Helicopter parents have become a recent phenomenon in higher education. Who are these parents and why have they landed on our college campuses? This monograph examines parental involvement in higher education by looking at the history of the relationship between students and institutions and institutional responses to this phenomenon. It explores alternative theoretical frameworks that highlight the benefits of strong parental relationships for today's college students, paying particular attention to the variables of gender, race, and socioeconomic class and how they inform the student-parent relationship. This text concludes with implications for practice and suggestions for policy so that all parents are included in our institutional efforts, not just the ones making all the noise. -- Back cover.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of the role that parents and families play in college students’ lives through their involvement starting with K–12, moving through the transition to college, and then focusing on the college experience itself. The authors broaden the conversation to reflect the actual and diverse array of parents and families that play vital roles in students’ collegiate experiences. Particular attention is paid to: diverse families, including students of color, first-generation college students, and low-income students, an agenda for more inclusive research, theories, and practices with the goal of broadening the conversation to reflect the diverse array of parent and family engagement, and standards, models, and best practices that might be applied more broadly and modified as needed. As a whole, this volume offers an expanded way of thinking about how higher education understands, engages, and serves the needs of parents and families. This is the 6th issue of the 41st volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.

The book titled Parental Involvement: Practices, Improvement Strategies and Challenges is a collection of papers focusing on different challenges and practices to obtain greater involvement of parents in the schooling of children and youth. The authors espoused, to varying degrees, the unique and complex patterns of parent-school relationships pointing out two significant areas where parents should become involved, namely home-based and school-based. In their exposition of these two areas, the authors of the various chapters point out both macro and micro antecedents of how parents are involved both at home (home-based) and at school (school-based) supporting their children towards achieving success. At the macro-level, the authors who contributed to this book reflected upon policy issues whereby the Ministries of Education in various countries (i.e., New Zealand, Israel, Finland, South Africa, and the United States) instigated strategies for parental involvement with varying degrees of success. There is also evidence of socio-cultural perspectives and teachers' ethnic and professional identities impacting on attitudes towards parental involvement both at school and at home. In addition, the authors point to the impact of gender differences (fathers and mothers) and at-home engagement with children's educational success. In sum, there are many and variable barriers, obstacles, and challenges towards enabling parents for greater involvement in their children's academic achievements, and a need for more consistency and collaboration across home and school systems. Presenting their most up-to-date research findings, the authors of the various chapters espouse their viewpoints pertaining to parental involvement from the perspective of the parents themselves, the perspective of the teachers, and the views of students both in the home and at the school. For the most part, however, the authors advocate the belief that strengthening parent-teacher relationships will promote the child's development and success in school and in life.

Helicopter parents—the kind that continue to hover even in college—are one of the most ridiculed figures of twenty-first-century parenting, criticized for creating entitled young adults who boomerang back home. But do involved parents really damage their children and burden universities? In this book, sociologist Laura T. Hamilton illuminates the lives of young women and their families to ask just what role parents play during the crucial college years. Hamilton vividly captures the parenting approaches of mothers and fathers from all walks of life—from a CFO for a Fortune 500 company to a waitress at a roadside diner. As she shows, parents are guided by different visions of the ideal college experience, built around classed notions of women’s work/family plans and the ideal age to “grow up.” Some are intensively involved and hold adulthood at bay to cultivate specific traits: professional helicopters, for instance, help develop the skills and credentials that will advance their daughters’ careers, while pink helicopters emphasize appearance, charm, and social ties in the hopes that women will secure a wealthy mate. In sharp contrast, bystander parents—whose influence is often limited by economic concerns—are relegated to the sidelines of their daughter’s lives. Finally, paramedic parents—who can come from a wide range of class backgrounds—sit in the middle, intervening in emergencies but otherwise valuing self-sufficiency above all. Analyzing the effects of each of these approaches with clarity and depth, Hamilton ultimately argues that successfully navigating many colleges and universities without involved parents is nearly impossible, and that schools themselves are increasingly dependent on active parents for a wide array of tasks, with intended and unintended consequences. Altogether, Parenting to a Degree offers an incisive look into the new—and sometimes problematic—relationship between students, parents, and universities.

It seems like common sense that children do better when parents are actively involved in their schooling. But how well does the evidence stack up? The Broken Compass puts this question to the test in the most thorough scientific investigation to date of how parents across socioeconomic and ethnic groups contribute to the academic performance of K-12 children. The surprising discovery is that no clear connection exists between parental involvement and student performance. Keith Robinson and Angel Harris assessed over sixty measures of parental participation, at home and in school. While some of the associations they found were consistent with past studies, others ran contrary to previous research and popular perceptions. It is not the case that Hispanic and African American parents are less concerned about education--or that "Tiger parenting" among Asian Americans gets the desired results. Many low-income parents want to be involved in their children's school lives but often receive little support from school systems. For immigrant families, language barriers only worsen the problem. In this provocative work, Robinson and Harris believe that the time has come to reconsider whether parental involvement can make much of a dent in the basic problems facing American schools today.

Families and schools share a desire for students to succeed but are often perplexed about how to collaborate and support this achievement, especially during the transition to middle and high school. This book will help educators and policymakers identify and implement the most effective strategies to help parents remain involved in their teens’ education. The research in this book looks at diverse families and adolescents from a wide range of backgrounds while considering cultural and socioeconomic contexts. Bringing together multidisciplinary perspectives—including prominent researchers from the fields of teacher education, psychology, and sociology —this authoritative book: Presents new research on family-school partnerships in the unique developmental period of adolescence. Outlines the challenges teachers experience in maintaining communication with families. Offers strategies that reflect academic socialization among African American, Asian American, Latino, and European American families as key factors that promote achievement. Describes how technology can bridge the gap between families and schools in a way that fits with the developmental needs of adolescents. Examines the roles of policymakers, communities, and school districts to highlight developmentally appropriate, culturally sensitive policy solutions.