Effects of a Parent-Implemented Intervention on the Academic Readiness Skills of Five Puerto Rican Kindergarten Students in an Urban School

Abstract

Despite strong research support for the benefits of parent involvement, Hispanic parents typically are less involved with their children's education and perceive more barriers to involvement than many other ethnic groups. Although this low level of involvement has been interpreted by some as reflecting a lack of caring for their children's education, an alternative explanation may be simply that Hispanic parents have limited knowledge of how to help their children. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a parent-implemented academic drill intervention on Puerto Rican children's academic readiness skills. Participants were five individual Puerto Rican parents and their kindergarten children identified by the teacher as having difficulty learning the letters of the alphabet. Results showed that all the parents, regardless of their English proficiency or educational level, were able to consistently implement the drill intervention. In addition, all five children made marked improvements on identifying letters with the parent-implemented intervention.