ABSTRACT
As indicated by the theme of this volume, social scientists increasingly have appreciated the pivotal role that agents outside the school – more specifically, family and community – play in children’s educational development. These scholars owe a great debt to the groundbreaking work by James Coleman and his colleagues, who firmly established the pattern that is by now familiar: the more favorable a family’s socioeconomic standing, the brighter its children’s educational prospects. Coleman’s signature finding that families and communities may be more consequential than schools with respect to children’s educational attainment still commands the attention of academicians, policy makers, and the public-atlarge. Scholars have crafted volumes of research illustrating how family dynamics in combination with background factors help shape individual-level educational outcomes. Coleman’s impression on policy makers spurred a host of educational reforms designed to encourage families’ greater involvement in their children’s education. His influence has been demonstrated, for instance, by the “community control” movement, while perhaps also inhibiting ongoing efforts to implement structural reforms, such as desegregating the nation’s public schools. Public commentary continues to reflect the stance, held at both conservative and liberal ends of the political spectrum, that for educational reforms to accomplish their goals, attention also must be directed to the familial conditions that favorably (or unfavorably) affect children’s educational progress.2
