There is a widespread view in education that poor parents are trouble: They don’t spend enough time reading to children, monitoring their homework, attending school events or helping teachers. Educators, at times, complain bitterly about them, and many policies have been designed to address these issues. With economic segregation in the United States worsening, there is likely to be a growing number of school districts where poor children, and poor parents, predominate.
Yet, economic segregation, which is more pronounced among families with children, also creates public school districts where affluent families predominate. This can lead to trouble in schools, but of a distinct kind. Motivated by a fierce desire to protect their children and themselves from difficulty, and armed with a robust sense of entitlement as well as ample economic, cultural and social resources, affluent parents can create conflict and interfere with school districts on a scale that is rarely acknowledged.
We saw this firsthand during the research for our recent study of an affluent school district in the Northeast. We call this district Kingsley, to preserve the anonymity of the interviews we conducted with families and school officials. As of the 2010 census, more than a third of households in the district had an annual income of $150,000 or more, and the median home value exceeded $450,000. More than 70 percent of adult residents had at least a bachelor’s degree, over twice the national average. Kingsley was also extremely successful academically. It was a “destination district,” with average SAT scores nearly 250 points above the state average on the 2,400-point scale.