Principals in Urban Schools Under Pressure: Relations With Parents in the Era of Test-Based Accountability

We conducted an inductive analysis of 166 interviews from a longitudinal study of 26 Chicago Public School principals. Test-based accountability pressures played a visible role in principals’ views of and relations with parents. Some principals reported banning parents from classrooms based on the need to protect instructional time to raise test scores; others thought more parental involvement would help their school reach its academic goals. Viewing principals in urban schools as street-level bureaucrats who have discretion in how they implement policy demands offers a way to understand variation in principals’ decisions about parent involvement.