| Jennifer Glick
Arizona State University
Family-school connectivity: Interactions leading to academic achievement for children of immigrants
Children of immigrants in the United States constitute a large and growing proportion of all school age children today. These children pose many unique challenges for the education systems with which they and their families interact. While it is clear that family-school involvement is associated with positive academic outcomes for many children, this involvement is lower among some immigrant groups. It is vital that educators and policy makers understand which educational settings promote greater parental involvement among immigrant families and the extent to which this parental involvement is associated with positive academic gains. This research will analyze variations in parental-school involvement among Mexican origin native and immigrant families across school settings. The combination of early school experiences and family background can have long lasting effects over the course of a child's schooling (Alexander, Entwisle and Horsey, 1997). Understanding how families from very different backgrounds interact with schools and teachers will help build successful collaborations between immigrant families and the schools their children attend. The primary research question to be addressed is: Are immigrant parents more likely to participate in their child's education in some schools than others? The research then examines the role of parental-school involvement in children's achievement in elementary school. The analyses incorporate measures including parents' own age at arrival in the United States and linguistic background as factors that may be associated with parents' involvement. School characteristics are also expected to be important such that some parents will increase their participation in children's schooling in schools with more teachers/staff of similar ethnic or linguistic backgrounds. Multi-level growth curve models predicting math and reading trajectories through fifth grade are proposed. The analyses are intended to help educators and policy makers understand which educational settings promote greater parental involvement and the way this family-school connectivity can lead to positive academic gains for children from immigrant backgrounds.
Back to Funded Research Grants Page |