Opportunities and barriers to parental involvement at the high school level: A study of inner city African American parents
This study was conducted to examine why parental involvement is lacking among African American parents of adolescents who attend high school in the inner city. The objective was to understand how to increase parental involvement and support efforts to close the achievement gap. The design was a qualitative research methodology study. The research tools were semi-structured interviews and field notes from observations. The study consisted of telephone interviews. The study involved 10 African American parents from separate households, all with adolescents presently in high school, who had graduated from high school in the past three years or had entered high school in September of the 2019-2020 school year. Each participant resided in the inner city neighborhood of East Garfield Park in Chicago, Illinois. The identified findings included but were not limited to safety issues at their child’s high school, closed-door policies that restricted parental involvement, perspectives of African American parents that school personnel do not care, a definition of parental involvement that differs from the high school personnel’s, and African American parents’ lack of awareness that parental involvement increases student academic achievement.
Parental Involvement, Inner City High Schools
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign