Hispanic Parental Involvement: Ten Competencies Schools Need to Teach Hispanic Parents

Hispanic Parental Involvement Hispanic student academic success rates lag behind those of their White and Asian peers. Educators have long known that parental involvement is one of the leading indicators of any student's success. To increase the academic achievement of Hispanic students, time, energy, and resources must be invested to get more Hispanic parents involved in their children’s education. Efforts to improve our schools must continue, but just holding teachers and administrators accountable for their Hispanic student performance will not give us the results that are sought. It takes parental support. Hispanic parents need to develop certain competencies to better support their kids’ education? That is what this book is about. Dr. Lourdes Ferrer’s personal experience as an immigrant, parent and as a teacher, administrator, and consultant in addition to the results of hundreds of interviews with Hispanic students across the nation serve as the basis for this book. In the studies she conducted, Most of the students’ responses in these interviews had little or nothing to do with what happened in their classrooms or schools. Words such as "parents," "family," and "home" outweighed words such as "teacher," "classroom," or "school." Hispanic students frequently indicated a belief that their parents do not really know the role they need to play in their children’s education. Their comments revealed that their parents are likely to believe that they are doing what they are supposed to be doing by providing shelter, food, and sending them to school. The students consistently expressed that they are pretty much on their own. Things like which courses to take, how to apply for college, how to prepare for a college entrance test, or how get financial aid was pretty much the student’s responsibility. As one student put it, “White students get a lot of help from their parents. Their parents went to school here, and they know a lot of stuff about school and what to do to go to college. Hispanics have to explain everything to their parents.” Dr. Ferrer's studies have helped her identify ten competencies that parents must demonstrate to better support their children’s education. These ten competencies provide a framework for developing a solid parental involvement programs for Hispanics. This book addresses the issue of Hispanic student success by focusing on Hispanic parental involvement. This book is an invaluable resource for educators, school administrators, and political leaders involved in school policy decisions and initiatives.

Growing up in a disadvantaged family in Puerto Rico, Lourdes soon learned that education was the way out of the poverty cycle. This understanding led her to complete her undergraduate degree in mathematics and begin teaching. She left Puerto Rico in 1979 to do community development work in Guatemala. She established and directed schools, an orphanage, feeding centers, and clinics. She procured resources for these entities through interaction with non-profit organizations and by obtaining assistance from Guatemalan government officials. Her community education work consisted of educational radio programs and parent education in various venues. Her experience in community development was a catalyst that led Lourdes to choose Research, Evaluation, and Measurement as the focus of her Master's degree. When she moved to the United States in 1990, she had to overcome enormous financial, linguistic, and cultural barriers to pursue the American Dream. She first worked as a Middle School Bilingual Curriculum Content (BCC) mathematics teacher in Dade County and then as Regular High School mathematics teacher in Palm Beach County. She went on to complete her Ed.D in Leadership and took a position as a School Improvement and Assessment Specialist for the School District of Palm Beach County. Her responsibilities included leading NCLB staff development opportunities for teachers and school administrators, as well as speaking at community forums regarding the same issues. Dr. Lourdes is an Education Consultant, Public Speaker and Researcher who assists districts and schools. She utilizes programs, methods, and strategies to train teachers, administrators, district personnel, students, parents and the communities at large, to help minority students achieve academic proficiency. She provides consulting services, staff development opportunities, and motivational speaking.In order to have a better understanding of the lack of achievement among minority students Dr. Lourdes has been interviewing hundreds of English Language Learner (ELL), Hispanic, African- American and Native American middle and high school students to find out, from their perspective, what are the underlying reasons for their lack of achievement and what can the school do to help them improve. These findings are used to customize strategic plans at the school level to help the target population.