“You look at children who are successful in school, and you see parents that are involved.” Until PALMS, there was very little Latino parent involvement. 
California’s Parent Institute for Quality Education offers a nine-week program that equips low-income Latino and other ethnically-diverse parents to take a leadership role in their children’s education. Topics covered during the program include the ins and outs of the U.S. school system, and the basics of preparing for college. Paty Mayer, a member of PIQE’s executive team, believes the program’s focus on action planning is critical to its success. After each session, parents are required to apply the new information in a concrete way. For example, after learning about report cards, parents are asked to calculate their child’s GPA based on the grades in their last report card.
Mayer explains that though many of the participants have only a grade-school education, they persevere through the program once they grasp the fact that their children’s chances of graduating from high school are bleak. “We raise the level of concern,” she says, because parents will act once they know what’s at stake. On a testimonial available on the program’s website, a former participant recalls that PIQE taught her “to always keep knocking on doors [and that] when one door closes another will open.” Her persistence and willingness to continually approach people who control key resources served her well beyond the nine weeks she spent with PIQE. She credits her experience there to helping her obtain legal documentation for her family—and to being able to send her four children to college.
In California’s Isla Vista community, a number of Latino parents receive leadership training through the Padres Adelante (Parents Moving Forward) program, a key component of the ENLACE y Avance initiative run by the University of California, Santa Barbara. The program uses a curriculum developed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which covers topics such as parent’s rights and responsibilities, the structure of the school system, how to conduct a meeting, and how to make an effective presentation. The program, first run at Isla Vista Elementary School, has now expanded to include a middle school and a high school. Initially conducted by an ENLACE staff member, the training is now run by parents who graduate from the program.
In addition to its intensive work with students, the North Carolina Math and Science Education Network (NC-MSEN) regularly provides parents with workshops that cover educational issues such as the No Child Left Behind legislation, the North Carolina standard course of study, and changes in state testing policies. These workshops are provided through local parent clubs called Parents Involved in Excellence (PIE), to which all parents with children in the program belong. Associate program director Rita Fuller says that having access to current education language and concepts helps parents feel empowered when approaching school personnel. Having equipped parents to interact with these individuals, the program also provides regular access to their children’s teachers and counselors.