linking parent and community involvement with student ... · structures by arguing that greater...

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American Journal of Education 116 (November 2009)� 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.0195-6744/2009/11601-0001$10.00

Linking Parent and Community Involvementwith Student Achievement: ComparingPrincipal and Teacher Perceptions ofStakeholder Influence

MOLLY F. GORDON and KAREN SEASHORE LOUISUniversity of Minnesota

Expanding the sources of leadership in schools has been a reform theme sincethe mid 1980s. Using exploratory factor analysis and regression, we examinethe following questions: (1) How does leadership style affect principals’ opennessto community involvement? (2) Is a principal’s openness to community involve-ment related to student achievement? And (3) How are participatory and sharedschool leadership structures related to student learning? We base our analysison a 2005–6 principal survey ( ) and a teacher survey ( ) fromN p 157 N p 4,491a Wallace Foundation–funded study, Learning from Leadership, augmented byavailable state 2005–6 math achievement data. Our results show that principalswith more diverse leadership teams are more open to community involvement.Also, teachers’ perceptions of greater parent involvement are positively associatedwith student math achievement. The article highlights how principals and teach-ers can better organize their efforts to involve stakeholders for increasing studentachievement.

Introduction

The United States has a historical commitment to localized public educationthat assumes that schools are extensions of local communities (Dewey [1915]1991, 1916; Elazar 1965; Newlon 1934). Despite this taken-for-granted as-sumption, during the latter part of the twentieth century school organizationsincreasingly kept community members and other outside stakeholders (in-cluding families) in the dark about what happens behind school walls. Somescholars argue that the teacher professionalism movement and the sometimescompeting goals of parents and educators served to widen the gap between

Electronically published July 20, 2009

Linking Stakeholder Involvement with Student Achievement

2 American Journal of Education

schools and communities (Brunner 1998; Crowson 2003; Driscoll 1998; Sar-ason 1995). More recently, however, renewed calls for increasing parent andcommunity participation, both formally in mandates such as Goals 2000 andNo Child Left Behind and in the inclusion of parent and community involve-ment in widely disseminated whole school reform programs, as well as ininformal grassroots action (e.g., Public Education Network and local effortsto increase parent involvement and school-business partnerships), have sur-faced.1 According to Anderson (1998), participatory components in reformsare so commonplace that increasing community involvement has becomeinstitutionally legitimated. School reform researchers, however, agree that pro-gram initiatives of the 1980s and 1990s did not eliminate the wide gap betweenpolicy rhetoric and observed practices (Anderson 1998; Driscoll 1998; Hess1999; Malen 1994; Malen and Ogawa 1988). Although school system leadersand staff increasingly laud the ideals, research suggests that efforts still fallshort in turning those expressions into authentic practice (Gonzales-DeHassand Willems 2003; Hiatt-Michael 2006; Stelmach 2004). Arguments for morecommunity and parent participation are often linked to fundamental demo-cratic principles. For example, in response to the continuing practice of ex-clusion, Sarason (1995) challenged educators to institute genuine participatorystructures by arguing that greater community involvement is necessary if weas a democratic society adhere to the political principle “when you are goingto be affected, directly or indirectly, by a decision, you should stand in somerelationship to the decision-making process” (7). Local democracy means, then,that key stakeholders have both the right and the responsibility to be involvedin critical school improvement efforts.

We are interested in parent and community involvement for two reasons:

MOLLY F. GORDON is a research fellow at the Center for Applied Researchand Educational Improvement at the University of Minnesota. She receivedher MA in educational policy studies from the University of Wiscon-sin–Madison and is currently a PhD candidate in educational policy andadministration at the University of Minnesota. Her recent research focuseson parent and community engagement with schools, school and district-levelleadership, and secondary school reform. KAREN SEASHORE LOUIS is RodneyS. Wallace Professor at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses onschool improvement and reform, leadership in school settings, and knowledgeuse in education. Recent books include Organizing for School Change (2006),Aligning Student Support with Achievement Goals: The Secondary School Principal’s Guide

(with Molly Gordon, 2006), Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth

and Dilemmas (with Louise Stoll, 2007), and Strong Cultures: A Principal’s Guide to

Change (with Sharon Kruse, 2009).

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first, because involvement reflects the democratic assumptions underlying theorganization of the U.S. school system. Second, research indicates that in-creasing parent and community involvement in education can lead to increasesin student achievement. Because we use participatory democratic theory asour theoretical framework, we make the assumption that key members (bothinside and outside the school) are engaged in participation and embody asense of ownership in the process. Even within the participatory democraticmovements in education, however, there is a lack of clarity around how greaterinvolvement operates in schools and, in particular, what “open” to stakeholderinvolvement means in practice. In this article, we explore what it means tobe open to parent and community involvement in practice from the viewpointof principals and teachers. For the purpose of this article, then, we define“democratic participation” as Barber (1984) defines strong democracy: direct,active, and explicitly public. In school contexts, this translates to broad prac-tices of community and parent inclusion in school improvement efforts anddecision making. In our analysis, we draw on surveys of principals and teachersthat focus on factors that are associated with an increased level of outsidestakeholder involvement and influence in schools. In addition, we examinewhich factors are positively associated with student learning. Based on ourconceptual framework, as well as the related literature, we address three ques-tions:

1. How does leadership style affect principals’ openness to communityinvolvement?

2. Is a principal’s openness to community involvement related to studentachievement?

3. How are participatory and shared school leadership structures relatedto student learning?

Related Literature

Four strands of research inform our approach to answering the above ques-tions. First, we examine the research linking increased parent involvementwith student achievement. Second, we look at what is known about recentefforts to create more democratic or participatory structures in schools, in-cluding the issue of changing power relationships. Third, we examine whatis known about shared leadership, with a particular emphasis on the inclusionof people who are not in designated or positional leadership roles. Finally, wereview empirical work on school characteristics that may support or inhibitparticipation.



Linking Parent and Community Involvement with Student Achievement

Two meta-analyses of the existing evidence found in the literature by Jeynes(2003 and 2007) add credible arguments for the case of parent involvementleading to increased student achievement. The first meta-analysis ( Jeynes 2003)found that parental involvement affected academic achievement for all mi-nority groups under the study, but in different ways. Although the effect sizesof African Americans were positive for parental attendance and style, theywere not statistically significant for other groups ( Jeynes 2003). The secondmeta-analysis ( Jeynes 2007) included 52 studies focusing exclusively on urbansecondary students and found that parental involvement has a significantinfluence on student achievement for both minority and white secondaryschool children.

