Latinx parent engagement and school readiness

The association between parent engagement in education and child school readiness among Latinx families remains poorly understood (Reaves et al., 2022). Due to a history of policies and systems shaped by white supremacy in the United States (Barajas-Gonzalez et al., 2021; Heard-Garris et al., 2021; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Perez Huber et al., 2008), Latinx families are twice as likely to live in poverty and more likely to live in segregated, very low-opportunity neighborhoods with fewer high-quality early childhood education options relative to non-Latinx White families (Fuller et al., 2022; Gándara & Contreras, 2009; Gennetian et al., 2019; Mendez Smith et al., 2021). Indicative of these inequitable conditions, Latinx children, on average, enter kindergarten performing lower than their non-Latinx White peers on math and reading assessments (Kuhfeld et al., 2018).

Parent engagement has been identified as a protective factor which may reduce the impact of household poverty on children’s educational outcomes; estimates from a meta-analysis indicate that parent engagement in education is associated meaningfully (medium-size effect) with children’s school success (Jeynes, 2017). As such, efforts to bolster the school readiness of Latinx children from low-income homes have focused on fostering parent engagement in children’s education. Yet, in early childhood education, these efforts are largely grounded in conceptualization and measurement of parent engagement that has been critiqued for too narrowly focusing on school-based involvement and missing other key aspects of Latinx parent engagement (Carreón et al., 2005; Iruka et al., 2022; McWayne et al., 2013). This gap has only recently been addressed through the development of a measure of Latinx parent engagement in early childhood. Using an emic approach with 650 Latinx parents of children enrolled in Head Start, McWayne et al. (2013) yielded four reliable dimensions of parent engagement that may be more representative of the Latinx experience in low income communities. In these studies, Latinx parents’ home-based engagement in learning was represented across three distinct dimensions (named foundational education, e.g. teaching child to follow rules; supplemental education, e.g. exposing the child to enhanced literacy activities and enrichment activities outside the home; and future-oriented teaching, e.g. talking to the child about the importance of doing well in school for success in adulthood), and their school-based engagement was captured in a single dimension (named school participation, e.g. help coordinate activities at child’s school). To date, no studies have examined the association between these four dimensions of Latinx parent engagement and indicators of child school readiness.

Child school readiness refers to a broad set of skills developed in the early childhood years which are associated with academic success in formal school environments (Duncan et al., 2007; La Paro & Pianta, 2002; Turney & McLanahan, 2015). These interrelated skills include cognition and emergent achievement, physical health and fine motor development, socioemotional development, language development and behavior (Blair & Raver, 2015; Denham, 2006; Duncan et al., 2007; Graziano et al., 2007; Ursache et al., 2012). Stronger school readiness at kindergarten entry is associated with greater academic achievement throughout the elementary and middle school years (Amadon et al., 2022; Duncan et al., 2007; Moore et al., 2022; Ricciardi et al., 2021). Given the importance of child school readiness for later academic achievement, a better understanding of the association between dimensions of parent engagement and child school readiness is necessary to tailor policies and practices in support of school readiness in the Latinx population. This is especially critical as one out of every four children in the U.S. are Latinx (Clarke et al., 2017).

Using data drawn from a diverse community sample of Latinx families with children in Pre-Kindergarten (pre-K), we ask, what is the association of foundational education, supplemental education, future-oriented teaching, and school participation with indicators of child school readiness, including parent-reported social competence and attention problems, direct assessments of children’s executive function, vocabulary skills, emotion knowledge in faces and stories, and assessor-rated attention regulation and impulse control?

Methods

Participants were families from 19 early education centers in historically disinvested neighborhoods in New York City (NYC) that were part of a study of programmatic supports for educators and families (Brotman et al., 2021). Families were eligible for the study if their child attended pre-K in one of the 19 study centers and if one parent spoke English or Spanish. Centers were eligible for the larger programmatic study if they served high proportions of students living in poverty (defined by the school district in terms of the proportion of students from census tracts with concentrated poverty, relative to all pre-K programs district-wide, and the number of students living in temporary housing), and if they had at least two pre-K classrooms. Pre-K leaders were invited to participate in the study if they expressed interest in programmatic supports related to family engagement and social–emotional learning and willingness to be randomly assigned to implement a center-based program for families. The Institutional Review Boards of the University and School District approved all study activities.

