Family Engagement in Black Students’ Academic Success:
Achievement and Resistance
in an American Suburban School District
Book available at:
“We are here disconfirming the prophecy of underachievement“
- Black Shaker Heights Parent
Insights on the education of successful Black American students.
In this book, Black American families and their students tell powerful stories of how, armed with a stone-cold sober resolve, they forged a path through widely sanctioned racist practices in their schools so their children could achieve an excellent education.
Learn how family histories of struggles, inspirations, courage, resistance, and deep caring engaged their children in education. Learn how the students saw themselves as the continuation of that history and strove to live up to these expectations. Learn how, to achieve, they prevailed over race and class divides and barriers in the school and America at large.
The book concludes that students’ academic engagement leads through their parents and their communities. Learn how schools can forge moments to incorporate the experiences of Black American students and their families to bridge the opportunity gaps.
Black families suggest that their interest in a high-quality education converges with liberal school districts’ interest if only they could see that Blackness is not only a fault line but also an asset.
This book is now a CarbonNeutral® certified publication!
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Blog
Articles, media, research, and more
Family Engagement in Education – How it Works
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After George Floyd Protests – the Flood
Within a year after George Floyd, a Black American, was murdered by a White policeman authorized by our government to shoot, parents across the country — let me start again — White parents across the…
Black Education – Crisis or Critical Mandate?
Black education in America has been dubbed a crisis for years in the national consciousness. First, the so-called problem was caused by the “cultural deficit” of the Black family; second, the focus shifted to the…
What people are saying
“This important book describes both the challenges and the opportunities associated with being an African American family that successfully navigated the Shaker Heights school system.”
“This volume offers powerful counter-narratives to prevailing deficit assumptions about Black students’ school achievement and levels of parental engagement, with nuanced stories of ways Black families used cultural funds of knowledge”
