Developing demand parents

This dissertation examined Miami-Dade County Public Schools' Parent Academy as a model to develop demand parents within an urban setting. According to the Academy's founder and district's former superintendent, Rudolph Crew (2009), demand parents effectively advocate for their child's education. To develop demand parents, the Academy offers a menu of courses that help parents support their children academically, navigate the educational system, and empower themselves personally or professionally. The conceptual framework used to analyze the Parent Academy indicates that effective strategies to develop demand parents build the self-efficacy of parents, recognize the human and social capital of parents, leverage that capital to form relationships within and outside of the community that engage parents in collective action (Vitti, 2009). This case study found that three of the four characteristics are directly or indirectly addressed through the Parent Academy with varying degrees of effectiveness. Evidence to engage parents in collective action was not present. Parents who participate in Academy sessions value their experience and find that their involvement provides useful tools and information to assist their children academically and to navigate the school system. Sessions can lead to higher levels of parent self-efficacy but parents would need to take several sessions to become demand parents. This does not always occur because parents commonly participate in only one or two sessions.

Most of the Academy's instructors recognize the human capital of parents and use this to facilitate discussions during sessions. Instructors valued the opinions and experiences of parents and attempted to create opportunities for parents to learn from one another. These attempts were acknowledged by parents. However, this is not an explicit strategy of the Academy's and does not occur consistently due to a lack of instructor quality and district monitoring. Relationships were developed between parents of similar backgrounds and between instructors and parents. There were also examples of parents from different backgrounds learning from one another during sessions but this did not result in relationships being formed outside the session. At the same time, some parents developed relationships with those of similar backgrounds. The district could leverage these relationships to accelerate the development of demand parents who could then empower other parents to become a force for social change (Warren, 2001). To develop demand parents with more consistency the district would need to control for instructor quality, expand the menu of courses to include issues of race and power, and develop an internal means to mobilize and train cohorts of parent leaders for collective action.