Building Evidence on How to Move Young Latinas Toward College

Some­times a sin­gle sta­tis­tic can be a cat­a­lyst for big action. In the ear­ly 1990s, a demographer’s find­ing — that Lati­na girls in Texas had less than a 1% chance of get­ting a col­lege edu­ca­tion — led to the start of an inter­ven­tion that would even­tu­al­ly grow into the Austin-based orga­ni­za­tion Con Mi MADRE (Moth­ers And Daugh­ters Rais­ing Expec­ta­tions). A Casey grantee, Con Mi MADRE now oper­ates through­out the state, sup­port­ing hun­dreds of young Lati­nas each year in their pur­suit of high­er education.

Har­ness­ing the pow­er of the moth­er-daugh­ter rela­tion­ship, Con Mi MADRE uses a two-gen­er­a­tion approach to pre­pare girls for aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess from the sixth grade through the com­ple­tion of post­sec­ondary stud­ies, serv­ing more than 900 young Lati­nas and their moth­ers every year. Many par­tic­i­pants come from sin­gle-par­ent, low-income fam­i­lies, and 80% would be first-gen­er­a­tion col­lege students.

Con Mi MADRE pro­gram­ming, con­duct­ed in Span­ish and Eng­lish, engages moth­ers and daugh­ters through a con­tin­u­um of sup­port ser­vices tai­lored to grade lev­el, includ­ing spe­cial­ized in-school cur­ric­u­la, coun­sel­ing ses­sions, edu­ca­tion­al work­shops, col­lege fairs and oth­er events.

The orga­ni­za­tion reports that 100% of its seniors grad­u­ate from high school, and about 77% enroll in post­sec­ondary edu­ca­tion. ​“By engag­ing the stu­dents and their moth­ers in the col­lege-going process at such an ear­ly age, we cre­ate a col­lege-going mind­set and cul­ture in the home,” said Tere­sa Granil­lo, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Con Mi MADRE. ​“They set their eyes and hearts on what they can do with their future if they stay in school.”

But in terms of estab­lish­ing the lev­el of evi­dence required for inclu­sion in reg­istries of rig­or­ous­ly test­ed pro­grams, such as Blue­prints for Healthy Youth Devel­op­ment, the 13-year dura­tion of Con Mi MADRE’s pro­gram works against it. Granil­lo points out that it’s dif­fi­cult to design a ran­dom­ized con­trol tri­al — the eval­u­a­tion method that assess­es impact through a com­par­i­son of ran­dom­ly assigned par­tic­i­pant and non­par­tic­i­pant groups — for a pro­gram that spans so many years of a young woman’s life. ​“Our work with the Foun­da­tion is putting the pieces in place to get to that point of being an evi­dence-based pro­gram, guid­ing our explo­ration toward a research ques­tion we can ask and answer in a short­er peri­od of time,” Granil­lo says.

Con Mi MADRE has used Casey’s tech­ni­cal assis­tance to help devel­op a the­o­ry of change and a new log­ic mod­el — crit­i­cal steps toward effec­tive eval­u­a­tion, the ulti­mate goal of Expand­ing Evi­dence work. Based on the needs of Expand­ing Evi­dence grantees, the Foundation’s Evi­dence-Based Prac­tice Group also has recent­ly added sup­port for sup­ple­men­tal coach­ing in brand­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and fundrais­ing. Says Granil­lo: ​“The tai­lor­ing of the Expand­ing Evi­dence pro­gram to meet each of us where we are as indi­vid­ual orga­ni­za­tions has been real­ly key to us being able to make the best use of the sup­port to pro­pel our work forward.”

Ayo Atter­ber­ry, a senior asso­ciate with the Evi­dence-Based Prac­tice Group, says the goal is to doc­u­ment the val­ue of pro­grams such as Con Mi MADRE so they can be expand­ed to oth­er parts of the coun­try. ​“Eval­u­a­tion leads to evi­dence,” she says. ​“We want evi­dence because we want to give kids pro­grams and ser­vices that work — and it’s espe­cial­ly impor­tant for kids of col­or to have access to inter­ven­tions that are both effec­tive and cul­tur­al­ly specific.”

Relat­ed

• Strength­en­ing the Foun­da­tion: Strate­gic Evi­dence Build­ing for Two-Gen­er­a­tion Approaches