Education Week - November 18, 2020 - 16

OPINION

Families Not Engaging Remotely?
Rethink the Problem
By Laura Brady,
Stephanie Fryberg,
Hazel Rose Markus,
!ÆÇ¿ÇÇ¶Ç¶ÆJÈ²ÇÇËÉÇÈºâ«Ø©â¬
Jenny Yang, &
Perla Rodriguez
BRADY is an associate
research scientist in the
University of Michigan
psychology department.
FRYBERG, a member
of the Tulalip Tribes, is a
professor of psychology at
the University of Michigan.
MARKUS is a professor of
psychology at Stanford
University and co-author
of Clash! How to Thrive
in a Multicultural World
(Penguin Publishing
Group, 2013).
GRIFFITHS and YANG are
doctoral students in social
psychology at Stanford
University.
RODRIGUEZ, the 2018
National Distinguished
Principal from Oregon, is
an elementary principal in
Cornelius, Ore.

T

he coronavirus pandemic
has allowed a
long-standing
educational
myth to take on
new force.
Educators often claim that their
efforts to serve some groups of
children, primarily Black, Latino,
and Native American, are hindered
by things their families fail to do-
things like supervise homework,
comply with school requests,
and communicate with teachers.
During pandemic-initiated distance
learning, these family contributions
may be even more important than
during normal classroom learning
and even less possible, given that
COVID-19 has hit families in
these groups particularly hard.
Concerned for their students, many
educators fear that the pandemic
will exacerbate the " familydisengagement problem. "
We take a different view. Family

disengagement is not inevitable
during the pandemic or at other
times. Our team of researchers and
practitioners working toward school
improvement in the Forest Grove,
Ore., district believes that families
of every background are ready to
partner with schools when schools
speak the right cultural language.
We believe further that the
myth of disengagement stems
from the same forces that
make certain communities feel
" minoritized " -pushed to the
margins-in educational settings.
The disengagement myth draws
from deficit narratives, pervasive
stereotypical beliefs about
deficiencies of Latino, Black,
and Native families, as well
as low-income families of any
background. These narratives
locate a disengagement problem
within families and ignore schools'
responsibilities to provide equal
access and opportunities.
Our contention-backed by

Forest Grove School District
LOCATION: exurb of Portland, Ore.
STUDENTS:

TEACHERS:

approximately 6,000

approximately 300

5
40

11

16

55%
73%

z Latino z white z multiracial/other race

59%

free/reduced-price
lunch

SOURCE:
Oregon Department
of Education

recently collected data-is that
if schools change, the so-called
disengagement problem recedes.
This summer, approximately
1,500 parents and 1,650 students
in the district responded to
surveys to help us understand their
experiences during the first few
months of distance learning. Aligned
with national data, the district's
minority families (most of them
Latino) were more likely to include
essential workers, experience lower
socioeconomic status, and lack a
reliable home-internet connection
compared with white families.
Minority parents also reported more
negative physical, financial, and
psychological COVID-19 effects than
white parents, and minority students
reported greater difficulty doing their
schoolwork and greater COVID-19
anxiety than white students.
Despite these disparities,
minority families had more positive
educational experiences than white
students. Specifically, we found:

z Learning is a collaborative
activity in minority homes. White
and minority parents provided
equal supervision of schooling.
However, minority students received
school help from a wider range of
sources than white students (such as
classmates, siblings, and cousins).
z Education is a top priority for
minority families. Minority parents
rated school as an even stronger
priority than did white parents.
z Minority families have
strong relationships with
educators. Compared with white
parents, minority parents rated their
children's teachers as more helpful,
in part because teachers expressed
caring, provided necessary school
supplies, and communicated clearly
and consistently.
z Minority students stayed
connected to teachers and
classmates. Despite the isolation
of distance learning, minority
students felt closer to their teachers
and classmates compared with their
white peers, perhaps because they
collaborated more frequently with
peers and received more help from
teachers.
Our data did not support the
disengagement myth: Minority
families were highly engaged in
distance learning.

16 | EDUCATION WEEK | November 18, 2020 | www.edweek.org/go/opinion

These findings are good news,
of course, but we caution against
generalizing them. They represent
a substantial amount of work in
the school district. Our researchpractitioner team has collaborated
for three years to overcome cultural
misunderstandings by expanding
educators' cultural toolkits-
their knowledge of how culture
shapes motivation and learning
and how to engage students of
different backgrounds. Cultural
misunderstandings arise between
the predominantly white, middleclass teaching force and families
who hold different beliefs regarding
parents' and teachers' roles in
education and what constitutes
" good " learning.
Many white and middle-class
families in the United States
adhere to cultural values rooted
in independence such that selfexpression, individuation, and
self-advocacy are seen as " good "
behaviors. To be a " good " parent
means voicing concerns and
advocating for one's children. To be
a " good " student necessitates being
individually motivated and showing
engagement by expressing opinions
and questioning authority figures.
Independent values typically guide
how schools try to engage families
and the expectations they set for
students and parents.
Another set of cultural norms
are common among many
lower-income, Black, Latino,
Native American, and Asian
American families, who value
interdependence, often more than
independence. Our toolkit helps
educators understand this cultural
value. Social contexts favoring
interdependence encourage
observation, attending to others'
needs, and deference to authority as
" good " behaviors. Interdependent
parents often view teachers as
academic experts and believe that
parents should support children's
nonacademic development. " Good "
interdependent learning occurs
through relationships and realworld exploration, which can take
the form of collaborative play or
observing and helping older family
or community members.
Without understanding these
cultural differences, educators
often perceive a lack of family
input or student self-expression
as " disengagement. " Moreover,
educators fail to recognize that
fostering student success requires
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