This study presents a report on parents' participation in a leadership-development project in which parents constructed their own leadership roles for improving children's educational opportunities and outcomes. The text focuses on parents working in collaboration with other parents, school administrators, and university faculty and staff. The paper presents a brief review of parent-involvement literature as related to parents' participation in local school leadership roles. It describes the 3-year collaboration between Center X of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA and two high school complexes in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The goals of the collaboration were to provide parents with substantive knowledge about changes in curriculum and instruction and how these changes supported education for social justice. The preliminary themes that emerged from a collaborative investigation centered around how a small group of diverse parents began to use the knowledge they gained to construct new or redefined leadership roles for themselves. The importance of using a professional-development approach for parent education in curricular and policy contexts is emphasized. (RJM)