Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Invisible Hand: Parent Accountability Pressures in Urban Schools

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SES-062318Barbara SchneiderElizabeth HassickThis dissertation research will use ethnographic, network and cohort data to study the relationship between social class and student classroom experiences. To what extent does parent accountability pressure shape everyday practices in schools? Much has been learned about how parents are involved in their children's education, but rarely do researchers consider how parents influence accountability structures in schools. School accountability has been primarily understood as originating through state and federal legislation and "loosely coupled" administrative lines of authority. But, teachers and administrators in predominately middle class schools are not alone in their classrooms and offices. Parents volunteer in classrooms and participate in school and neighborhood groups, such as parent and teacher organizations, 'Friends of the School' groups and parent cooperatives, creating parent, teacher and administrator networks that span school, community and home settings. Prior research suggests that the fundamental conceptualization of parents as "helping partners" is complicated by an additional parent-monitoring dimension that shapes teacher and administrator everyday practices. While pursing a private good (the enhanced educational experience of their particular child), "swarming" middle class parents generate public goods, such as an increased flow of "insider" information between community and school and the enhanced monitoring of administrators and teachers. More broadly, uncovering the mechanisms that enable individual parent surveillance efforts to "swarm" and form group accountability pressures that are in turn used to monitor everyday school activities, provides information for formulating new kinds of questions about organizational accountability in schools and other organizations that serve children.