Setonji Agosa

Agosa
In the future I want to work in education and policy, and foster an environment where policymakers are listening to parents.

Degree

Public Policy ’18

Project Team

Demographics are shifting, and there are more Latino students and more minority students in schools than ever before. What are the barriers that are keeping the academic gap so prevalent in this day and age?

One thing that we noticed is that a lot of research is talking about parental engagement as a method of fostering student success in the classroom. So we were wondering what is hindering parents from coming into the classroom, talking with the teachers and being present there?

We noticed that a lot of parents were having issues with language, with accessing the faculty at schools, and even just understanding the system of education in this country, because many had emigrated from other nations. We knew the best way to interact with these parents would be to actually speak with them: research can only tell you so much. And so we spoke to the parents at El Centro Hispano in Durham.

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In the future I want to work in education and policy, and foster an environment where policymakers are listening to parents. I have nieces and nephews, and I want them to have the best education possible. That’s what I want to see in the future.