Researchers have also concluded that “subtle” aspects of parental involve-ment, such as parenting style and parent expectations, had a greater impacton student outcomes than more “concrete” forms, such as parent attendanceat school conferences and other school functions or enforcing rules at homeregarding homework (Fan 2001; Feuerstein 2000; Jeynes 2007, 100; Lee andBowen 2006; Sanders 1998; Sheldon 2003), and some argue that the subtleforms of parental involvement are not easily influenced by schools.2 In contrast,we argue that the value of creating participatory structures in schools lies inits potential for increasing parent and community members’ sense of engage-ment in children’s education and, as a consequence, to augment the subtlebehaviors (Sheldon 2005).

Creating and Sustaining Participatory Democratic Structures in Schools

A renewed interest in creating more democratic structures in schools is areaction to the prevailing practice of viewing parents and community membersas “outsiders” or as “visitors” within the schools and not as true members ofthe school community. Recently, researchers and policy makers have reframedthe relationships between schools and their communities by using a businessand accountability lens. Rhetoric has shifted from viewing families and com-munity members as outsiders to holding schools more accountable to their“clients”—meaning parents and the larger community. According to Rileyand Louis, these arguments are closely tied to the “new public management”ideology that emphasizes a more businesslike approach to government services(Riley and Louis 2004, 9). However, a focus on community-as-client reinforcesthe distinction between members and nonmembers. A school that is account-able to the community reflects local values and customs, has indicators ofsuccess that are visible and well-communicated to the public, and allows

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parents to choose schools if they are not satisfied with the service (Anderson1998, 1999; Mawhinney 2004; Riley and Louis 2004) but does not necessarilygive them a legitimate voice in determining what goes on inside the school.A number of theorists have, therefore, cautioned against equating choice withdemocratic principles (Anderson 1998, 1999; Apple 1995; Lauder and Hughes1999; Whitty et al. 1998).

In the past two decades, reformists began to push for more participatorydemocratic structures within schools, specifically reforms that aimed to in-crease active involvement of parents and community members in decisionmaking. Some researchers saw democracy in action with the movement towarddevolution of power and authority from the state down to local schools, cul-minating in outside stakeholder involvement (Anderson 1998, 1999; Schulleret al. 2000). For example, many of the arguments around site-based man-agement, community control of schools, community schools, and school choicewere based upon participatory democratic theories as well as communitarianperspectives (Anderson 1998, 1999; Crowson and Boyd 2001; Driscoll 1998;Keith 1999; Lee et al. 1993; Riley and Louis 2004).

Changing Power Relationships in Schools

Researchers in the United States have found that such initiatives, however,rarely challenge existing power structures and decision making (Hess 1999;Malen 1994, 1999; Malen and Ogawa 1988) but instead work to convinceand incorporate outsiders into the school’s frame of reference (Anderson1998).3 Even where mandated, the implementation fidelity of parent andcommunity involvement programs has been questioned. For instance, Malen(1999) found that in councils that include parents, the principal remains incontrol of decision making regarding the whole school, and teachers remainin power to make decisions over curriculum and instruction. Since it is easierfor traditional power structures to remain in place when environmental factorsremain “stable and congenial” (Malen and Ogawa 1988, 265), giving parentsand teachers authority to make some school decisions may facilitate the fictionof power shifts (Hess 1999; Malen 1994, 1999; Malen and Ogawa 1988;Tschannen-Moran 2001).

Shifting from a more closed system in which elected school boards are urgedto behave like hands-off corporate boards to a more open and vulnerablesystem that is accountable to the clients and shaped by stakeholders has notbeen an easy transition for most school systems. For example, researchers havelong documented how tensions between the teacher professionalism movementand the proponents of greater parent and community involvement in decisionmaking have hampered outside stakeholder inclusion in governance structures



(Bauch et al. 1998; Driscoll 1998; Sarason 1995; Strike 1993).4 These dis-appointing results are, according to some, a consequence of how communityis being defined. Researchers argue that smaller, more homogenous com-munities are more stable and are better able to exercise collective influence(Coleman 1990), and many reformers pushing for more community involve-ment make this assumption. In contrast, Opfer and Denmark argue that “theschool site is never fully closed to these larger and ever-widening communitiesin which it resides” (2001, 102). This idea suggests that structural participatoryreforms based on narrow definitions of community may have created policiesthat are not based on the realities of today’s school system. Instead, Opferand Denmark assert that “schools . . . may require an eccentristic (i.e., open,expanding, and fluid) notion of community” (2001, 116).

Abrams looked at the contested nature of schools in a pluralistic societyand found that “school interventions seeking to change established practicesand ideologies concerning parental involvement can become contested terrain,mediating power relations between parent groups and exposing competingneeds and concerns about children’s education” (Abrams 2002, 384). However,her research suggests that schools can bridge between competing groups bydeveloping collaborative structures and working toward involving parents inshared decision making at the school and thus building social capital. Themodel of community development as a mechanism to link schools and com-munities is another facet of schools building social capital and has increasedin policy and research in the past 15 years (Mawhinney 2004).

However, more recently, researchers have seen a convergence of these move-ments around similar ideals of shared leadership, professional community, andthe arguments around schools as communities. For example, Louis and Kruse(1995) argued that both professionalism and the call for more inclusion of outsidestakeholders are centered on the same set of criteria: (a) a core of shared values,(b) a common set of activities that structure interactions and provide sharedexperiences, and (c) the specific organizational structures that will promote suchactivities, including expectations for collegial exchanges (Louis and Kruse 1995,16). In addition, Darling-Hammond (1997) warned about the “dark side” ofprofessional and community engagement when she stated “that creating a teach-ing force that becomes disconnected with the very clientele it is intended toserve will be no boon for education” (1997, 17).

