Effects of a parent-implemented intervention on the academic readiness skills of five Puerto Rican kindergarten students in an urban school

Despite strong research support for the benefits of parent involvement, His panic parents typically are less involved with their children's education a nd perceive more barriers to involvement than many other ethnic groups. Alt hough this low level of involvement has been interpreted by some as reflect ing a lack of caring for their children's education, an alternative explana tion may be simply that Hispanic-parents have limited knowledge of how to h elp their children. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects o f a parent-implemented academic drill intervention on Puerto Rican children 's academic readiness skills. Participants were five individual Puerto Rica n parents and their kindergarten children identified by the teacher as havi ng 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, a ll five children made marked improvements on identifying letters with the p arent-implemented intervention.