A Study on Parents Involvement in Charter Schools : Focusing on PACT charter school

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Other Title
  • チャータースクールにおける父母の学校参加に関する一考察 : PACTチャータースクールを事例として
  • チャータースクール ニ オケル フボ ノ ガッコウ サンカ ニ カンスル イチ コウサツ PACT チャータースクール オ ジレイ ト シテ

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is 1) to reexamine two ideas of school choice and parents involvement, 2) to clarify how to have made it possible for Parents, Allied with Children and Teachers (PACT) to manage two reform approaches compatibly, based on school choice and parents involvement, and 3) to consider the legislative possibility and limitation of two ideas. PACT is a charter school (CS) opened in Anoka-Hennepin district, Minnesota in 1994. The issue of parents involvement in CS is significant, because parents in CS can get involved in personnel affairs, curriculum development, and budget that has been hard for parents in public schools. Moreover it is a new educational practice, introducing both school choice and parents involvement simultaneously. Parents in PACT can participate in school management by: (1) being members of each committee, (2) being Teacher Assistants, (3) expressing own opinions through questionaires. In PACT parents' satisfaction of their involvement is quite high. This outcome implies that the new management introducing two controversial reform approaches is successful in practice. The reasons are following. First, parents were free to choose PACT because of being CS, one of the school choice programs. Second, PACT could offer parents three strategies to promote parents involvement as it had the right to manage school autonomously. Third, parents wanted to make the best of these three strategies because there were many parents who had experiences of home-schooling and who agreed with parents involvement at PACT. But we should be careful of imposing parents involvement on every CS, because this could spoil one of the main characteristics of CS, that is, the diversity of school management. Moreover, introducing parents involvement on every CS might work as a wav of selectivity of parents and students. (291)

Journal

  • Journal of JASEA

    Journal of JASEA 41 (0), 56-68, 1999

    The Japanese Association for the Study of Educational Administration

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