Fm. Hess et Dl. Leal, The opportunity to engage: How race, class, and institutions structure access to educational deliberation, EDUC POLICY, 15(3), 2001, pp. 474-490
Educators have long discussed the value of community engagement in schoolin
g, especially in troubled urban systems. However most attention has focused
on either the consequences of engagement or the willingness of groups or i
ndividuals to take existing opportunities for participation. The questions
of whether and why there may be systematic variation in how open school sys
tems are to community involvement have been largely overlooked. Using the C
ouncil of Urban Boards of Education's 1992 survey and U.S, census data, the
authors examined these questions using a sample of 57 urban school distric
ts. It was found that urban communities with larger percentages of African
American students provide increased avenues for participation, whereas poor
er districts and those in the South offer fewer avenues. These findings,tgs
have important implications for educational equity and the promise of comm
unity participation in school governance.