent involvement in the PTO, the principal and parents also had many moments of conflict. We have highlighted three sources of conflict. First, the PTO was an all-volunteer organization that had a pattern of intricate dependency with the school in the implementation of PTO events. The necessary coordination between the PTO and the school staff, as in the box top recess, created confusion and fostered conflict. Second, there was ambiguity over who had the authority to decide key aspects of PTO events. Third, parents and the principal had different priorities. As we have shown, the principal was fully aware of the concerns of parents in some areas (e.g., the ball and the office staff); hence, the difficulties cannot primarily be attributed to a lack of communication. Instead, parents and the principal had different priorities. In many different ways, parent involvement meant that the principal was seeking to rebuff efforts by parents to “run” the school. With over 30 different events during the year (i.e., approximately one per week), coordination between the PTO and school administrators, and a revolving set of parent volunteers, planning PTO activities was complex. Problems were likely.

Research in sociology of education has been clear that the principal plays an important, indeed crucial, role in the school (Hallinan 2000). Principals can help define and promote a sense of mission. Principals are instructional leaders. Principals implement policy regarding behavior problems. And principals are liaisons with district administrators. Sociologists of education, however, have not devoted enough attention to a crucial point: If a school has a very active program of parent involvement, the parent programs can demand time and energy of the principal. Since a principal’s time is limited, and since there are many other demands, the time that a principal devotes to scheduling a special recess or managing parents’ demands to be volunteers at recess is time that he or she does not devote to other school issues. It is a zero-sum process. Thus, the cost of parent involvement programs for school administrators needs attention.

It is possible, of course, that Ms. Torres was unusually difficult, ineffective, and ill-suited to managing parent volunteers. In addition, as a Hispanic woman (who had previously taught in city schools), it is possible that parents did not defer to her in a way that they might have done with another (e.g., white male) principal (see Hallett 2007). This case cannot resolve these questions. But there are signs in the literature of parents in upper-middle-class communities placing significant demands on principals. Demerath (2009) shows the pressure that upper-middle-class parents place on a prestigious high school as parents demand special accommodations, including grade changes. McGrath and Kuriloff (1999) and Lareau ([1989] 2000, 2011) also clearly show that middle-class parents monitor and intervene with educators. Ong-Deng (2009) highlights how middle-class parents file lawsuits and aggressively pursue their interests regarding their children’s special education. The principals and other educators described in these various studies had different temperaments and leadership styles, but they all faced formidable demands from parents. Thus, we see signs that the parent involvement conflicts also may surface at other schools, particularly schools enrolling upper-middle-class families.

It is also possible that certain types of parents are drawn to volunteering at PTO events. Other work, for example, has found that mothers who are stay-at-home mothers are drawn to PTO activities as a source of a social life for mothers (Warner 2010). There is no reason to presume that mothers who are active in PTO are more open to conflict than mothers who are not active, but further work would need to look at the self-selection of parents.

One interesting area for future research is how the organizational structure of PTOs (e.g., all-volunteer, high turnover, relatively flat leadership structure, multiple organizational goals) facilitates the production of conflict with administrators and teachers. Although the study of schools as organizations has a distinguished history (see Bidwell 2001 for a review), much of the research on schools as organizations has focused on principal-teacher relations and control (or lack thereof) over teachers’ work.⁷ Yet unlike the school, the PTO is relatively nonhierarchical. Other research has suggested that this organizational structure is characterized by a rich foment of new ideas and innovation (Bidwell 2001; Smith-Doerr 2004). These innovations (e.g., new fundraisers and a calisthenics program) are outside of the bureaucratic structure of the school and may challenge the authority of the principal. Successful innovations in schools are often implemented slowly through existing relationships (see Frank, Zhao, and Borman 2004; Hallett 2010). As parents seek to innovate through the PTO, they may create new opportunities for conflict with the principal that can strain the smooth running of the school (for discussion of the impact of conflict on performance, see Jehn 1997).

Our study also leaves important unanswered questions, particularly on the class-based nature of the conflicts we observed. To be sure, we suspect that conflicts are common. A review of Web sites and journalistic accounts clearly suggests that it is common for schools in upper-middle-class communities to have active PTO organizations that raise many thousands of dollars for the school, including in Palo Alto, California, and Newton, Massachusetts (Brunner and Imazeki 2004). There are signs that there are conflicts in some of these districts (Mathews 2007). Thus, we speculate that other upper-middle-class communities also have skirmishes between PTO parents and educators over the running of the school.

What is less clear, however, is the degree to which the skirmishes are linked to the intrinsic ambiguity about authority and control in parent involvement programs or the class position of the parents. That working-class parents are less involved in schools as a part of organized groups, however, begs the question of whether there would be conflicts with educators if they were to be involved. Indeed, there have been groups of working-class parents who displayed anger and frustration with educators over conflicts about busing (Rubin 1972). In addition, in our sample of parents, there were a few parents of working-class position who were involved in the PTO. Thus, it could be that working-class parents are both less likely to be involved as a group and less likely to encounter conflicts with educators. Or it could be that working-class parents are less likely to be involved as a group but, when they are involved as a group, are just as likely to have conflicts with educators (though the conflicts may take a somewhat different tone and character than the conflicts with middle-class parents due to class differences in the cultural repertoires that parents display). We speculate that class differences in parenting may indeed lead to differences in the cultural signals parents display in PTO meetings and in their interactions with principals. Nonetheless, as intimacy breeds contempt, very high levels of parent involvement create ample opportunities for conflict. These conflicts need to be integrated into the sociological research on parent involvement.

In terms of policy, practitioners need to be alerted to the conflicts that are likely to surface with a very active parent organization guiding parent involvement. Principals could be trained to “cool parents out” or to deflect parents’ requests without fueling antagonism (see Goldring 1996). Parent groups could make efforts to incorporate school administrators into the planning of PTOs. Parent groups may also benefit from trainings on the school system and the responsibilities of school administrators. At the very least, school districts could develop more realistic models about the amount of time principals working in upper-middle-class communities are likely to devote to their interactions with parents. Developing a more sophisticated conception of parent involvement in schooling is important not simply for sociology of education but is also important for practitioners working with parents in schools.⁸ We see our article as one small step in this direction.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Jessica McCrory Calarco, Amanda Cox, Timothy Hallett, Elizabeth McGhee Hassrick, Erin McNamara Horvat, Hilary Levey, Catharine Warner, and Elliot Weininger for their feedback. This article was presented at the 2010 American Sociological Association annual meeting. A much earlier version of this article was presented at the 2009 American Educational Research Association annual meeting. All errors, of course, are the sole responsibility of the authors.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The first author gratefully acknowledges the generous financial support of the Spencer Foundation (grant number: 200700124) as well as research assistance from the University of Pennsylvania.

Notes

Bios

Annette Lareau is the Stanley I. Sheerr Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Unequal Childhoods and Home Advantage. She also edited Social Class: How Does It Work (with Dalton Conley) and Educational Research on Trial with Pamela B. Walters and Sherri Ranis. In 2011 she published a second edition of Unequal Childhoods. It includes 100 new pages of material from a follow-up study completed a decade after the original research.

Vanessa Lopes Muñoz is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Brandeis University. Her research interests include medical sociology, families, and schools. In her dissertation, a qualitative study of the management of children’s food allergies, she examines how medical adherence is negotiated between families and school communities.

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