Reaching Parents
In a recent survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, 95 percent of Latino parents indicated that it was “very important” to them that their children go to college.1 A study conducted by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) reveals a similar finding: Of 1,054 Latino parents in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, 96 percent said they expected their children to attend college.2
While these numbers support the view that Latino parents have high aspirations for their children, the TRPI study also presented a less encouraging statistic. Sixty-six percent of those parents surveyed failed a “mini-test of college knowledge,” incorrectly answering at least half of the questions about prerequisites and milestones needed to prepare their children for postsecondary education. This gap between aspirations and practical know-how was most frequently observed among parents of low socioeconomic status (SES).3 Furthermore, researchers correlated lower SES with parents’ increased difficulty in “engaging” their children’s teachers and counselors in the search for information.4
The goal of the PALMS Parent Outreach Study, launched in September 2004, was to examine how college access programs across the country were working to address this gap in aspirations and attainment. We conducted in-depth interviews with staff from university- and community-based programs to learn about their work with the parents of Latino middle-grades students. We learned that the first step programs took was often to educate parents about the U.S. school system and the importance of serving as an advocate for their children. Subsequently, programs worked to engage parents in the life of their children’s school and empower them to be full participants in the postsecondary planning process.
The programs we studied seek to help parents translate their aspirations into high-impact, empowering supports for their children. In this section, we describe the strategies that postsecondary access programs employ to address the lack of college knowledge and connections to school-based resources among Latino parents. We also offer case studies that focus and elaborate on unique aspects of selected programs. Finally, we provide a summary of the research that informed the development of this section and complements the findings of our study.
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1. Pew Hispanic
Center/Kaiser Family Foundation. National
survey of Latinos: Education.
(Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2004), p. 9.
2. Louis Tornatzky, Richard Cutler, and Jongho Lee. What Latino Parents Need to Know and Why They Don’t Know It. (Claremont, CA: Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, 2002), p. 11.
