PARENTS STEP AHEAD INC
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Mission Statement
Parents Step Ahead (PSA) was founded in 2006 by Lupita Colmenero, publisher of El Hispano News, the oldest Spanish language newspaper in the Dallas/Fort Worth Area. Rather than just report alarming statistics about the challenges minority and underprivileged communities face, Colmenero created a program to empower parents to take a proactive role in the education of their children. PSA seeks to remedy the growing lack of awareness and education plaguing parents, especially within undeserved communities, which is putting their children at a significant educational disadvantage. PSA works in partnership with school districts, corporations and community organizations to offer educational programs for parents throughout the calendar school year. In December, the year-long program concludes with an awards ceremony recognizing the “Parent of the Year.” Winners are selected based on program participation and school nominations.
About This Cause
Parents Step Ahead (PSA) is a 501-C3 nonprofit organization, with the mission to “recognize, educate, enable and empower parents to take a proactive role in the educational and personal development of their children.” PSA was founded in response to a worrying trend that we observed in our own community. In a society where higher education is now a necessary step for success, our public schools have been underfunded and underappreciated, leading to stagnating academic achievement and increasingly worrisome dropout rates. This dilemma disproportionately affects low-income, underrepresented demographics, as economic or cultural barriers often determine the quality of education available to minorities. Unfortunately, this problem is not unique to our North Texas schools. Across the nation, minority children often do not have access to an equal caliber of education and, as a result, experience setbacks in every stage of life - from higher dropout rates in high school, to lower acceptance to college, to underemployment in the future. At PSA, we believe that our children’s futures should not be determined by ethnicity nor economics. We strive to increase every child’s opportunity to realize his or her full potential by supporting education, empowering parents, and elevating our children’s achievements. Our concern is threefold: High school dropout rates are disproportionately high among underserved communities. Lower-income families are not granted the same resources necessary for success in higher education, and, at the core of these issues, early childhood education starts too late. While high school graduation rates have increased among white, higher-income children, it seems as though minority groups have been left behind. African-American students exhibited almost no change in dropout rates in the last decade. Even more strikingly, the dropout rate among Hispanic groups is twice as high as that of African-Americans and almost three times as high as that of white students (Pew Research Center, 2013). At the core of this issue is a lack of parental involvement and early education opportunities. Research heavily supports that parents are the most important key in determining a child’s future despite economic barriers. A parent of any background can single-handedly raise their child’s test scores, school attendance and college acceptance by simply being involved and acting as a positive influence (SEDL, 2002). We at PSA believes that it is never too early to plan for our children’s future, and we provide the tools to help families achieve this. The Parents Step Ahead Parent Curriculum (PPC) will teach parents how and why to educate at the preschool level, how to positively communicate to their children through key stages of life, how and when to start saving for college. Parents will learn to manage their finances and the importance of saving. The PPC will also open doors of opportunity for parents to continue their own education, and will teach them key elements about health and wellness, and more. One may believe that it is too late to address this decades-old problem, or that pre-elementary education is too early to make a difference - but it’s not too late, and it’s never too early. Steve Jobs said, “Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday. ” We couldn’t agree more. Our PPC is designed to empower our families, our schools and our parents to make an impact on tomorrow, regardless of the past. It is only through knowledge and family empowerment that we can lead our children on the path of success so that they may achieve all that they can. PPC is committed to educating parents on how to best take care of their own families. We do this by concentrating on four important lesson topics in which to educate parents • Family Communication • Health and Wellness • Financial Literacy • Education and Technology. These four areas were chosen because of their great and practical importance to children at every level of their education. Each topic is divided into three, 1.5-hour (total 18 hours) lessons which are interactive, informative, and offered in both English and Spanish.