x2015 – Page 5 – Cities, Suburbs & Schools Project at Trinity College

Finding the Flaws in Claims about School Choice: What Do We Really Know About School Choice and Student Outcomes

April 29, 2015May 6, 2015Leib Sutcher

School choice—a resounding success! Or is it?
Across the nation the popular rhetoric used to describe school choice is glowing. Describing Connecticut’s choice system, newspaper headlines proclaim, “[Choice programs are] a major contributor to closing the achievement gap” ¹ and “Students [in school choice programs] are improving each year!” ². The much talked about full-length documentary, Waiting for Superman, holds charter schools and parent choice up as the last hope for our urban students to succeed. But in reality, many of these assertions are made based on a faulty comparison ³. The current rhetoric used in the public sphere about choice schools and student performance is not accounting for the fallacy of selection bias.

Measuring the achievement impact of choice schools compared to traditional public schools on students is very difficult. The only true comparison would be to take advantage of a parallel universe in which one could compare students who attended a choice school in one universe with the very same students who simultaneously attended a public school. If this technique was possible, many researchers would be out of the job.

This article points out the flaws in many evaluations of choice schools, and highlights several ways to mitigate and improve school choice analysis. Additionally, using a robust data set, I provide original analysis that mitigates some these issues and situate the findings in a broader context.

Selection bias—the problem that plagues all school choice studies
To investigate the effect that school choice has on student outcomes, researchers leverage statistical tools to try to make the most accurate comparison. The issue we are most concerned about when trying to make this comparison is selection bias. Selection bias occurs when the population of students you are looking at is not random but is self selected. The thing about self selection, is that it may be due to some factor that actually matters in the whole equation. In the school choice debate, we worry about selection bias when the families who chose to apply and attend a charter school are even slightly different that the families who just end up keeping their kids in traditional public schools. The problem arises when we try to compare these two groups. It may be that the difference we observe in test scores is really due to the dissimilarity in the family characteristics rather than in the effectiveness of choice or traditional public schools. Herein lies the challenge: How do we make a true comparison of student outcomes between choice schools and traditional public schools?

Virtual twin method—one way to minimize the impact of selection bias
The CREDO team at Stanford University came up with a method called “virtual twin” to try to make better comparisons. Essentially, they use measurable student characteristics and previous achievement to match students in charter schools with students who attend public school in their same school district. For example, CREDO compares two students with similar prior test scores both coming from low income and high parental education families, but one student now attends a charter school and the other attends a traditional public school. They do this with many pairs of students or “twins” to curb selection bias and make a better comparison between the two school types. Using this methodology in 2009, the CREDO team found that only 17% of charter schools outperformed traditional public schools, while 46% did worse, and 37% had no statistical difference. ⁴ They repeated this study on a slightly larger sample of students in 2013 and found that charter schools on average performed slightly better than in the 2009 study ⁵, but that at the end of the day, an average charter school is just average.

The virtual twin methodology is not perfect, because not all factors can be matched. There still may be some unobservable differences between students who attend charter schools compared with their public school peers. For example, a family that takes the time and effort to apply to a charter school, might be more involved in their student’s education than a family that just sends their student to the neighborhood school, and that might be why we see choice school students performing better than the traditional public school students. In other words, the result may be driven by the unobservable characteristics of the students who attend charter schools, rather than the actual effect of the charter school themselves.

Randomization—another way to address the problem of selection bias
Using another method to mitigate the issue of selection bias, some researchers take advantage of the randomization inherent in a charter school lottery. When charter schools receive more applications that spots available they are required to hold a randomized “lottery” to determine which students receive a spot. In a large study of charter schools, Gleason et al, (2010), compared the achievement of students who won charter lotteries and attended charter schools to students who lost charter lotteries and attended traditional public schools. Since the lotteries are random, we assume on average, there is no difference between the people who won and lost the lottery ⁶.

In terms of methodology, randomized trials are the closest one can get to a perfect comparison. The methodology helps mitigate the selection issue present in the CREDO study, since the student population they are comparing, the winners and losers, both have the unobservable characteristics that lead to a family applying to a charter school. The Gleason study found, on average, that there was no statistically significant impact of charter schools on student achievement. Similar to the CREDO studies, Gleason reports positive outcomes for students with low-SES backgrounds. But even this study with randomized design has it’s limitations. For example, only schools that receive more applications than spots use a lottery, therefore the charter schools analyzed in this study were charter schools that received lots of applications, potentially meaning they were on average better charter schools.

