What We Do >> Dignity and Respect for Parents Campaign

Dignity and Respect for Parents Campaign

In 2002, after speaking with nearly 1,000 parents across different South LA neighborhoods and school sites, the treatment of parents surfaced as the most common issue - regardless of parents' race, ethnicity, language, age, income, or economic status. We viewed and continue to view this as a systemic issue and part of the reason that South LA schools continue to fail.

From 2002-2004, we developed the knowledge and strategy to tell the story about the lack of respect for parents at South LA schools, and the lack of response to their participation, especially if parents raised questions about schools' accountability and compliance with policies. CADRE surveyed over 120 parents in-depth about their relationships with their children's schools. This resulted in our first report entitled "We Interrupt This Crisis - With Our Side of the Story: Relationships between South LA Parents and Schools", released in October 2004.

In this report we found that South LA schools need to:

be more inclusive of the cultures and experiences of their students and parents;

genuinely engage parents, which means asking for and utilizing parent input and involving parents in making decisions that concern their children and their learning environment; and

be truly accountable to parents, allowing parents to monitor school conditions and compliance with policies and to demand changes and improvements without fear of retaliation.

CADRE believes that in order for South LA schools to truly serve their students and parents, they must demonstrate commitment to the three values above. These values reflect dignity and respect for the community, which is absolutely necessary for true partnership between schools and parents. And without such a partnership, the school-to-prison train and educational crisis in South LA will not be stopped.

As a result, the Dignity and Respect for Parents Campaign became CADRE's core organizing program in 2004. All of our organizing projects and related issue campaigns are shaped by our theory that the school-to-prison train must be stopped by parents, and that true parent involvement in education includes holding schools accountable for ending pushout.

As the umbrella for all of our issue campaigns, the Dignity and Respect for Parents Campaign has two long-term goals:

To increase the commitment of South LA schools, through policy, practice, and resources, to keeping students in school; and

To create the conditions for meaningful parent participation in monitoring and improving school quality.

At CADRE we believe that these two goals are dependent on one another and require policy change in order to reach them. In order to further these goals, we coordinate our work in different projects, under which we focus on building parent capacity and carrying out issue campaigns to advance specific policies.

Click here for our Right to Education Project.

Click here for our Standards of Parent Participation Project.