The present study utilizes baseline data (prior to implementation of programmatic supports) collected from parents and children between October, 2018 and April, 2019. Greater than 90% of pre-K families at the study centers spoke Spanish and/or English and therefore were eligible for the study. The phased informed consent procedure invited parents to consent to their child’s participation in study assessments and teacher ratings of children’s behavior (n = 313), and inquired about their interest in participating in telephone surveys (n = 302). We were able to reach, consent, and complete phone surveys with 163 parents at baseline; 112 of these parents, identified as Latinx. The present study includes 112 Latinx parents from 19 centers who completed the baseline measure of parent engagement.

Parents were from various Latin American countries including the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Ecuador and Chile. We conducted informed consent and phone surveys in the parent’s preferred language; 44% of caregivers indicated a preference for communication to be in Spanish (and were contacted by bilingual research assistants). Fifty-eight percent of parents were U.S. born; almost all children were U.S. born. The mean age of the children (n=114; two parents had twins in this study) was 4.4 years (52 months). According to parents, 56 (49.6%) of the children were boys; gender was not reported for one child. 81 children (71.1%) had parents who had a high school (or less) level of education. Of the 70 (61.4%) children whose parents provided family income, 39 (55.7%) reported an income below 200% of the federal poverty level.

The present study includes data from multiple sources. Parents reported on their engagement in children’s learning, demographic information, and children’s social competence and attention problems through phone surveys. Surveys, administered over the phone, lasted approximately 1 hour; parents received a $25 gift card for their participation. Children participated in direct assessments of executive function, vocabulary skills, and emotion knowledge, and research staff administering the assessments completed ratings of child attention and impulse control during the assessment.

Measures

All measures were in English and Spanish, using the developers’ Spanish version when available. For measures without the developer’s translation or in which the developer’s translation contained inaccuracies as determined by the bilingual study team, the study team translated and back-translated the measures, and each measure was verified by a working group of four native Spanish speakers. We used a consensus approach for translation of words or phrases with several options for translation; the lead author made final decisions as needed.

Family Engagement was assessed using the Parent Engagement of Families from Latino Backgrounds (PEFL; McWayne et al., 2013). Creation and validation of the PEFL was done using mixed-method studies with over 650 Latinx Head Start parents in Boston and NYC to understand the ways in which low-income, Latino parents support their children’s learning and success (McWayne et al., 2013). The PEFL consists of four dimensions of family engagement tapping into home and school-based engagement. Foundational education consists of 20 items (English α = .76, Spanish α = .84) tapping into behaviors contributing to children’s school readiness and general life skills. Items in this subscale include “I help my child follow rules”, “I help my child learn letters (ABCs)”, “I spend time working with my child on numbers (counting)”, “I teach my child to ask for help when he/she needs it,” and “I provide praise and encouragement to my child, so that he/she will learn”. Supplemental education consists of 12 items (English α = .67, Spanish α = .77) tapping into mainstream notions of family engagement (e.g. “I read with my child”, “My child sees me or other family members doing reading and writing activities”, “I bring home educational toys and learning materials for my child like books videos, puzzles”, “I encourage my child to work with his/her hands on building activities (Legos, blocks)”, “I enroll my child in classes outside of school,” and “I take my child to places in the community to learn (such as the library, museum, zoo, aquarium)”). Future oriented teaching consists of 3 items (English α = .53, Spanish α = .68) tapping into the importance of academic achievement as a means to achieve social mobility (e.g. “I talk with my child about how difficult it is not to have an education” and “I talk with my child about what I would like him/her to be in the future”). The lower reliability value for this subscale may be due to it consisting of only a few items (Taber, 2018). McWayne and colleagues (2013) also found this subscale to have the lowest reliability value yet retained it due to its theoretical importance and factor analytic results that support its use. The school participation subscale consists of 8 items (English α = .58, Spanish α = .71) tapping into parent’s participation in school-based activities (e.g. “I attend school trips with my child,” “I attend classes to better myself, such as GED or ESL” and “I donate items or my own skills to support activities at my child’s school”). Raw scores were converted to T-scores using the guidelines from the developers.

