When it comes to education, parental involvement and building relationships with the school are key to success. Students with special education needs especially need the support of their parents. The Educational Diagnosticians of the Capital School District helped provide data on the parental involvement in the Individualized Education Program…

Engaging low-income parents of color in schools in ways that empower and respect rather than further marginalize remains a persistent challenge. Current studies on organizations which work with low-income parents of color in schools, which I term "parent engagement organizations" or PEOs, highlight how PEOs lend critical infrastructure…

This study sought to explore the lived experience of parents concerning school voucher programs and determine whether parental knowledge of funding discrepancies between income-eligible voucher programs and traditional public schools drives parents' advocacy for vouchers. This research is rooted in the interest convergence theory to explore and…

This study examines the experiences of Spanish-speaking Latino/a parents in their attempts to obtain school-based speech and language services for their children; the impact of these experiences on parents; and parent perspectives on how school-based speech-language pathologists can co-create collaborative relationships. Through a detailed…

The Empowering Children with Hope and Opportunity (ECHO) program has collected data for 20 years. The ECHO staff has fallen short in using this data to clearly demonstrate any impacts and to engage in continuous improvement of the ECHO organization. Thus, the purpose of the current research project is to demonstrate how effective the counseling,…

The occurrence of behaviors that require disciplinary action will always be an issue without programs to support the social and emotional development of students at a young and critical age. The problem school districts face is how to appropriately and effectively provide consequences to different targeted age groups, based on their social and…

The purpose of this qualitative case study utilizing ethnographic methods was to understand how family members' participation in Digital Home, a community-based technology program in an urban mid-sized Midwestern city, built on and fostered Latino immigrant families' community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) in order to increase their abilities to…

This research, a phenomenological study, examined four different local churches in Rwanda to identify the key strategies and methods used to establish an orphan care culture and ministry. Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California has partnered with the country of Rwanda to end the orphan crisis. As of today, 35 orphanages in the country of…

The high percentage and the steady growth of Hispanic/Latino students in Arizona demand that special attention be placed on improving academic achievement and attainment. The need to support Hispanic/Latino parents in becoming meaningful positive contributors to their children's schooling continues to surface as a critical issue in school…

In pursuance of analyzing attendance at Midwest High School (a pseudonym), the researcher examined the attendance program's effect on the junior class. The goal of the researched attendance program was to find what worked in the program, what needed to be changed, and how effective was the program. In order to evaluate the program, the researcher…

Latino students are the fastest growing minority population and currently have the largest population of student-aged young people. However, Latino students are lagging behind White, Asian, and African American in college attendance rates. The purpose of this study was to examine how an AVID program at an urban high school helps Latino students…

Environmental education researchers have long identified a connection between formative play experiences in nature settings and pro-environmental behaviors (i.e., career paths) of their subjects later in life. Most studies have been post-hoc retrospective looks that have not had the ability to assess causation. As more children are removed from…

Informed by research studies that demonstrate a positive relationship between parent engagement and student academic attainment, state and national parent outreach initiatives have aimed to bridge the gap between Latina/o parents and schools. Such was the case with the Latina/o Family, School and Community "Avanzando" Project, which…

This case study examined the perceptions of students, parent/guardians, and teacher mentors who participated in the 2009-2010 Check and Connect Intervention. The literature reviewed for this study identified that three specific practices had particularly strong effects on lowering rates of chronic absenteeism. They were: (a) providing awards and…

First-generation students are more likely than non-first-generation students to depart from a postsecondary institution before a degree is attained. Factors that could impact academic persistence among first-generation students include low self-efficacy, lack of financial resources and parental support, poor college planning, and minimal school…