This paper explores the relationship between low income parents and urban schools. Parent participation in urban schools today is said to have been institutionalized in forms set in motion by the Civil Rights movement. Three types of response to the failure of schools to respond to the 1954 Supreme Court decision calling for desegregation are identified: (1) confrontation; (2) efforts to work within existing school bureaucracies; and (3) creation of new educational structures. The roles of parents, teachers' unions, administrators, and the school board in the Ocean Hill Brownsville controversy are discussed in a case study of confrontation over community control. It is suggested that community control failed because control, rather than collaboration, became the central issue. Title I compensatory education programs are described as attempts to work within the school bureaucracy to promote change. It is suggested that large Federal intervention programs may not be appropriate vehicles for structural change. Project Head Start is then discussed as an example of a successful national program launched outside traditional educational bureaucracy and created with parent participation at its core. Finally, research conducted to assess the impact of parent participation reform efforts is reviewed, and implications for future parent involvement in urban schools are considered. (Author/APM)