Because of the gap between participatory rhetoric and practice, severalscholars began investigating factors that lead to more open and participatorystructures within schools. For example, Miretzky (2004) argued that fosteringgreater communication between teachers and parents is necessary in order tocreate and sustain a democratic community as well as to support school im-provement efforts. Outcomes of this research suggest that “while parents andteachers did not espouse ‘democratic communities’ per se, the values they

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expressed as important—investment in the school community, direct and hon-est communication, trust, mutual respect and mutual goals—all reflect the‘communication requirements’ of such communities” (Miretzky 2004, 814).The results of Miretsky’s study suggest that some teachers and parents desiredemocratic community connections but lack the necessary language or supportto sustain such relationships. The ideals of democratic community, then, are“lived” when there are mutual feelings of responsibility, communication, col-laboration, ownership, respect, and support from school and community lead-ers (Giles 2006; Miretzky 2004; Tschannen-Moran 2001).

In some schools that have not initiated democratic governance structures,outside community groups have banded together to push for more porouswalls and greater representation. For example, a recent wave of communityorganizing has surfaced in an effort to challenge existing power structures ofschools and to demand more power and voice in school decision making.Most community organizing groups focus on low-performing schools orschools that have not been responsive to community demands, and most areaffiliated with larger organizing entities that have histories of working to im-prove communities generally (Mediratta et al. 2002, 2008).

The Purpose of Shared Leadership

Underlying the political arguments for closer links between schools and com-munities is an explicit challenge to the traditional, hierarchical leadership andpower structures in schools (Anderson 1998, 1999; Keith 1999; Sarason 1995).In particular, they assume that the principal’s role will change. According toLeithwood and Prestine (2002), the policies and reforms that call for decen-tralized forms of decision making have underlying assumptions for the rolesof the principal and other school leaders. They claim that the communitycontrol model of site-based management “assumes that the school leader’srole is to ‘empower’ these people and to actively encourage the sharing ofpower formerly exercised by the principal. . . . School leaders, it is assumed,will act as members of teams rather than sole decision-makers, teaching othershow to make defensible decisions and clarifying their decision responsibilities”(Leithwood and Prestine 2002, 46). In addition, they argue that participatorydemocratic structures assume that shared power and decision making will notonly produce better decisions but will also create a sense of ownership in andresponsibility for the outcomes of those shared decisions by parents and teach-ers (Leithwood and Prestine 2002).

In essence, participatory reforms require a certain kind of leader in orderto be successful; one who is comfortable sharing the spotlight and able todistribute power among several competing players while still guiding the pro-



cess. Scholars, in fact, have found that strong leadership plays a pivotal rolein the formation of collaborative partnerships between schools and other com-munity agencies and in creating and sustaining legitimate shared decisionmaking (Anderson 1998; Goldring 1986; Goldring and Sims 2005; Leithwoodet al. 1999; Opfer and Denmark 200; Riehl 2000). In 2005, Goldring andSims found in their study of a Principals Leadership Academy “that coop-erative inter-organizational relationships can take firm root and flourish underan innovative leadership structure that is grounded in principles of sharedpower and shared learning” (Goldring and Sims 2005, 223). In addition tostrong support and direction from leaders, they found that “the bridger role”or “boundary spanner” was central to the process of creating successful part-nership structures that promote democratic interorganizational relationships(Goldring and Sims 2005, 245). Leithwood et al. (1999), furthermore, foundthat leaders who were committed to facilitative or distributed forms of gov-ernance tended to have stronger, more influential school councils. Similarly,Anderson found in his research on authentic participation that “principalswho were seen as honest, communicative, participatory, collegial, and sup-portive provided institutional spaces in which a micropolitical culture of au-thentic deliberation was sustained. On the other hand, with more control-oriented principals, teachers responded with micropolitical strategies ofavoidance, defensiveness, and self-protection” (Anderson 1998, 593).

Several qualitative investigations suggest the power of place and local con-ditions in determining effective principal behavior in engaging parents andcommunity members in school improvement. Griffith’s (2001) study foundthat the characteristics of the student population make a difference. He arguesthat principals who were more focused on instruction and saw themselves asmissionaries carrying out the goals of the community were more effective inachieving parent involvement in lower socioeconomic status (SES) commu-nities. Furthermore, Griffith found that school context and community char-acteristics call for different role constructions of principals. Therefore, prin-cipals who move between schools may need to change their role to reflect anew demographic context if they want to foster greater parent involvement.Furthermore, Giles (2006) emphasizes the centrality of “ownership.” He foundthat principals who see parents as equal partners were not only able to fostera greater sense of accountability toward the community but were also able toengage parents and community members in the ownership of the schoolprocess. In his cases on exemplary, transformational leadership, Giles assertsthat these principals were determined to build capacity through actively in-volving parents and teachers in programs or activities that had potential todirectly or indirectly affect student learning.

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School Conditions That Foster or Inhibit Greater Participation

While the principal’s role is critical, other school cultural characteristics areimportant. In their study on teacher work life, Bauch and Goldring (2000)found that creating a caring atmosphere and requiring parent volunteeringseem to have a large effect on promoting parent participation as viewed byteachers. In addition, their research suggests that if the school itself is a sup-portive environment for teachers to work in, teachers are then more likely toprovide parents with information. Another school culture characteristic, trust,is also a significant factor for collaboration among school staff and with thegreater community. Tschannen-Moran (2001) found that when school ad-ministrators collaborated with their teachers, and when teachers collaboratedwith each other, they both indicated higher levels of trust. Similarly, whenschool staff collaborated with parents, each group indicated a greater level oftrust. Consequently, they found that when schools and communities share asense of purpose and exhibit greater levels of trust, there is more outsidestakeholder influence in the school decision-making processes.

Socially constructed norms institutionalize relationships among teachers,administrators, and schools that often lead to negative teacher reflections ofparents who are not involved (at least visibly) in the development of theirchild’s education (Pena 2001; Smrekar and Cohen-Vogel 2001). The associ-ation between parent involvement and student achievement is well established(see above), but according to one study it also has a beneficial effect on parents,enhancing their attitudes about themselves, their child’s school, as well as theschool staff (Smrekar and Cohen-Vogel 2001).

