Latino parents in dual language immersion programs: why are they so satisfied?

ABSTRACT

Educators (school administrators, teachers, district officials, etc.) often use parental satisfaction ‘as one indicator of school success or one outcome of school effectiveness’ [Parkes, J., and T. Ruth. 2011. “How Satisfied are Parents of Students in Dual Language Education Programs? (Me parece maravillosa la gran oportunidad que le están dando a estos niños).” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 14 (6): 701–718]. Parent satisfaction is particularly attended to in educational settings where participation is voluntary (such as magnet or charter schools, for example). This article examines Latino parental satisfaction in four Oregon dual language immersion (DLI) schools. If past research, and our findings, are accurate, then researchers and educators can convincingly conclude that Latino parents are highly satisfied with bilingual education programs in general, and DLI programs in particular, and there is no need for improvement. We argue, however, that uncritically reporting high levels Latino parental satisfaction in bilingual programs can lead educators to become complacent to these parents’ concerns. Latino parental satisfaction must be viewed through multiple lenses in order to avoid silencing their voices in DLI settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual language immersion
• Latino parent involvement
• parental satisfaction
• bilingual education
• language minority students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Edward M. Olivos is an associate professor specializing in bilingual education and bicultural parent involvement at the University of Oregon. His research focuses on the relationship between bicultural parents and schools as well as the development of bilingual educators. He is a former San Diego (CA) bilingual elementary school teacher.

Audrey Lucero is an associate professor at the University of Oregon whose work broadly investigates the experiences of Spanish-speaking Latin@s with the U.S. public school system. She is a former Seattle (WA) bilingual elementary school teacher.

Notes

1 Parents were interviewed in Spanish and responses were in Spanish. For brevity, we only include the English translations here.