Social competence was measured by parent report on the Social Competence Scale (Parent version; Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 1992; Jones et al., 2015). The measure includes 12 items (α = .91; e.g., “your child can accept things not going his/her way”; “your child is helpful to others”; your child listens to others’ points of view”; “your child controls his/her temper when there is a disagreement”). Parents rated the extent to which each item is characteristic of the child on a 5-point scale (Not at all, A little, Moderately Well, Well, Very well) and the mean score was calculated. The measure has high discriminant validity, with significantly higher levels of social competence in normative samples compared to higher risk samples. Construct validity has been documented on the parent version of the Social Competence Scale with preschool-aged children; the scale was relatively stable over 24 months and was correlated with measures of social competence and parent ratings of emotion regulation (Corrigan, 2002; Gouley et al., 2008).

Attention problems were assessed using the Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC). The PSC is a reliable and valid measure for assessing children’s externalizing, internalizing, and attention problems based on parent report (Gardner et al., 2007; Murphy et al., 2016). For this study, the sum of the attention problem scale was used (five items, α = .69). The scale has been validated for use in primary care and community settings for children ages 4–16 years old from diverse backgrounds. Parents rated how well each statement describes their child on a 3-point scale, Never (0), Sometimes (1), Often (2). The PSC has shown high rates of sensitivity and specificity in different pediatric settings (Jellinek et al., 1988). Higher scores indicate greater attention problems.

Executive function was assessed using the Pencil Tap task (Diamond & Taylor, 1996), a direct assessment with children which primarily requires inhibitory control and working memory. Children are presented with 16 trials in which they are asked to tap on a table twice with a pencil when the research assistant taps once, and once when the experimenter taps twice. The task is scored as the percentage of trials on which children respond correctly.

Vocabulary skills were assessed with the Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test --ROWPVT, 4th Edition (Martin & Brownell, 2010) for English speaking children who did not speak Spanish. Children who spoke Spanish (as indicated by parent report) were assessed using the ROWPVT-4: Spanish-Bilingual Edition (Martin & Brownell, 2013). Both versions were adapted for administration on a tablet. The ROWPVT measures an individual’s ability to match a spoken word with an image of an object, action, or concept, without any context. This task requires only recognition of the word meaning and can be administered to anyone from the age of 2 years old and above. The examiner reads a word aloud and the child is asked to choose which of the 4 illustrations shown matches the spoken word (e.g. “balloon”, “jump, “octagon”). In the Spanish-Bilingual Edition, assessors would say the word prompt first in the child’s parent-reported dominant language and if the child says they do not know the answer, the assessor would prompt the child in the non-dominant language. The words start out easy, and increasingly become more difficult as the test continues. For each correct response, one point is added to the raw score. The test begins by establishing a basal level and is discontinued after 6 errors within 8 consecutive items. After the raw score is calculated, standardized scores are created based on the child’s raw score and age in years and months as per the ROWPVT / ROWPVT-SBE Manual Guidelines.

Emotion knowledge was assessed with two direct assessments that were designed to measure children’s ability to identify emotions from facial expressions and in stories. The emotion knowledge in faces task is based on the facial expression section of the validated Assessment of Children’s Emotional Skills (ACES; Schultz, Izard, & Bear, 2004). We adapted this measure using photographs from the Child Affective Facial Expression set (CAFÉ; LoBue, 2014; LoBue & Trasher, 2015) to include more racially and ethnic diverse photographs of boys and girls (Kamboukos et al., 2022). We followed the standard administration procedures for the ACES, whereby children are asked to identify the emotion from an option of four emotions provided – happy, sad, mad (angry), or scared. However, the administration was adapted in that children viewed a series of eight photographs on an electronic tablet and an audio recording asked the child to name the emotion depicted (children provided their response by verbalizing the emotion after each photograph). Children received 1 point for an accurate response to the photograph and 0 points for inaccurate responses (including if the child provided a response for an emotion that did not fall into one of the four categories) or no response. We calculated a percentage correct score based on accuracy across the eight items.

