Barriers to parents’ involvement in school-related activities among Spanish-speaking families

A new NCES Data Pont, Barriers to Participation in School Activities for Spanish-speaking Parents: 2019, examines language barriers faced by Spanish-speaking parents as they try to participate in activities at their student’s school, and language services provided by schools to those parents. In the 2019, about 7.9 percent of K–12 enrolled students had parents that primarily spoke Spanish at home or as a first language. This Data Point explores barriers those parents may face related to language. Students in Spanish-speaking families had parents who reported that they experienced difficulty participating in school activities due to speaking a language other than English. Further, Spanish-speaking parents that said that language was a barrier to participating in school activities reported less frequent participation than Spanish-speaking families that had no such difficulty. This Data Point uses data from the Parent and Family Involvement Survey of the National Household Education Surveys Program (PFI-NHES:2019).