Big Data Analysis—a third method to account for selection bias
I set out to find a different method to add to the current understanding of the effect school choice has on student outcomes, taking into account the main issues involved in investigating student outcomes, including selection bias and the unobserved factors that come with it. Increasingly, researchers are collecting data about students over time, in what are referred to as longitudinal studies. These studies often involve capturing data about large numbers of students via surveys, resulting in large data sets. I decided to use one such data set, from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009. By using a variety of variables focusing on student achievement, family background, and school characteristics from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) I wanted to see if I could shed light on the school choice debate.

The High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 was conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. The data set is comprised of nearly 24,000 9th graders selected randomly from 944 schools. Students, parents, teachers, administrators, and counselors are all surveyed to collect a wide variety of data on both the students and their learning environment. Called multi-level surveying, this data set, in concert with students test scores provided a rich data set for analysis.For an extended explanation of these data, click here.

One of the main issues with using survey data is that it is impossible to account for every potential factor that determines student achievement. In order to isolate the true effect of participating in a school choice program, it’s necessary to hold constant every other potential difference between students. This is obviously an impossible task, especially considering the many unobserved and unmeasurable factors that are present, such as differences in student motivation or innate ability. However, there are analytic and statistical strategies that enable you to control for these differences, that allow you to better isolate the true relationship between school choice and student achievement. I used a variety of these student, parent, teacher, and school controls to try to measure the underlying components that affect a student’s test score.

My Assumptions
I set out, assuming that five factors are most important in determining student achievement.They are: 1) whether or not a student attends a choice school, 2) students’ demographic characteristics, 3) students’ motivation, 4) a student’s parental characteristics, and 5) a students teacher characteristics. If we had the data and could measure all of these underlying factors, we could make a convincing case for the accuracy of our estimates to truly measure the effect of choice on student achievement.

Unfortunately, many of these underlying constructs are unobservable, not measured, or have layers of complexity. To mitigate this issue, I used factors I could measure that get at the underlying construct and are highly correlated with these unmeasured factors. For example, when looking at student motivation, I controlled for whether students think getting good grades is important and whether students think they will graduate from college. The hope is that high student motivation, an unobservable characteristic, will overlap sufficiently with students who think getting good grades is important and expect to graduate from college to serve as a proxy. For results to be reliable, these relationships need to be highly correlated but not necessarily perfectly correlated. This is because when working with a very large number of students, as I was, one can begin to see that on average these factors will account for motivation. The rest of our proxies are displayed in table 2. Click on each underlying construct for a deeper examination of the variables used to measure them. Click here for a full breakdown of the model used in estimation.

Click to read more on how each construct is represented: true achievement, school choice, family background, student motivation, parent characteristics, or teacher characteristics.

The Tricky Bit—How to Account for Selection Bias
Now for the important question, in the context of these data and techniques, how did I compare students in choice schools to students in traditional public school knowing that that difference in decision might be because of some unobservable characteristic obscuring the true comparison between choice students and traditional public school students?

My hypotheses going in to this study is that when first looking at choice schools on student achievement I would see a positive effect because of selection bias; I expected that the students in choice schools would be systematically different from those in traditional public school due to parental factors that affected their selection of a choice program. However, I expected that after explicitly controlling for parental characteristics, and making a much more valid comparison between students in both types of schools, the initial positive result will not persist. My hypothesis is consistent with past studies that support the idea that parents who send their students to choice schools are on average more involved in their students education thus effecting achievement (Gleason et. al, 2010; Ballou et al., 2007; Betts et al., 2006, CREDO, 2009).

To control for this confounding factor, I used a variety of controls to account for a wide variety of parent involvement. I considered whether or not a parent attends any meeting at the school, a parent teacher organization meeting, or a parent teacher conference. I took into account whether a parent volunteers at their child’s school or helps fundraise for the school. I also considered parents’ expectations of how far they think their student will get in school, and whether or not they help their student with their homework. My assumption was that together all of these variables account for and overlap sufficiently with the unobservable characteristics that choice school families have that would affect student achievement. Although these factors do not directly account for the underlying construct I argue that these characteristics would signal and proxy for the unobserved ones.

