Stronger together: race, power, and parent-teacher partnership in the COVID-19 era

Abstract

This article explores parent-teacher partnerships as a strategy for improving students’ educational experiences and addressing racial equity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a subset of qualitative open-response questions specific to family perceptions from a large-scale 2020 Boston Public Schools survey, the results of this study indicate that the demands of remote learning during the pandemic left families, particularly those of Black and Latinx backgrounds, desiring stronger relational connections with teachers and schools. This analysis furthers the literature on race and education by attending to how white racial domination influences educational opportunity, even in times of crisis. Accordingly, our findings emphasize how the wider society must reckon with the effects of racial capitalism as a driving force of racialized inequities in student and family experiences in education.