Keith Robinson and Angel L. Harris: Broken Compass: Parental Involvement with Children’s Education

By proclaiming in the New York Times that “parental involvement is overrated,” Robinson and Harris have sparked considerable debate with their book Broken Compass: Parental Involvement with Children’s Education. At the core of Broken Compass is an attempt to determine whether differences in parental involvement account for race and socioeconomic status achievement gaps. Robinson and Harris question whether “the resources expended in efforts to increase parental involvement are justified” as, in their view, evidence exhibiting direct links between parental involvement and improved student outcomes is lacking (p. 4). Using three nationally representative data sets from the National Center for Education Statistics and one additional data set from the state of Maryland, the authors conclude that no clear relationship exists between parental involvement and student outcomes. Robinson and Harris thus propose a new conceptualization of parental involvement that they call “stage setting”. …