The strength of this approach is that it addresses the issue that comes in to play with the Virtual Twin methodology—selection bias, and it gets around some of the main issues of randomization including only looking at over-subscribed schools. The weakness of the method I used is needing to rely on my proxy strengths without being able to actually tell if they sufficiently account for selection bias. There are some who say that data analysis is more art than science. A statistical model is an argument and it is important to question each assumption, while at the same time stepping back to look at what the whole thing has an ability to tell. I argue that the above variables account for enough of the underlying factors of student achievement for our results to be unbiased.

Click here for the descriptive statistics of all the variables used in estimation.

My Findings
Using data from the High School Longitudinal study of 2009 (HSLS 09) and the above methodology, I indeed found that when initially looking at the relationship of participation in a school choice program and student learning, there exists a positive effect for students of low socioeconomic status. This result explains some of the promise and glamour that the idea of school choice receives. However, after using more robust methods and explicitly controlling for the difference in students and families that chose to attend choice programs, the once promising result, disappears.

To arrive at this conclusion I first compared the achievement of students who went to choice schools to that of students who went to traditional public schools while accounting for their race, socioeconomic status and intrinsic motivation. I found that attending a choice school had a positive impact on students from low socioeconomic background. Results based on simple comparisons like this are constantly held in the media as evidence of the positive impact of school choice. To account for the issue of selection bias and the potentially unobserved parent characteristics as the possible reason choice students appear to perform better in my first comparison, I next also accounted for the parent-related variables. As discussed above, these variables are used to account for the potential selection bias introduced because of the differences between the populations at choice schools compared to traditional public schools. I found that after accounting for selection bias, on average, students in choice school perform no better than students in traditional public schools. This result confirms my hypothesis and corroborates other literature indicating that after accounting for selection bias, on the whole choice schools do not outperform traditional public schools. Lastly, when accounting for teacher quality, the results remain the same. Click here to see the full table of regression results.

In summary, looking at the simple relationship between choice schools and student achievement, I found a positive effect of choice schools, consistent with popular claims made in the headlines. However, when accounting for the observed and unobservable differences in data, these once promising results do not persist.

The Limitations
As previously discussed, there are several limitations to this study. First, without random assignment there is no way to be sure that we fully accounted for selection bias. I can make an argument, and I hope that I have, that my methodology accounts for selection bias, but we will never know for sure. Second, beyond selection bias, we don’t know if there are other factors that affect achievement that we are not accounting for that are systematically different between students in choice schools and students in traditional public schools. Researchers call this omitted variable bias, and it is always an issue when working with survey data in particular. One indicator that this study may sufficiently account for both selection and omitted variable bias, is that its results are consistent with randomized studies on schools choice that also find no relationship between choice and student outcomes ⁷ ⁸ ⁹.

Additionally, it is worth noting that this study looks at choice schools on average. This does not mean that no choice schools are outperforming traditional public schools. Rather, it means that as a whole the choice school reform movement is not outperforming the status quo of traditional public schools. Further, this paper also does not distinguish between types of school choice. Because of data limitations charter schools, magnet schools, and voucher programs were clumped together.

Click for more technical limitations and solutions to these limitations including, missing values, attrition, and other data issues.

The Implications
With school choice becoming increasingly popular among reforms it is crucial to investigate its actual effect on students. Although there is a large body of existing research, it is important to keep looking for pieces in the solution to bring better educational opportunities to students as policies shift and school systems progress. A single assessment of the choice system alone will not provide enough evidence on it’s own, but using an abundance of data and a range of techniques, we can continue to fill in more and more of the picture.

Next time you read about a school choice success, don’t accept the result outright. Make sure you consider the comparison they are making, and ask yourself: Do you believe these two groups are equivalent? Has the study sufficiently accounted for the unobservable differences between students in choice schools and students in traditional public school?

