Promising research evidence linking achievement, empowerment, and parent participation are dwarfed by troubling indications of negative, infrequent interactions between families and schools. Middle-income parents seem to participate in school-based and home-learning exercises at higher rates than lower-class parents. The study summarized in this report applies Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital to understand varying levels of parent participation in schooling. Bourdieu argues that schools draw unevenly on families' social and cultural resources by invoking particular linguistic styles, authority patterns, and types of curricula. Although Lareau's study (1989) extended Bourdieu's research to include parental involvement, it excluded the effects of schools' institutional characteristics on family-school interactions. Multiple-case study research involving three organizationally different schools (public nonchoice, magnet, and Catholic) extends previous findings by examining how school management and organization may mediate the influence of cultural capital on family-school interactions. The discussion suggests the need to underscore the value and importance of school community and to explore ways that school organization promotes or constrains community-building. (34 references) (MLH)