Substantial literature suggests that parent participation is beneficial to student success. Latino parents, however, have traditionally been underrepresented in their children's schools. Historically, this phenomenon has been explicated using deficit perspectives which have viewed Latino parents as culpable for their children's academic and social failure, arguments which have failed to capture the complexity of the relationship between these parents and the public school system. This article is a parent activist's narrative. Integrating personal experience and parental voices, it examines tensions in the relationship between Latino parents and the public schools. The author suggests that Latino parents can resist, challenge, and even transform contradictory and "oppressive" school policies and practices, particularly when accompanied by political consciousness.

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This article focuses on how education personnel can foster a climate and infrastructure for working collaboratively with Latino families. The author argues that collaboration is facilitated when educators understand how they, as school agents, accept a Latino community’s culture, knowledge, and power within the school context and how educators align their values and beliefs, as well as school policies and practices, with those of the community. Included is a review of relevant literature as well as suggestions for Latino family collaboration that can be used to guide educators (special and general) in identifying mind-sets and practices that either permit or preclude authentic collaboration.