Notes:

Ken Imperato, Ajit Gopalakrishnan, and Richard Mooney, “Choice Program Data and Emerging Research: Questioning the Common Interpretations of Publicly Reported Indicators of Choice Program Success” (Magnets in a School Choice Arena, Goodwin College, East Hartford CT, December 12, 2013),http://www.goodwin.edu/pdfs/magnetSchools/Kenneth_Imperato.pdf. ↩
De La Torre, Vanessa. “Hartford ‘Sheff’ Students Outperform Those In City Schools,” September 12, 2013. http://articles.courant.com/2013-09-12/community/hc-hartford-sheff-scores-0913-20130912_1_open-choice-sheff-region-hartford-students. ↩
Guggenheim, Davis, Billy Kimball, Lesley Chilcott, Bill Strickland, Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee, Randi Weingarten, et al. 2011. Waiting for “Superman”. Hollywood, Calif: Paramount Home Entertainment. ↩
Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). 2009. Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States. Stanford, CA: CREDO. ↩
Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). 2013. National charter school study 2013. Stanford, CA: CREDO. ↩
Gleason, Philip, Melissa Clark, Christina Clark Tuttle, and Emily Dwoyer. The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts: Final Report. NCEE 2010-4029. National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, 2010. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED510573. ↩
Bifulco, Robert, Casey D. Cobb, and Courtney Bell. “Can Interdistrict Choice Boost Student Achievement? The Case of Connecticut’s Interdistrict Magnet School Program.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 31, no. 4 (December 1, 2009): 323–45. doi:10.3102/0162373709340917. ↩
Betts, Julian R. Does School Choice Work?: Effects on Student Integration and Achievement. Public Policy Instit. of CA, 2006. ↩
Gleason, Philip, Melissa Clark, Christina Clark Tuttle, and Emily Dwoyer. The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts: Final Report. NCEE 2010-4029. National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, 2010. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED510573. ↩

The progression of the charter school concept away from teacher experimentation and collaboration

April 14, 2015April 14, 2015Rachel Unger

Charter schools have come a long way from Albert Shanker’s vision of an alternative education arena that helps improve public schools while increasing teacher voice and racial and socioeconomic integration. Now, charter schools have become a conservative, free-market alternative that act as competitors to public schools and resist unionization.

Teacher voice is important for both teachers’ rights and better learning conditions for students. Teacher voice does not just mean unionization: it relates to teachers’ roles in decisions on “instruction and curriculum; organization, scheduling, and teaching assignments; hiring, evaluation, and dismissal; salaries and benefits; and teacher professional growth” (85). Teacher turnover is a major problem in charter schools, which have an average turnover of 24.2% versus 11.9% in traditional public schools (39). According to a study by Ingersoll, turnover is correlated with teacher voice: schools with low teacher control in social issues have an average turnover rate of 19%, relative to 4% in schools with high levels (36). In terms of achievement, research shows that schools with unionized teachers have higher achievement levels (though these variables are difficult to measure) (30). This evidence is backed by arguments that empowering teachers brings in more qualified candidates and creates a better learning environment (30-31). Moreover, low rates of unionization in charter schools is not only problematic for those schools; Shanker warned that this pitted teacher unions against charter schools, undermining the latter’s capacity to act as laboratories for public schools (22).

As charter school legislation was enacted in various states, it failed to include collective bargaining rights for teachers. Conservative charter school advocates began to see this as the defining advantage of charter schools over traditional public schools; unions were seen as the cause of unnecessary bureaucracy, micro-management, and restrictions that favored teachers over students (17). Kahlenberg and Potter argue that the image of teacher unions as “defenders of self-interested policies” is inaccurate and outdated; unions have taken middle-ground positions and some have supported merit-based salaries for teachers (31). However, they fail to address on a wider scale the issue of unions protecting bad teachers and preventing accountability. In order to empower educators with new visions, conservative charter school advocates have given preference to school management over teachers to avoid the restrictions unions have imposed on school districts. This has the negative consequence of disempowering teachers and preventing them from having the time, resources, class sizes, compensation, and creativity they need to be a vocal part of charter school experimentation.

Questions:

You say that charter schools have the “potential to fulfill the great democratic mission of American public education” (5). In what way do you see charter schools as democratic, when they tend to be more “free-market” institutions controlled by private organizations rather than the elected government?