Although some principals and teachers assume that low levels of parentalinvolvement reflect parents’ low interest in their child’s education, evidenceindicates the opposite—that parents, including inner city, low-income parents,generally display positive attitudes toward their children’s educational devel-opment (Patrikakou and Weissberg 1998). Schools design more opportunitiesfor some parents than others. Specifically, teachers working with higher-incomeparents indicate that their school offers more opportunities for involvementat the school level than do teachers working with lower-income parents (Bauchand Goldring 2000). Other studies suggest that parents do not know how tobe productively involved in their children’s education (Epstein and Dauber1991). Many believe that it is the job of the districts and schools to informparents and to organize school and family connections to foster increasedinvolvement. Because of the low levels of parental and community involvementin some districts, it can be argued that most parents need direction and helpfrom the schools in order to know how to be productively involved in their



children’s education. The policies, pressures, and programs to fill this void inmeaningful ways are currently inadequate (Kruse and Louis 2009).

Methodology

The data for this analysis come from a principal and teacher survey admin-istered in 2005–6 as part of a large multiyear, mixed-method study focusingon the relationship between leadership and student achievement. For the largestudy, stratified random sampling procedures were used at all organizationallevels: states were sampled to ensure variation in geography, demographics,state governance for education, curriculum standards, leadership policies, andaccountability systems; districts were sampled to achieve variation in size andstudent diversity (e.g., race/ethnicity, family income), as well as trends instudent performance on state accountability measures; school samples wereadjusted to ensure variation in school level (elementary, middle, and secondary)and student diversity. We obtained achievement data for math and Englishfrom all available grade levels through state department of education Websites or by directly contacting the state departments of education.

Both surveys contained newly developed items as well as existing scalesfrom other surveys with good reliability measures. Both surveys were fieldtested and piloted in several schools in a large urban district in January 2005,and discussions of the instruments were held with selected respondents afterthe pretest. Instruments were revised accordingly. The principal and teachersurveys were mailed to a total of 180 schools in 45 districts that span acrossnine states. A total of 260 administrators returned the surveys (157 principalsand 103 vice principals) for a response rate of 74.2 percent. For the purposeof this article, we chose to focus only on the responses of principals (N p

). In addition, 81.25 percent of schools that were sent principal surveys157returned them. At the same time, surveys were sent to all teachers in theseschools, and 4,491 returned the surveys (67 percent response rate). All of theperception or attitudinal variables were measured using six-point Likert scales.

For the larger study, we also conducted qualitative interviews in 18 schooldistricts and 36 schools for three consecutive years. We interviewed stake-holders at all levels including state, district, community (including parents,business members, and community group members), and school. In addition,we administered a second round of teacher and principal surveys during spring2008 and are in the process of analyzing the new survey data. The analysisfor this article focuses primarily on the items on both round 1 surveys relatedto principal and teacher perceptions of parent and community involvementin schools. Items on the principal survey addressed such themes as the levelof outside stakeholder influence in schools, the composition of the building

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leadership teams, the level of influence of outside stakeholder groups, and theperceptions of principals and teachers on parent and community opennessand involvement in promoting student learning. Using principal componentanalysis with varimax rotation, we developed separate scales for each survey.Then, using stepwise regression, we analyzed the principal and teacher surveysseparately. Our outcome variables in the first analysis of the principal surveyare (1) the diversity of membership on the site council and (2) the level ofopenness to community and parent involvement in schools. In addition, weexamined which of our factors were associated with the level of math achieve-ment using the (3) 2005–6 mean math proficiency for that building. Ouroutcome variable in the second analysis of the teacher survey is the 2005–6mean math proficiency for that building. Our independent variables for bothsurvey analyses include the other constructed factor variables in addition topoverty (defined as the percentage of free and reduced-price lunch—FRPLstudents) and school level (defined as elementary or secondary—which wasmiddle and high school combined) as the control variables. We use povertyand building level as control variables because several studies that examinedcommunity involvement specifically found that SES, as measured by the per-centage of students receiving FRPL, and grade level of child were significantfactors in the level of parent involvement in schools and because SES is alsoa significant factor in predicting student achievement (Clark 1993; Hendersonand Mapp 2002; Ho Sui-Chu and Willms 1996; Shaver and Walls 1998).

Variable Construction

Principal survey.—We developed independent and dependent variables byusing principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation. Three clearfactors emerged with eigenvalues over 1.0. Loading was considered high if itwas greater than .5. All factors had a Cronbach’s alpha of .7 or above,calculated by examining the items that loaded high on the factor.

• Principals’ openness to community involvement: This factor had high loadingson items such as “community groups are involved in setting directionfor our school improvement efforts” and “my school includes communityleaders and organizations when planning curriculum.” All of the itemsreflected our definition of participatory democratic structures wherecommunity members were actively included in planning and settingschool improvement goals.

• District support for community and parent involvement: This factor had highloadings on items such as “my district leaders in the central office ensurewide participation in decision making about school improvement,” “areeffective in building community support for school improvement efforts,”



and “the community is a valued partner in the decision-making process.”We wanted to measure the role of the district in helping or hinderingprincipals from seeking greater community and parent involvement.

• Principals’ perceptions of parent influence: This factor loaded high on itemssuch as “our site council/building leadership team encourages parentsto provide leadership” and “parents are involved in setting direction forschool improvement efforts.” We wanted to measure the perceived levelof influence of parents in setting directions for school improvement effortsand the extent to which parents are involved in decision making.

Based on the factor analyses, we computed scales for each of the above var-iables by adding those items that loaded clearly on the factor.

In addition, we created a new variable to measure the diversity of mem-bership on schools’ building leadership teams (or site councils). In our sample,we first examined elected versus nonelected site councils in order to distinguishbetween leadership teams that reflected democratic participatory structuresand those that did not. For our definition, we chose to focus on formallyelected building leadership teams that are diverse. Diversity in our definitionincludes leadership teams that have more than three “groups” of people rep-resented on the teams; teams with more than three “groups” include parentsand community members. The groups were categorized as follows: schooladministrators, teachers, support staff, community members, and parents.

Forty-three percent of building leadership teams in our sample are elected.In our analysis, we found that if the site council is elected, it tends to be morediverse than if it was not elected. For our analysis, we made a new variablelabeled “SCDiversity” (site council diversity) to describe the diversity of mem-bership on-site councils or building leadership teams. Figure 1 is a graphshowing the SCDiversity based on our principal survey sample ( ):N p 157The numbers under “diversity of membership on site council” correspond tothe number of represented groups. Greater than three means that communitymembers and/or parents were included as members of the site council. Fromthis graph, it is evident that most elected site councils in our sample havecommunity members and parents on them and only a few have just admin-istrators and teachers or administrators, teachers, and other school staff.

