This book addresses the complications and implications of parental involvement in education as a policy. It attempts to explain the origins, meanings, and effects of parental involvement as a requisite of schooling, and particularly as a policy solution for low achievement and even inequity in the American educational system. The four chapters discuss: (1) "The Articulation of Family and School in Educational Policy" (the family as an object of educational policy, the problem, and an analytical approach); (2) "Family-School Interactions: Lessons Learned from Personal Experience" (discovering and rediscovering the problem); (3) "Education and Social Reproduction: The Quest for Equity within Family-School Relations" (family, school, and the democratic ideal; education and social inequality; and educational policy, equity, and the family); and (4) "The Obscure Side of Homework" (origins and recent developments of the homework issue, instructional and social relevance, and the rearticulation of home and school). An epilogue discusses "Perverse Effects of Parental Involvement as Policy: Extending Symbolic Violence to the Family and Weakening the Egalitarian Ideal of Public Education." (Contains 176 references.) (SM)