Teacher unions are condemning charter schools because they are resistant to unionization, while charter school advocates are critical of unions for opposing conservative charter school ideology. Is this a vicious cycle, and how can we get out of it?

KIPP Schools: The Exception to the Rule

April 14, 2015Sarah Seo

In Kahlenberg and Potter’s A Smarter Charter, the authors systematically outline the disintegration of Albert Shanker’s original vision of charter schools, and present a picture of what they really look like today. One of the most salient tenets in Shanker’s proposal for the foundation of charters emphasized the importance of integrating students across all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds in order to promote social mobility, cohesion, and our shared American identity. The benefits of this social integration were backed up by research finding that “children from socioeconomically deprived families do better academically when they are integrated with children of higher socioeconomic status and better-educated families” (9). Moreover, studies have also found a relationship between racial integration in schools and the production of tolerant, unprejudiced adults (55). Despite the evidence of the effectiveness of socially integrated school populations, charter schools have, on average, proven to be even more economically and racially segregated than traditional public schools.

What led to this break from Shanker’s groundbreaking conception of desegregated charter schools? Charter school operators, whose primary aim is to run schools that bring students better education than their public school counterparts, seem to define doing a “better job” as bringing the benefits of their schools to students who are at-risk. The attention is then placed on helping at-risk students (low-income and minority), pulling focus away from the idea of actually integrating these students into school populations with varying degrees of race and socioeconomic standing. With all the given literature advancing the notion that integrated schools will increase academic performance as well as encourage tolerance in its students, the creation of charter schools catering to at-risk students seems to be a set up for underachievement. However, there is one organization of charter schools that has been able to fight the stereotype and service high-poverty, minority students while maintaining academic achievement.

KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program, is a network of charter schools that serves more than 86% of students from low-income families and 95% of students who identify as African American or Latino (78). While based on these numbers KIPP appears to cater to an isolated population of low-income and minority students, these students have academically performed better than any other program servicing low-income children (78). KIPP schools embrace longer school days, more homework, and a demanding set of expectations, which sets these schools apart from other low-income serving public and charter schools. These features create a self-selected student population made of not the “typical low-income student, but rather a subset fortunate enough to have striving parents” to inspire motivation in their kids (79).

While KIPP is one example where an almost entirely racially and economically isolated charter school has produced academic success, the “tough love” and self-selection that weeds out lower achievers provides a skewed image of the school. Except for KIPP schools, charter schools should realize the truth and effectiveness in Shanker’s original vision of charters, where the integration of all kinds of students will ultimately lead to increased academic performance.

Teaching Unions: Will they Build or Destroy Education in Charter Schools?

April 14, 2015April 14, 2015Alix Liss

Teacher unions have long been recognized for the supportive network of educators they bring together. Some believe unions allow teachers to fight for better rights, higher wages and a greater number of opportunities in their communities. Other educators and parents, often stereotypically associated with charter schools, make the argument that with unions, individual school development is difficult, especially given a contract’s typically high standards and restrictive requirements regarding teacher retention, job security and wages. Given Kahlenberg and Potter’s argument for the importance of teacher voice in their book entitled “Smarter Charter,” understanding the supporting and opposing arguments for unions is imperative to comprehending how charter schools can most effectively start and operate.

Charter schools pride themselves on providing opportunities for teacher voice and autonomy, giving educators the chance to work with “school issues, instruction, curriculum, organization, schooling… evaluation, benefits and professional growth” (85). According to Geoffrey Canada, this opportunity is ultimately destroyed by the presence of unions, (151). Without unions, teachers spend more time in their classrooms with their own planned curriculums. Without unions, some argue teachers in one particular school can work more collaboratively to build a system that is productive for both students and themselves. And yet, other scholars discussed in “Smarter Charter” argue the opposite, suggesting teacher unions actually provide the perfect forum for productive collaboration amongst educators.

In speaking about whether or not teachers wanted to form a union at Morris Jeff Community School in New Orleans in 2013, the choice was ultimately made “to make sure the collaborative relationships established during the school’s first few years [would] continue as the school grows (157).” Many individuals are particularly supportive of unions and the purpose behind them, even in charter schools — the idea they exist in order to protect individuals working within the education sector. Unions can give teachers a greater number of opportunities to contribute to school decisions (89), allowing them to use their voices to better institutions. They write school-wide policy and create structure by guaranteeing salaries, writing employment contracts and protecting jobs. Unions act as advocates for the associated employees; these employees are then equipped to construct a stable and effective learning environment for students and their families.

