The Public School: A Source of Alienation for Minority Parents

Though the past three decades have seen dramatic changes in the civil rights status of American minorities, both society in general and the public schools in particular presently appear reluctant to grant further movement toward equality. Discriminatory practices continue in America's public schools. These practices, which Felice (1981) related to the very structure of American schooling, generate high minority dropout rates and disproportionately high numbers of minority student suspensions and placements in mentally or emotionally retarded classes (Cardenas & First, 1983). Public school officials refuse to identify the American educational process itself as discriminatory. Instead, armed with research findings, they continue to blame the victims of discrimination, suggesting that poor environmental circumstances produce disadvantaged students who are thus predisposed to second-class status and failure (see Beck & Muia, 1980; Coleman, 1987; and Fordham & Ogbu, 1986). However, researchers such as Calabrese (1988), Felice (1981), Fine (1986), and Michaelson (1981) have argued that minority students' educational disadvantages are the result of overt and covert school policies that are developed and maintained with the express purpose of ensuring a continuing disparity in the social-class system. As Bronfenbrenner (1986) has asserted, the schools serve to further exacerbate negative feelings and conditions that have their roots in poor economic circumstances and home environments. Although the literature suggests different causes, there is general agreement that minorities are alienated from social structures in general and from the school organization in particular (see Carnegie Corporation, 1984). Building upon Bronfenbrenner's (1986) work, the present study will examine the relationship of the parents of minority students to the public schools to ascertain the degree of separation or alienation, if any, that these parents feel toward the schools.