Teacher survey.—Next, we developed our teacher survey independent variablesby using principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation. Four clearfactors emerged with eigenvalues over 1.0. Loading was considered high if itwas greater than .5. All factors had a Cronbach’s alpha of .7 or above.

• Parent/teacher shared leadership: This factor had high loadings on items suchas “my school principal ensures wide participation in decisions aboutschool improvement,” “my school principal engages parents in theschool’s improvement efforts,” and “my school’s principal promotes lead-ership development among teachers.” We used this variable because the

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FIG. 1.—Diversity of Membership on the Site Council or Building Leadership Team

literature suggests that in schools with evidence of shared leadership,principals and teachers are more likely to collaborate with parents andthe community (Anderson 1998; Goldring and Sims 2005; Leithwoodet al. 1999; Opfer and Denmark 2001; Tschannen-Moran 2001).

• District and school leadership influence: This factor had high loadings on itemssuch as “How much direct influence do the following individuals orgroups have on school decisions?” The choices included principals, otherbuilding-level administrators, and district-level administrators. We usedthis variable as a measure of the degree to which administrators—atboth the school and district level, retained control over decision makingin schools.

• Teachers’ perceptions of parent influence: This factor had high loadings on itemssuch as “How much direct influence do parent advisory groups have onschool decisions?” and “How much direct influence do individual parentshave on school decisions?” This variable explores whether teachers’perceptions of parent influence are related to student learning outcomes.

• Teacher Influence: This factor loaded high on items such as “How much



TABLE 1

Principal Survey Correlations Matrix ( )N p 157

1 2 3 4 5 6

Percentage of free orreduced-price lunchstudents 1.00

School level (elementaryor secondary) �.179* 1.00

Diversity of member-ship on site council .197* �.079 1.00

Principal’s openness tocommunityinvolvement .062 .036 .273** 1.00

Principal’s perceptionsof parent influence .019 �.317** .306** .432** 1.00

District support �.189* �.027 .177 .246** .345** 1.00

* Significant at the .05 level.** Significant at the .001 level.

direct influence do school teams have on school decisions?” and “Howmuch direct influence do teachers with designated leadership roles haveon school decisions?” We constructed this variable in order to distinguishbetween the influence of parents, administrators, and teachers in schooldecisions.

Based on the factor analyses, we computed scales for each of the above var-iables by adding those items that loaded clearly on the factor.

Achievement and school characteristics.—Student achievement was measured bythe school’s performance on the 2005–6 state tests administered as part oftheir mandated response to federal legislation and were obtained either fromstate Web sites or directly from the school districts. Demographic character-istics, including the number of students receiving subsidized food programsupport and the type of school (elementary school, secondary school) werealso obtained from public sources.

Data Analysis and Results

In addressing our research questions we first explored our newly constructedvariables by looking at the correlations to examine relationships and to accountfor highly correlated variables or multicollinearity (see table 1): in examiningthe correlations, we find that the variable principals’ perception of parentinfluence is moderately weak positive but significantly correlated with the

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TABLE 2

Factors Associated with the Diversity of Membership on Site Councils ( )N p 157

PredictorStandardizedCoefficient t Sig. 2R

Adjusted2R

(Constant) 3.648 !.001Percentage of free or

reduced-price lunchstudents .260 2.656 .009

District support .227 2.324 .022F p 5.092 .092 .074

variable principals’ openness to community involvement. Because of this re-lationship, we ran separate stepwise linear regressions (one with principals’openness to community involvement as our independent variable, along withour other independent variables, and then one with principal’s perceptions ofparent influence as one of the independent variables) in order to examineeach leadership variable to see which variables are associated with studentachievement over and above our control variables of FRPL students and schoollevel. Also worth noting in table 1 is the relationship between principal’sperceptions of parent influence and school level. The correlation is moderatelyweak negative, yet significant. This result suggests that principal’s perceivegreater levels of parental influence in the lower grades, which is consistentwith the literature (Patrikakou and Weissberg 1998). We find that althoughmany of our other newly constructed variables are weakly correlated, we arenot overly concerned about multicollinearity.

In our first analysis, we explore which variables are associated with thediversity of membership on site councils. Specifically, we examine which districtand school leadership factors are associated with whether or not a school hasdiverse (meaning parents and community) members on their building leader-ship teams above and beyond administrators and teachers. Using diversity ofmembership on the site council as our dependent variable, we use linearregression to examine the relationship between district support for more stake-holder involvement, controlling for the percentage of FRPL students. Ourfirst analysis reveals that the model is significant at the .05 level (see table 2).

Poverty level and district support for community involvement only explain9 percent of the variance in the diversity of membership on building leadershipteams. Nevertheless, we find that diversity of membership on the site councilor building leadership team is fostered by district support for communityparticipation and occurs most frequently in schools with high SES populations.

In our second analysis, we look at which factors are associated with whether



TABLE 3

Factors Associated with Principals’ Openness to Community ( )N p 157


Adjusted2R

1. (Constant) 16.073 !.001Percentage of free

or reduced-price lunchstudents .027 .274 .785

F p .075 .001 �.0092. (Constant) 2.130 .036

Percentage of freeor reduced-price lunchstudents .017 .172 .864

District support .169 1.673 .097SCDiversity .230 2.292 .024F change p

*5.159 .095 .0683. (Constant) 1.661 .1000

Percentage of freeor reduced-price lunchstudents .025 .224 .808

District support .171 1.684 .095SCDiversity .231 2.289 .024Elementary or

secondary .035 .352 .726F change p .124 .096 .059

* Significant at the .05 level.

or not principals are open to community-level involvement. Using communityopenness as our dependent variable, we use stepwise regression to assess thedegree to which our independent variables, district support for more stake-holder involvement and the diversity of membership on the site council, ac-count for the variance in our dependent variable. We use FRPL and schoollevel as our controlling variables (see table 3). In the first model, our resultsindicate that poverty level, as measured by FRLP, does not influence whetheror not principals are open to community-level involvement. This finding sug-gests that the context of the school does not matter as much to principals’openness for community involvement. In the second model, we add districtsupport and site council diversity as independent variables. Results show thatsite council diversity is the only significant variable associated with principals’openness to community involvement at the .05 level. Furthermore, we find

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NOVEMBER 2009 17

that the district’s policies and support for community participation has alimited influence on the openness of the school to community involvement.It appears that although districts play a role in the makeup of building lead-ership teams, they play only a limited role in fostering school leaders’ opennessto community involvement in decision making. In our third model, we findthat school level is not associated with whether or not a principal is open tocommunity involvement. We conclude that participatory structures or thedegree to which building leadership teams reflect a diverse membership hasa strong influence on the level of openness to community and parent involve-ment in schools.

