Parent Disengagement Case Study

The purpose of this quantitative case study is to understand the factors that contribute to parent disengagement in an alternative education setting and what can alternative education schools need to put in place to increase parental engagement. Alternative education, in this case, consists of a student population that is on formal probation and has been expelled from their home district.

Dropping out of school, however, is only the end of the more general process of school disengagement, a process that typically begins earlier in the educational career. A strategy is needed to recognize early school disengagement and potential dropout (Henry, Knight, & Thornberry, 2012). The parents of successful students were involved at school significantly

Two questions were developed to understand why parental engagement is low in an alternative education setting and what factors need to be in place at a school site to ensure parent engagement. The research questions for the study are:

1. What factors attribute for parent disengagement at an alternative school site?

2. Is student expulsion process a barrier for parental student involvement?

3. What factors are in place at the school site that welcome or are barriers for parental involvement?

4. Do teacher’s perceptions of students engage or disengage students?

Data Types

Do to the nature of the study four types of data, qualitative inquiry frameworks were considered; Ethnography, Grounded Theory, Realism and System Theory (Patton, 2015);

• Ethnography was considered because research focuses on a specific type of culture, high-risk students and their families who are on probation and/or expelled. This type of data focuses on cultural biases, their peoplehood focusing on an ethnographic approach to

Surveys will ask parents, teacher and students about school engagement and how they foresee their role/behavior to affect parental engagement. Students attendance, grades, behavior records will be used to see if there is a pattern of academic success and parental involvement, as well as teacher perception having an effect. Interviews will be conducted to help find a pattern on what parents, students, and teachers/school staff see as an obstacle or a welcoming for parents. Interviews with parents will collect data on what factors attribute to parent disengagement and what can teachers and school staff do to make them feel welcome and engage in their child’s