Connecting Social Services to Social Change; Nonprofits and K–5 Parental Involvement

Robert W. Ressler , University of Texas at Austin

Latinx families face unique barriers to educational success, one of which might be the U.S. emphasis on parental involvement in schools. Some social theories predict that some Latinx families could already be benefiting from services that promote parental involvement in early education through educational or community service provision. Measured in this study through IRS data on nonprofit community organizations, such civic infrastructure is predicted to especially facilitate parental involvement behaviors from individuals in communities with fewer resources and from families with more recent immigrant histories. Controlling for other community and individual factors, fixed-effects models predict a scale of parental involvement behaviors with the number of nonprofits, community poverty, and family acculturation and provide some evidence for a nonprofit effect on parental involvement.

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 Presented in Session 2. Children & Youth