In our final analyses using the principal survey, we examine which factors,if any, have an influence on student math achievement, using stepwise linearregression. Using 2005–6 mean math proficiency for each school building asour outcome variable, we use site council diversity, district support, and prin-cipals’ openness to community level influence as independent variables andthe FRPL students and school level as control variables. For our analysis, weuse stepwise regression so that we can examine whether or not the leadershipvariables are associated with student outcomes above and beyond poverty andschool level (see table 4). In the first model, results indicate that poverty, asmeasured by FRPL, accounts for 17 percent of the variance in student mathachievement. In model 2, we add the leadership variables to see if leadershipat both the building and district levels adds to our understanding of studentachievement. Our findings, however, show that site council diversity, districtsupport, and principals’ openness to community involvement do not relatesignificantly to student achievement. The third model reveals that school leveldoes have a significant inverse affect on student math achievement. When weswap principals’ openness to community involvement with principals’ percep-tions of parent influence, our results do not change—meaning our leadershipvariables do not influence student math achievement (see appendix table A1).These findings suggest that even if principals are open to community involve-ment or perceive a greater level of parent influence, as well as institute par-ticipatory democratic structures in schools, the attitudes and correspondingschool structures do not have an influence on student achievement above andbeyond contextual factors. This finding is consistent with what is known inthe field—that simply changing structure or being open to involvement andinfluence does not necessary lead to increased student learning.

We shift to the teacher survey to address our last research question, lookingat the correlations to examine relationships and to address issues of multi-collinearity (see table 5). Similar to the principal survey, many of our itemsreach statistical significance but with relatively small coefficients (due to thesize of the sample). This table shows that our highest correlation is betweenparent/teacher shared leadership and teachers’ perceptions of parent involve-



TABLE 4

Principal Survey: Factors Associated with 2005–6 Student Achievement Scores at the

Building Level ( )N p 157


Adjusted2R

1. (Constant) 17.617 !.001Percentage of free or

reduced-price lunchstudents �.416 �4.413 .000

**F p 19.471 .173 .1642. (Constant) 5.196 !.001

Percentage of free orreduced-price lunchstudents �.405 �4.009 .000

SCDiversity .087 .856 .394District support .096 .970 .335Principal openness to

community-levelinfluence �.180 �1.836 .070

F change p 1.419 .210 .1753. (Constant) 5.973 !.001


SCDiversity .099 1.004 .318District support .078 .811 .419Principal openness to

community-levelinfluence �.159 �1.662 .100

Elementary orsecondary �.255 �2.649 .010

*F change p 7.018 .268 .227


ment. This finding is consistent with existing research that indicates that ifteachers have more influence in decision making and practice shared lead-ership, they believe that parents are also more likely to have influence andbe involved actively in school improvement efforts (Tschannen-Moran andHoy 2000). Since other research has confirmed this relationship, we kept bothconstructs in the remaining analyses.

Using stepwise linear regression, we examine which leadership variables areassociated with student achievement above and beyond our control variables.We use parent/teacher shared leadership, district/school leadership, teacher

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NOVEMBER 2009 19

TABLE 5

Teacher Survey: Correlation Matrix ( )N p 4,491

1 2 3 4 5 6

Percentage of free orreduced-price lunchstudents 1.00

Elementary orsecondary �.278** 1.00

Parent/teacher sharedleadership �.018 �.145** 1.00

District/school leader-ship influence �.052** .000 .193 1.00

Teachers’ perceptionsof parentinvolvement �.018 �.078** .485** .292** 1.00

Teacher influence �.137** �.073** .315** .177** .450** 1.00

** Significant at the .001 level.

influence, and teachers’ perceptions of parent involvement as our independentvariables, 2005–6 building-level math achievement as our outcome variable,and the percentage of FRPL students and school level as our controllingvariables (see table 6). Not surprisingly, model 1 results show that poverty levelhas an inverse but statistically significant affect on student math achievementand accounts for 21 percent of the variance. When we add our participatoryand shared leadership variables to model 2, we find that both parent/teachershared leadership and teacher’s perceptions of parent influence positively andsignificantly are associated with student math achievement at the .001 level.As predicted, model 3 reveals that school level again has an inverse statisticallysignificant relationship with student math achievement at the .001 level. Dis-trict/school leadership and teacher influence, however, do not have a signif-icant influence on student learning. This finding is interesting given the re-search on the site-based management movement that revealed that whenschools were charged with creating more shared leadership and being moreinclusive with parents and community members, principals and teachers main-tained decision-making control (Hess 1999; Malen 1994, 1999; Malen andOgawa 1988; Tschannen-Moran 2001).

Discussion

In this article, we sought to answer three research questions: (1) How doesleadership style affect principals’ openness to community involvement? (2) Is



TABLE 6

Teacher Survey: Factors Associated with 2005–6 Student Achievement Scores at the

Building Level ( )N p 4,491


Adjusted2R



**F p 860.303 .209 .2092. (Constant) 21.916 !.001


Parent/teacher sharedleadership .097 5.468 .000

District/school leadership .004 .269 .788Teacher influence .020 1.059 .290Teachers’ perceptions of par-

ent involvement .058 3.276 .001**F change p 20.771 .229 .228



Parent/teacher sharedleadership .054 3.159 .002

District/school leadership .011 .683 .494Teacher influence .021 1.153 .249Teachers’ perceptions of par-

ent involvement .043 2.530 .011Elementary or secondary �.268 �16.672 .000

**F change p 277.955 .290 .289

** Significant at the .001 level.

a principal’s openness to community involvement related to student achieve-ment? And (3) How are participatory and shared school leadership structuresrelated to student learning? We summarize the answers to our three researchquestions below.

