Better Schools Through Parent Empowerment

Aurelio Montemayor has been organizing parents for decades. His work at the Intercultural Research Development Association, or IDRA, as a family engagement coordinator has focused on a specific type of parent engagement, known as parent empowerment.

He defines the four ways parents are typically engaged in schools as:

1. As free labor and fundraisers.
2. Through education programs designed to help improve parenting
3. Through education programs designed for self improvement
4. Through meaningful parent / caregiver empowerment

This fourth form of parent engagement – parent empowerment, is the only form that he believes leads to school wide improvement for all kids. When done well, it can serve as an important tool for equity, but it requires that all parents feel empowered.

I’m joined by parent board member, Sarah Becker, to discuss what this looks like in practice, and how people with racial or economic privilege, who often enter schools with outsized empowerment, can act as allies.

LINKS:

• Intercultural Research Development Association
• Chicano Movement
• No Child Left Behind
• When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools: Class, Race, and the Challenge of Equity in Public Education by Lynn Posey-Maddox
• Despite The Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools by John B. Diamond and Amanda E. Lewis

Register for the Integrated Schools Book Club in July. We’ll be reading Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.