Latina/o Parental Civic Engagement in Schools and Surrounding Communities: Assessing the Impact of Parent Development on Improving Student Educational Outcomes

• In Event: Community Counts With Family Involvement Practices

Abstract

The central research question that this study investigates is: What is the impact of Latina/Latino parental civic engagement on student educational outcomes? This question challenges long-standing existing thinking about the relationship between parental involvement and student academic achievement—namely that student performance improves when parents are only or mostly directly focused on improving it alone. This study reveals that more effective approaches for building student success in schools focus on parental participation in the democratic life of their local community, including in their children’s school(s).

Author

• Christine Clark, University of Nevada - Las Vegas