Abstracts

According to Epstein (2010), the interactions and perceptions of the community, educators, students and parents with schools determine the culture and climate of the schools. According to critical race theory, racism has become institutionalized in Americas culture. Ogbu (2007) posited that historically, institutional racism in America, enforced by European Americans, has caused the children of enslaved Africans in America to struggle with cultural identity and self-hate. To resist self-hatred some African Americans developed social oppositional behaviors, while others sought to adopt the European American culture that seemed to be built upon social dominance. Yet, African American parental perceptions of school culture/climate have been given little to no serious consideration in education research; leading to possible skewed research outcomes when it comes to understanding African American parents perceptions of their childrens schools. This research compared African American parents/guardians perceptions of the culture and climate of successful and failing urban middle schools led by male African American principals to determine if there are significant differences in perceptions between African American parents of successful schools and African American parents of failing schools. This quantitative study used the Culture of Excellence & Ethnics Assessment (CEEA) Parent Survey version 4.5 (Khmelkov, Davidson, Baker, Lickona, & Parisi, 2014) to answer three questions. Research question 1 asked if there were significant differences between African American parents and guardians perceptions of the culture and climate in successful and failing urban middle schools led by male African American principals. The second research question asked if there were significant differences between African American fathers/males perceptions of the culture and climate in successful and failing urban middle schools led by male African American principals. The third research question asked if there were significant differences between African American mothers/females perceptions of the culture and climate in successful and failing urban middle schools led by male African American principals. Twelve African American parents took the survey and were discovered to have significant perceptional differences in the areas of social engagement and positive behavior support at home.