The emotion knowledge in stories task is adapted from the Emotion Recognition Questionnaire (ERQ; Ribordy, Camras, Stafani, & Spaccarelli, 1988). The ERQ measures children’s ability to identify emotions that are elicited in a series of brief scenarios. Eight scenarios that elicit happy, sad, mad, or scared emotions are presented to children, along with black and white line drawings to aid with comprehension. Children are asked to name the emotion the main character would be feeling in that situation. In order to reduce verbal demands of the task, instead of verbally naming the emotion, children can also indicate their response by pointing to a picture of a face depicting that emotion. In order to facilitate this response option, children were first shown four images of the same child depicting a happy, sad, angry, or scared emotion, and were taught to correctly identify the emotion in each picture. If children could not correctly identify the emotions in these pictures after three attempts, the task was discontinued and they did not go on to the stories task. Children who went on to the stories task, received two points for correctly identifying the emotion elicited by the story, one point for correctly identifying the correct valence of the emotion (e.g. answering “sad” when the correct answer was “mad”) and zero points for an incorrect answer (Bierman et al., 2008). We calculated a sum score across the eight scenarios.

Attention regulation and impulse control were measured by assessor ratings on the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment (PSRA). The PSRA is a 28-item measure that assesses the child’s level of attention, emotion, and behavior on a four-point scale ranging from Never (0) to Always (3) (Raver et al., 2009; Smith-Donald et al., 2007, Daneri et al 2018). Trained research staff completed the PSRA immediately after they administered a battery of direct child assessments. The PSRA was developed with Black and Latinx families in preschool, and has demonstrated adequate construct and concurrent validity (Raver et al., 2011; Smith-Donald et al., 2007). The current study used mean scores from the 7-item attention regulation subscale (α = .85; e.g. “daydreams, has trouble focusing”) and the 6-item impulse control subscale (α = .86; e.g. “has difficulty waiting between tasks”) which have been shown to work similarly well for children of various racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds (Daneri et al., 2018).

Analytic Plan

To examine the association between parent engagement in education and children’s school readiness outcomes, we first conducted correlational analyses using only available data. We then carried out regression analyses and used full information maximum likelihood (FIML) to account for missing data. Separate models (i.e., 4 for each parent engagement outcome) were used to test the relation of each aspect of parent engagement to child school readiness. We examined 8 indicators of child school readiness – parent-reported social competence and attention problems, direct assessments of children’s executive function, vocabulary skills, emotion knowledge in faces, emotion knowledge in stories, and assessor-rated attention regulation and impulse control. Analyses were conducted in Mplus 8 (Muthen & Muthen, 2017). All models controlled for child gender and parent education. Standard errors were adjusted to account for nesting of children within schools.

Results

Correlational analyses (Table 1) yielded results that were largely similar to regression analyses described below.

Table 1.

Bivariate correlation associations of parent engagement with child school readiness outcomes

	Social Competence (P)	Executive Function (C)	Vocabulary Skills (C)	Emotional Knowledge, faces (C)	Emotion Knowledge, stories (C)	Attention Problems (P)	Attention (A)	Impulse Control (A)
Foundational education	0.38***	−0.03	0.04	0.03	0.12	−.20*	−0.03	−0.11
Supplemental education	0.37***	0.12	.33**	.27*	.27*	−.24*	0.12	−0.03
School participation	0.14	−0.16	−0.04	−0.18	−0.01	.19+	−.24*	−0.18+
Future orientation	0.30**	.19+	0.10	0.04	−0.04	−0.06	0.04	−0.04

Note. A= Assessor-Rated. P = Parent- Reported. C= Child assessment.

