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Together, Better: Improving the Impact of Family Feedback to Build More Equitable Schools

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posted on 2025-04-24, 14:09 authored by Kerry Swarr

This study considers how schools can improve their structures and practices for family engagement to optimize the use and impact of family feedback to create transformational and equitable school and family collaborations. Changes in school demographics and family engagement work due to COVID, alongside a racial reckoning that emerged with the murder of George Floyd and fueled a backlash against a range of efforts to achieve greater inclusiveness of the nation’s cultural pluralism. Within education, this dynamic most notably manifested in distortions of critical race theory, which led to legislation banning its teaching across schools, including public universities in some states. It also impacted notions of parent engagement as some sought to expand and amplify the voices of marginalized parents while others worked to block those efforts through the political weaponization of the fears of White parents. Ultimately, this demands a renewed interest in parents’ role in education with particular attention on intentionally designed processes and tools to help schools cultivate authentic and meaningful partnerships with families that represent their school community is more important than ever.

History

Publisher

ProQuest

Language

English

Committee chair

Kecia Hayes

Committee member(s)

Shani Dowell; Kathy Curry

Degree discipline

Education Policy and Leadership

Degree grantor

American University. School of Education

Degree level

  • Doctoral

Degree name

D.Ed. in Education Policy and Leadership, American University, May 2023

Local identifier

Swarr_american_0008E_12008.pdf

Media type

application/pdf

Pagination

155 pages

Call number

Thesis 11384

MMS ID

99186660194804102

Submission ID

12008

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