Toward Improving the Educational Opportunities for Black and Latinx Young Children: Strengthening Family-School Partnerships

Teacher-Child Racial/Ethnic Match and Parental Engagement With Head Start

“…Parents may form more productive relationships with teachers—one in which teachers look to parents as key sources of information about children’s education—or feel more comfortable being involved in classrooms when they share a racial/ethnic or cultural background with the teacher (Gaitan, 2004, 2012; Hornby & Lafaele, 2011; Ishimaru et al, 2016; Lareau & Horvat, 1999; LaRocque et al, 2011). Our findings suggest that teachers hoping to support students of varied racial/ethnic or cultural backgrounds should consider the use of strategies that explicitly consider the role of racial/ethnic differences (De Gaetano, 2007; Montoya-Ávila et al, 2018).…”

“…Thus, understanding policy-malleable predictors of parental engagement, while relevant across ECE program types, is particularly critical in the context of Head Start. Drawing on the growing literature on the importance of racial/ethnic match in both educational (Downer et al, 2016; Grissom et al, 2015) and other family service settings (Filene et al, 2013; Huang & Zane, 2016; McCurdy et al, 2003) as well as critical analyses of the ways in which schools engage with bicultural students or students from nondominant groups (Baquedano-López et al, 2013; Lewis & Diamond, 2015; Montoya-Ávila et al, 2018; Valenzuela, 1999), the present study provides a novel exploration of the links between teacher-child racial/ethnic match and parental engagement with Head Start.…”

“…A racial/ethnic match between teachers and parents can facilitate greater parental engagement with schooling by encouraging teacher-parent relationships, easing communication, and reducing substantial cultural barriers (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011; LaRocque et al, 2011; Montoya-Ávila et al, 2018; Olivos, 2006). Indeed, in their work on how teacher race/ethnicity predicts differences in assignment to gifted services for students of color, Grissom and Redding (2016) and Grissom et al (2017) highlight parental responses to the presence of a same-race teacher as a key potential driver.…”

“…Because Head Start is targeted at low-income families, it may be the case that time and resource constraints are the fundamental driver of parent involvement, and racial/ethnic match may be unrelated. However, given the large proportion of Head Start families from Black and Hispanic communities, evidence suggesting schools create barriers to family engagement for families of color (Lareau & Horvat, 1999; Lewis & Diamond, 2015; Montoya-Ávila et al, 2018; Valenzuela, 1999), and the importance of parental engagement to the two-generation mission of Head Start, understanding how racial/ethnic match may affect parents’ engagement with Head Start is vital to assessing the overall impact of policies that may change the racial composition of the Head Start workforce.…”

“…Understanding how teacher-child racial/ethnic match relates to parental engagement with their child’s ECE setting is critical, especially in light of growing efforts to raise the educational credentials of early childhood educators. While drops in the percentage of non-White teachers are often raised as an unintended consequence of these policies, there has been little empirical evidence on the benefits of racial/ethnic match within early childhood settings—despite the work of many scholars suggesting that having a teacher or school that values the cultural spaces families inhabit is important (Gaitan, 2004; Montoya-Ávila et al, 2018). This article provides new evidence to inform policymakers looking to scale up or pull back from education requirements as a method for improving quality in Head Start programs by explicitly exploring if and how a diverse staff may serve Head Start children and families.…”