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NOVEMBER 2009 21

Question 1: How Does Leadership Style Affect Principals’ Openness toCommunity Involvement?

For our first question, stepwise regression analysis revealed that diversity ofmembership on building leadership teams is mediated by the district’s supportfor community and parent involvement. Furthermore, diverse site councilsare more likely to exist in higher SES schools. The result suggests that districtscan play a role in promoting participatory democratic structures in schoolsby creating policies and expectations for participation by a wide array ofpeoples and groups outside of the school. In addition, districts may have toplay more of a role in helping to create diverse leadership teams in moreaffluent communities.

In examining which factors influence how open a principal was to com-munity and parent involvement, we found that although district support formore involvement does correlate with the diversity of membership on sitecouncils, districts do not have a strong impact on how open principals are tocommunity and parent involvement outside of the traditional site councilstructures. This finding suggests that districts are not creating the ethos orexpectation for schools to be more open to community and parent involve-ment. Our analysis reveals that the major role that districts are playing is tocreate structural policies that demand a certain level of outside stakeholderinfluence in decision making. These policies and expectations, however, haveonly a very weak and indirect impact on creating more participatory andopen environments in schools. We did find that when schools do have morediverse members on their site councils or building leadership teams, principalsappear to be more open to community-level involvement. This finding is notsurprising and suggests that in schools with parents and community membersin significant leadership roles, principals are more open generally to outsidestakeholder influences in other ways. These findings are consistent with theresearch that says leaders can and often do play a significant role in the levelof parent and community involvement in schools (Anderson 1998; Goldringand Sims 2005; Honig 2003; Leithwood et al. 1999; Opfer and Denmark2001). Overall, fostering democratic participation appears to be a function ofboth district and school leadership, but in different ways:

• District policies—setting expectations for who should be involved—in-fluences the range of stakeholders who participate in school decisions.

• District “culture” appears to have a limited influence on stakeholderinvolvement at the school level.

• Principal’s personal behaviors and attitudes about community and parentinfluence are strongly related to community and parent involvement inschool decisions.



Question 2: Is a Principal’s Openness to Community Involvement Related toStudent Achievement?

Our principal survey analysis revealed that there is no statistically significantrelationship between the diversity of membership on site councils, districtsupport for including outside stakeholders in school level decisions, principals’perceptions of parent influence, or principals’ openness to community in-volvement to student math achievement, over and above controlling for pov-erty and school level. Although previous research suggests that principals playa large role in the level of involvement of parents and communities in schools,it is consistent with other findings that changing building-level structures (in-cluding more diverse members on building leadership teams) and being opento community involvement alone may not influence student learning—espe-cially considering our finding that more democratic participatory structuresexist in lower SES populations.

One finding, however, is that although a principals’ openness to communityinvolvement is not significantly related to achievement at the .05 level in theregression model, it does show an inverse relationship with student achieve-ment at a .10 significance level. One possible explanation could be that inacademically struggling schools with low achievement, principals may feelmore open to involve outside stakeholders in problem solving or in schoolimprovement efforts aimed at increasing student learning. On the other hand,we may hypothesize that in schools that are doing well academically, principalsmay feel less compelled to bring in outside parent and community membersfor direction since they might contend that because they are high achieving,they do not want to allow external influences to steer them off course. Thishypothesis is consistent with the organizing literature that suggests parentsand community members focus more of their efforts on low-performing schoolsand tend to have less influence in high-performing schools (Malen and Ogawa1988; Mediratta et al. 2002, 2008). We will be examining these outcomes infurther research on qualitative data using case study analysis.

Question 3: How Are Participatory and Shared School Leadership StructuresRelated to Student Learning?

When we turned to the teacher survey to examine in more detail how principalbehaviors and a school culture of sharing leadership might be associated withstudent achievement, our answer is more positive. Our results indicate thatin schools where teachers perceive greater involvement by parents and inschools where teachers indicate that they have a school environment wherethey practice shared leadership, student achievement is higher. Although this

Gordon and Louis

NOVEMBER 2009 23

is only a correlational and not a causal relationship, this analysis suggests thatdirect and active involvement by parents (as perceived by teachers) may havean impact on student learning. Although Feuerstein’s (2000) research indicatedthat schools have less influence over the “subtle” forms of parent involvement,this research suggests that teachers and principals may actually have a greaterinfluence than previously thought on parent and community involvement andits link to student learning. Because parent involvement may be linked tostudent achievement correlationally, we contend that teachers and principalscan play a role in increasing student learning by creating a culture of sharedleadership and responsibility, not just among school staff but also with thewider community. In future research we will examine the qualitative data inorder to get a better picture of how shared leadership and parent influenceoperate in our sample schools. Although our participatory and shared lead-ership variables add only about 2 percent to the overall variance in studentachievement over and above poverty and school level, we believe it is asignificant argument for incorporating more broadly shared leadership andparticipatory democratic structures in schools.

At first glance, some aspects of our results appear to be discrepant. Whileprincipals’ reports of their behavior and efforts to promote more open rela-tionships with community and parents are not related to student achievement,reports about parent involvement by teachers located in the same schools suggesta significant influence. One explanation may be that principals are simply poorreporters of their own behavior and inflated their reported behaviors to reflectthe increasing normative assumption, discussed above, that they are supposedto work on this issue. Teachers, in contrast, were asked to report on the indirectresults of their principal’s efforts and the school culture in general, rather thanon their own behavior, and may, therefore, have been more forthright.

There are, however, other explanations that do not rely on response bias.One might be that in schools in which teachers experience shared decisionmaking they are more “empowered,” as Leithwood and Prestine (2002, 46)suggested, and therefore more willing to engage parents as participants in theirchildren’s learning and also to accept their input into setting directions forschool improvement efforts that increase student achievement. In other words,a more professionalized and influential group of teachers may seek to increasethe resources available to improve student achievement (including increasingparent involvement and influence) rather than, as the critics of professionalismhave assumed, claiming exclusive knowledge and expertise. If this is the case,the analogy would be to the movement within the medical profession to makepatients more knowledgeable as partners in complex health decisions.

Another explanation might be that teachers see the consequences of prin-cipals’ efforts to shape an inclusive culture in the school rather than lookingat the concrete, structural components of parent and community involvement.



