Developing and Refining a Multimodal Intervention to Promote Latino Students Postsecondary Readiness

• In Event: Designing, Defending, and Sustaining Equity for Communities of Color in Politically Hostile Climates

Abstract

Latinos are the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, accounting for 52% of the nation’s population growth between 2010 and 2021 (Hamilton et al., 2023) and 28% of K-12 students nationwide (NCES, 2023). Yet, Latino high school and college completion rates continue to lag behind those of White students (Excelencia in Education, 2023), creating a precarious foundation for adulthood. With Latinos projected to represent more than 27% of the total U.S. population by 2060 (Vespa et al., 2020), addressing these disparities is urgent and nationally consequential. From a prevention science perspective, closing these gaps requires interventions that target modifiable risk and protective factors influencing Latino students’ educational attainment. To this end, we developed a multimodal intervention guided by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1979). This framework helped us identify the system levels shaping Latino students’ postsecondary readiness and the malleable factors within each to directly target. In this presentation, we describe the intervention’s content, the development and refinement process, the challenges faced, and lessons learned during implementation.
The intervention targeted barriers and strengths across the ecological levels identified in Bronfenbrenner’s framework. In the home microsystem, we addressed parents’ gaps in knowledge about postsecondary preparation (e.g., course-taking behaviors) and built on their strong family ties and educational values. In the school microsystem, we tackled educators’ implicit bias and tracking practices while leveraging their commitment to working with youth. In the home–school mesosystem, we strengthened skills critical for collaboration among Latino parents, students, and educators, including effective communication, trust, and teamwork. While the intervention did not directly target exosystem (e.g., state educational policies), macrosystem (e.g., systemic racial inequality and cultural norms about Latinos in higher education), and chronosystem (e.g., post-pandemic recovery) influences, we explicitly addressed them through guided discussions. These discussions helped participants understand how larger contextual factors could shape Latino students’ postsecondary opportunities and emphasized the importance of proactive planning to mitigate their impact.
We used an iterative, stakeholder-informed cohort model, applying lessons learned from the first cohort to the second. We worked with Latino 8th- and 9th-grade students (n = 60), their parents (n = 94), and educators (n = 67) in five public middle schools and two high schools in Texas serving predominantly Latino populations. The resulting intervention offers a scalable model for contextually grounded, multi-level interventions aimed at closing persistent educational disparities among Latino students in public schools. Although the current political climate threatens to halt efforts like the one described here, this work underscores the urgent need to sustain and scale culturally grounded interventions that confront systemic inequities and enable the success of communities of color.

Authors

• Alejandra Garcia Isaza, University of Texas at Austin

• Charles R. Martinez, University of Texas at Austin

• John Mark Eddy, University of Texas at Austin

• Diana Orozco-Lapray, University of Texas at Austin

• Sarah Mason, University of Texas at Austin