Empowering Parents and Building Communities

This article builds and explores the hypothesis that parent and community participation in school governance can have positive impacts on community development by fostering improvements in school performance and school— community relations and by acting as a catalyst for collective action around community-development issues. It does so through case studies of reforms for school-based management that have led to the creation of school-site councils that include parents and community representatives in Kentucky, Hawaii, Chicago, and El Paso. The article finds that the hypothesized outcomes can occur where parents are given meaningful decision-making authority in schools, nongovernmental organizations provide training and advocacy for parents, and principals actively facilitate parent involvement.