[Ap]parent Involvement: Reflections on Parents, Power and Urban Public Schools

Describes 3 major parental involvement projects (PIPs) in urban school districts. Discussion focuses on how parents are being positioned as subjects, but also as objects, of a struggle to resuscitate the public sphere of public education. Rich and real parental involvement is said to require a 3-way commitment to organizing parents, to restructuring schools and communities toward enriched educational and economic outcomes, and to inventing rich visions of educational democracies of difference. Unless parents are organized as a political body, PIPs will devolve into crisis intervention, leaving neither empowerment or systemic change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)