This explanation could account for the unexpected finding that our initial factoranalysis produced a variable that includes measures of both parent and teacherinfluence within the school. By itself, this finding suggests that principals, whohave a great deal of influence over the culture of the school, may have a subtleand indirect influence on student achievement by increasing openness and mak-ing the school more democratic. This supports the assumption that it is not thestructures that make a school democratic but the everyday actions that encourageor discourage the flow of ideas and influence across boundaries.

Conclusion

Before commenting on the contributions of our study, we take note of a fewof its limitations. First, we have examined only the survey data available tous through our larger study, and we are well aware of the limitations that thiscreates for understanding the dynamics of parent and teacher participation,as well as the role of principals in expanding opportunities for shared ordistributed leadership. Reliance on survey data also means that we are unableto examine in detail the processes of democratic decision making within andacross school boundaries. Some of the issues that we raised in the literaturereview (e.g., the focus on parents as “clients” vs. “members”) are not addressedin our quantitative measures. In addition, our data, both our qualitative andquantitative data, are limited in the degree to which we can address the effectsof involvement on parents, particularly on the subtle forms of parent involve-ment in their children’s education. Finally, our survey was conducted in 2005,before some of the more onerous effects of state and federal accountabilityand testing policies were apparent to most school-based professionals. Wehasten to point out that a deeper analysis of the longitudinal case materials(2005–8) is well underway, and it includes the voices of parents and communitymembers. This analysis suggests that the additional voices and the ability tosituate people’s responses to local and state policy churn has had limited impacton the findings reported in this article. In spite of these limitations, our analysissheds some light on a number of the larger theoretical issues that were iden-tified in the literature.

First, with respect to the links between parent involvement and studentlearning, we support those who argue that schools (and school leaders) mayhave an indirect influence on the subtle aspects of homeschool engagement.While formal parent education programs or other efforts may bear real fruitfor student learning, more limited administrative efforts to make the schoola friendly and trusting place for families may also encourage additional teacherresponsiveness around academic work. How principal behaviors shape a schoolculture that is open to families has been investigated in previous studies, but

Gordon and Louis

NOVEMBER 2009 25

our analysis suggests a need for more examinations of the creation of a cultureof openness to community that is reflected in teachers’ sense that they andparents are sharing the work of educating children.

Second, creating and sustaining democratic participation may be less amatter of policy visions than of daily transactions with school members. Theability of districts to encourage participatory involvement has limited effectsat the school level, and formal participation has limited impact on the achieve-ment of students in the school. This does not mean that these policies shouldbe abandoned, because they may have symbolic value of their own that haseffects that we have not measured. Our study hints, however, that the moreexperience that principals have with community interactions (e.g., throughdiverse site councils), the more likely they are to be open to more influencein the daily practices in their buildings.

There is, however, a need to move beyond a focus on changing the powerstructure of schools. Administrators are still “in control” of the system, andprincipals have a significant impact on how teachers react to and work withparents in addition to how they work with students in classrooms. But, while25 years of policy and research evidence supports the benefits of more porousboundaries between schools and communities, the learning curve about howto create effective participation while maintaining legitimate fiduciary andprofessional responsibility is steep. Rather than hoping that rearrangementsof existing school structures will make participation happen, we need to createother venues for professionals and “interested stakeholders” to engage aroundthe question of mutual responsibilities, other than those related to powerredistribution or traditional events that tend to exclude poor and minorityparents.

The challenge that we see in our work is how best to create more com-munitarian participation rather than representative democracy. As part of thisdiscussion, our data do not support the view that professional-communityconflicts over who controls the school are inevitable: parents and teachersseem to share more than that which may divide them. There are clearly manycircumstances under which differences may become politicized, and thesecreate opportunities for good investigative news stories as well as researchopportunities. In the daily life of teachers, however, there does not seem tobe a great deal of professional-community conflict. Schools that are open toparent influence are also open to teacher influence: it is not a “zero-sum”power game but an expanding pie. Open and shared patterns of influencemay produce the settings in which professionals and teachers can solve prob-lems of learning that they share because they are both invested in the de-velopment of the same children. In addition, by discussing possible differencesin an open and accepting culture, opportunities for resolution and compromise



may be increased, avoiding the kinds of escalation into power conflicts thatwe read about all too often.

Finally, we think that our study sheds some light on the purposes of sharedleadership. Rather than focusing primarily on school forms and structure, weneed to engage teachers, administrators, parents, and community membersin a continued and reflective discussion of what each party can and shouldcontribute to a child’s learning.

Appendix

TABLE A1

Principal Survey: Factors Affecting 2005–6 Student Achievement Scores at

the Building Level ( )N p 157


Adjusted2R



**F p 18.721 .171 .1622. (Constant) 3.233 .002


SCDiversity .028 .263 .793District support .017 .165 .869Principal perceptions

of parent influence .146 1.388 .169F change p .944 .196 .160



SCDiversity .067 .654 .515District support .019 .191 .849Principal perceptions

of parent influence .079 .754 .453Elementary or

secondary �.255 �2.516 .014*F change p 6.329 .251 .208


Gordon and Louis

NOVEMBER 2009 27

Notes

This article was funded by the Wallace Foundation as part of a larger grant titledLearning from District Efforts to Strengthen Educational Leadership. We would liketo thank Michael Michlin and Beverly Dretzke, who helped with the analysis.

1. To find out more about former President Bill Clinton’s educational policy, Goals2000, please see http://www.ed.gov/legislation/GOALS2000/TheAct/index.html. Tofind out more about former President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB)educational policy, please see http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml?srcpln. ThePublic Education Network (PEN) is a national association of local education funds andindividuals working to advance public school reform in low-income communities. Seehttp://www.publiceducation.org/aboutus.asp.

2. Other factors affecting parent involvement in schools included issues such as race,SES, family size, parent self-efficacy, geographic location of school, educational at-tainment of parents, and grade level of child (Bandura et al. 1996; Crispeels and Rivero2001; Epstein and Dauber 1991; Fan 2001; Feuerstein 2000; Grolnick et al. 1997;Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler 1997; Lee and Bowen 2006).

3. This finding is challenged by some European studies (Møller 2006).4. The earliest observations of this conflict were well documented in the Ocean

Hill-Brownsville controversy in New York City (Berube and Gittell 1969).

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