Youth as a bridge between home and school: Comparing student voice and parent involvement as strategies for change

This article analyzes efforts to increase parent involvement and student voice among Mexican American families who are low income at a large comprehensive high school. Although the parent-involvement effort ultimately failed, the students developed their own initiatives to help support Latino youth and their families, including the development of a bilingual tutoring program and a translation program for families needing to communicate with the school. The experiences in this article suggest that, rather than focusing solely on parent-involvement strategies, schools also increase student voice as a way to bridge the gap between families and the school and to improve student outcomes.