What We Now Know About Parental Engagement, Which Will Guide the Future

Social Scientists, educators, and parents have often thought of parental engagement as being a major force affecting school outcomes. Over the last more than two decades, there have been some very noteworthy advancements in the understanding of the workings of parental engagement in urban settings. A lot of this progress is due to the growth of: (1) quantitative analysis examining parental involvement and (2) the resultant increase in the level of sophistication of the theories that have been propounded. The advancements have been particularly puissant, due to the quantitative results informing recent theoretical advancements that are being propounded. However, the question arises as to just what has the academic community learned. In addition, what are some of the policy actions and attitudes that need to be incorporated to help incorporate these advances that will help students, educators, and families. This paper addresses these issues.