Survey shows program boosts Latino parents’ child knowledge, confidence

While many Latino children enter school hampered by weak preliteracy skills, a new program tied to Head Start successfully equips parents to close these gaps, according to findings out today from the University of California, Berkeley. School success for Latino children is becoming increasingly important: Today, one in five American children is Latino, and by 2030 the ratio is projected to reach one in three. "The success of Latino students is inextricably tied to the nation's future, and families are at the center of ensuring their success," said Adrián A. Pedroza, a member of President Obama's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. A team at UC Berkeley's Institute of Human Development led by principal investigator Margaret Bridges reports in a brief posted today (Tuesday, Oct. 16) that the parenting program, Abriendo Puertas ("Opening Doors"), appears to significantly boost Latino parents' knowledge about improving their children's language and literacy, social-emotional skills, and health. The program's effects, Bridges said, "were impressive and important, since it's the daily interactions with parents, starting at birth, that make such a difference in how ready young children are to start school." The team's study also indicates that parents who took the training, taught in Spanish or English, reported substantial gains in knowledge about their rights as parents and their children's rights, as well as self-confidence in their parenting and teaching skills.