A new book edited by University of New Orleans School of Education professor Brian Beabout addresses the ways families and communities engage with charter schools, which are an increasingly common feature of the American public educational landscape. Published by Information Age Publishing, “Family and Community Engagement in Charter Schools” examines an emerging field of study authored by both established and emerging scholars.

Beabout is an associate professor of education, director of the School of Education and graduate coordinator of K-12 educational leadership. In addition to his role in the book, former UNO educational administration students Diana Ward and Shanté Williams contributed to the volume.

“While charter schools have been a hotly contested avenue for educational reform in the last 20 years, the debates about their existence have sometimes given off more heat than light,” Beabout said. “The scholars represented in this book view charter schools as a likely long-term structure for delivering public education, and one that is worthy of careful investigation. In New Orleans it is the dominant structure for public schooling. In many other urban districts, charters are a niche structure. But in both cases, charters are schools predicated on the idea that families choose public schools for their kids, rather than being assigned to one. This means that how charter schools engage with their families and communities may be influenced by their need to attract families.”

Chapters examine how charter schools, the policy landscape, families, community institutions and charter school educators both create and inhibit opportunities for effective family and community engagement. Data is included from intensely “charterized” school districts such as New Orleans, Los Angeles, Denver, New York City and Oakland, as well as broader state-level perspectives from California and Massachusetts.

In addition to highlighting their unique findings, chapters propose practical, research-based strategies for schools, districts or communities so that charter schools can be strong sources of local democracy- an oft-cited but rarely achieved goal. The book will broaden the field of family and community engagement by including new theories, scholars and areas of study. It is valuable reading for researchers, graduate students, policymakers, educational leaders and community-based organizations seeking to better understand this unique form of organizing public schools.

“This book is an important step in documenting the landscape of family and community engagement in charter schools,” Beabout said. “It is undergirded by the hope that there might be lessons for all public schools from some of the practices we document in the book.”