Recent neo-liberal educational policy, both in the United States and in Brazil, is calling for parental involvement in school decision-making and homework. Such a policy carries class and gender implications: schools that count on families assume a single family model, with economic and symbolic capital, and an available mother committed to her children's education. Policymakers have neither considered the relationship between models of curricular and instructional organization and family organization, nor the gender asymmetry that places responsibility for children's education mostly on females, nor change and variation in family arrangements. By shifting the focus of educational improvement from the school and classroom to the home and family, this policy is likely to produce two undesirable effects: to penalize families (especially mothers), and convert economic, cultural and social capital differences into different educational outcomes.