Immigrants Learn to Hook Into Children’s Education

Intimidated by a language and a school system she didn’t understand, Alma Valencia, a Mexican immigrant, rarely spoke to her daughter’s teachers.

Like many Latin American immigrants, Valencia, 40, assumed that her child’s education should be left in the hands of the school faculty, as it was done in her hometown of Colima.

But after learning of the high dropout rate for Latinos in Los Angeles, Valencia grew worried about her daughter Cattleya’s future. She decided to sign up for a program at the Parents Institute for Quality Education.

The institute, which recently celebrated graduating 100,000 parents in California, teaches low-income mothers and fathers, particularly Latino immigrants, to become engaged in their children’s education and to guide them into college.

“The research is quite clear,” said Myron Dembo, professor of educational psychology at USC, “that when parents get involved in their kids’ education, the kids benefit. We’ve known this for a long time.”

Though the program serves all ethnic communities in Los Angeles, it targets immigrants because they often don’t understand how the school system works and, due to language barriers, are afraid of getting involved.

“In Spanish-speaking countries, the schools are something to be respected and stayed away from,” said Anne T. Henderson, an educational policy consultant at the Center for Law and Education in Washington. “[The parents] are expected to leave the children at the door and trust the school to do its job.”

Jose Moreno, 46, took this traditional role with his first son, after emigrating from El Salvador. When his son dropped out and joined a gang, Moreno was devastated and began suffering anxiety attacks. He vowed to place his younger son in college and, two months ago, signed up for the program.

“With this son, I help him with his homework and take him to the movies. I try to spend time with him,” Moreno said. “I didn’t see it then the way I see it now.”

The program began in Los Angeles in 1992, five years after a baptist minister named Vahac Mardirosian established the institute in San Diego. Since it started, 54,000 parents have graduated from 112 different sites in Los Angeles.

The parents take seven weekly classes, ranging from how to communicate with and motivate their children to college and career planning.

Mardirosian, who is of Armenian descent and grew up in Tijuana, has long fought for education reform. In 1968, he was an organizer during the walkouts of thousands of Mexican American students who demanded changes in curriculum. The next year, he helped found the Mexican American Education Commission.

“Why do we have such a disparity between the achievement of middle class children and poor children?” he asked. “For many years since 1968, I have been trying to persuade the Los Angeles and San Diego unified school districts to change the system. I came to the conclusion that the system was not going to change.”

Mardirosian decided that change would have to hinge on the parents, because they had the major stake in their children’s education.

Program instructors urge parents not only to spend quality time with their children, but also with the youngsters’ teachers.

“If a parent comes up and says, ‘I want my kid to go to college,’ that teacher will pay more attention,” Mardirosian said. “The teacher has to start thinking of the kids as college material.”

The classes are offered in Spanish, Russian, Cambodian, Korean, Chinese, Armenian and English.

Most experts familiar with the institute agree that the program is effective in the short term. But they say no studies have analyzed its long-term effectiveness.

“What is missing is the longitudinal studies,” said Chet McCall, a professor of research methods at Pepperdine University who has done a survey of the institute.

David Luna, executive director of the program in Los Angeles, agreed that a more comprehensive study needs to be done. “In the long term we have to assume that we’re making a difference,” he said.

Cattleya Valencia, 15, who had been getting average grades before her mother went through the program, is now on the honor roll. “By seeing that she was interested in what I was doing,” Cattleya said, “it made me want to do better.”

The Los Angeles institute gets more than $1.2 million from the L.A. school district, the LAMP and LEARN programs, the Los Angeles Annenberg Project and corporate, foundation and individual sponsors. Enrollment is free. Institute programs are also offered in the Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley and Orange County.

San Diego State University reported that of about 1,200 Latinos who entered there in 1996, 230 had parents who graduated from the program, Mardirosian said.

“The Latino community is thoroughly interested in the future of their children, but would like the children to do better than they have in the past,” Luna said.