Perhaps, enhancing teacher voice and student performance is not about whether the union exists but rather the potential of the schools themselves. The authors write, “What distinguishes great charters is not the absence of a labor agreement, but the presence of an education strategy built around commonsense ideas: More time on task, aligned curricula, high parent involvement, great teacher support, and strong leadership. (87).” But how can national education exist if each school works on its own? Many union and anti-union activists are focused on the politics of education, often arguing the same points from opposing sides. Instead, regardless of whether unions or other forms of co-op governance exist, it is the practice of education with enhanced teacher voice and plans for high quality learning for students in potentially successful and effective charter schools that activists must focus upon instead.

Ratios and Rewards: A Discussion of Integration in Charter Schools

April 14, 2015April 14, 2015Jessica Carlson

Given the drastic deviation from the original vision of desegregated charters, Smarter Charter devotes much of its discussion to the benefits of integration. One of the greatest results is the reduction in discrimination and prejudice. Increasing contact between individuals of different backgrounds provides opportunities to recognize similarities disprove stereotypes and increase intergroup comfort (55). Another important advantage is that high-poverty students do better academically when they attend integrated and economically diverse institutions. Not only are motivation and ambition contagious, deprived students are able to accelerate their learning through informal interactions with peers (64). Reduced isolation is a requirement in Connecticut schools, but charters are not held to any particular criteria. Binding administrators to strict standards increases accountability through severe consequences and potential termination. Charter schools are given loose demands, which contributes to maintaining segregated schools. Because of the remarkable rewards, integration should be a necessity in charters and become a stricter requirement with set ranges for ratios between different socioeconomic and racial groups.

How do we determine the ratio that produces the best rewards? One might assume targeting the students who are most in need would create the largest reward, since more deprived students would receive better education. Kahlenberg and Potter, however, explain that “the negative effects of concentrated poverty tend to kick in where a clear majority of students are low in-come” (62). A classroom with a far greater percentage of high-poverty students puts all students at risk of a decreased academic environment. The reverse is dangerous as well. Stereotype threat is a phenomenon in psychology that claims simply by being aware of one’s race in comparison to others can cause an individual to underperform due to anxiety that they will confirm cultural stereotypes. Kahlenberg and Potter describe a girl in an all-Muslim school who didn’t feel embarrassed when excusing herself for prayer (20). If she had been placed in a school with majority white, middle-class students, she might have felt embarrassment over her cultural differences, potentially hindering her performance. There’s also the chance that academically deprived students will feel inferior among an ocean of advanced peers; the pressure to achieve at the same level may backfire and result in decreased self-esteem and poor performance.

Kahlenberg and Potter later state “that 70% is a threshold at which a group is at risk of becoming a dominant culture” and recommend charters have between 30% to 70% low-income students (120). This seems fair and practical, and should extend to the racial and ethnic ratios within charter school enrollments. By preventing any one group from falling into dominance, the likelihood of negative effects should decrease significantly. The authors recommend that the state enforce desegregation laws, monitor school compliance and require recruitment plans for outreach (168). Administrators should be thoughtful about creating outreach plans that produce more balanced ratios between different socioeconomic and racial groups. In order to attain the greatest quality and quantity of the positive effects of integration, policymakers should establish and enforce a required benchmark for integration in charter regulations.

Questions to authors:

1. It seems like Minnesota set the stage for the rest of the country’s establishment of charters. How much did Minnesota’s adoption and alteration of the charter vision affect the trajectory of charter schools across the country?

2. One example of preventing class/level divides was giving students the option to take classes at the honors level by completing extra assignments. However, stakes are high and college competition is intense. If a university knows your school offered an advanced level and it wasn’t taken, your chances of acceptance decrease. How functional and successful is this given the current state of college admissions?

3. If middle-class parents are more likely to volunteer, to donate, to be politically savy and hold administrators accountable, does this give them a leg up in terms of making lasting change for issues that concern them and their child? What happens when demands of middle-class parents do not include or apply to low in-come parents?