⁺p<=.10,

^*p<.05,

^**p < .01,

^***p < .001

Results of regression analyses (controlling for child gender and parental education) are shown in Table 2. Higher parent-reported social competence was associated with higher foundational education (b = .04, SE = .01, p <.001), higher supplemental education (b = .03, SE = .01, p < .001), and higher future orientation (b = .03, SE = .01, p < .001). Greater parent-reported attention problems were associated with higher school participation (b = .05, SE = .02, p =.025). Higher scores on a direct assessment of vocabulary skills were associated with higher supplemental education (b = .44, SE = .16, p = .005). Higher scores on direct assessments of emotion knowledge in faces and emotion knowledge in stories were associated with higher supplemental education (b = .70, SE = .14, p < .001; (b = .07, SE = .03 p = .015, respectively). There were no significant associations between any home- or school-based aspect of parent engagement and assessor-rated attention, assessor-rated impulse control, or direct assessment of executive functioning.

Table 2.

Parameter estimates from regression models estimating associations of parent engagement in learning with child school readiness. N = 114

	School Readiness Outcomes
	Social Competence (P)	Executive Function	Vocabulary Skills	Emotion Knowledge, faces	Emotion Knowledge, stories	Attention Problems (P)	Attention (A)	Impulse Control (A)
Foundational Education	.04 (.01)***	ns	ns	ns	ns	-.06 (.03) +	ns	ns
Supplemental Education	.03 (.01)***	ns	.44 (.16) **	.70 (.14)***	.07 (.03)*	ns	ns	ns
School Participation	.01 (.01)+	ns	ns	ns	ns	.05(.02)*	ns	ns
Future Orientation	.03 (.01)***	ns	ns	ns	ns	ns	ns	ns

Notes: Each dimension of parent engagement was tested in a separate model for each of 8 outcomes. All analyses controlled for child gender and parent education. 112 Latinx completed assessments regarding their children; there were two sets of twins in this study, thus the number of children is 114. A = Assessor-Rated. P = Parent-Reported.

⁺p < .10,

^*p < .05,

^**p < .01,

^***p < .001.

Conclusion

This is the first study to examine the association between multiple culturally-relevant dimensions of Latinx parent engagement in education and indicators of child school readiness. Findings indicate that Latinx parent engagement during early childhood is associated with child school readiness. Across three distinct aspects of home-based parent engagement, relations were largely in the expected direction, such that higher home-based parent engagement was related to higher school readiness, assessed by parent report and direct assessments: social competence, vocabulary skills, and emotion knowledge. There were no associations with direct assessments of executive function, assessor-rated attention regulation, or assessor-rated impulse control. Greater school participation was associated with greater parent-reported attention problems. This latter finding may reflect greater parent participation at school in response to concerns about child behavior problems (Barajas-Gonzalez et al., 2022; Pomerantz et al., 2007; Reaves et al., 2022). Longitudinal research is needed to better understand these associations.

Our use of cross-sectional data limits our ability to make causal inferences. Nonetheless, the use of a culturally-relevant measure of Latinx parent engagement, the use of a range of school readiness indicators from multiple sources, and the participation of a diverse sample of Latinx families are strengths that inform our understanding of the association between Latinx parent engagement and child school readiness.

Efforts to bolster child school readiness in the Latinx population equitably are encouraged to attend to the multiple ways Latinx parents engage with their young children’s learning. This could look like honoring the breadth of ways that parents contribute to their children’s learning and development outside of formal education settings and working to build authentic relationships based on this understanding and appreciation (Brotman, et al., 2018; Dawson-McClure, Calzada & Brotman, 2017). At the policy level, this could look like investing in programming that supports parents’ well-being and capacity for home-based engagement in learning. In particular, programming that supports parent engagement in foundational and supplemental activities (as operationalized by the PEFL) may be a promising way to support the school readiness of Latinx children living in historically disinvested neighborhoods.