Developing Collaborative Parent—Teacher Relationships with Culturally Diverse Parents

to develop effective strategies in promoting collaborative home-school partnerships with parents from culturally diverse backgrounds By Deborah L. Voltz The interdependent relation-ship between the school and the home in the edu-cation process underscores the importance of developing effective partnerships with parents. Parents play a critical role in laying the foundation for school learning, as well as in main-taining a nurturing home environment in which it can flourish. As Marion (1979, p. 1) has noted, "Historically and legally, the function of education in this country has been vested in state educational agencies and chiefly dele-gated to local school districts; but in reality, the family is the primary edu-cator. " Consequently, when school personnel and parents fail to work together as a team, the effectiveness of the educational program is com-promised (Diggs, 1974). Attention to the task of developing effective parent-teacher partnerships is particularly critical * when working with high-risk populations facing spe-cial challenges—as is true in the case of students with disabilities who have culturally diverse backgrounds. Par-ents of these students must encounter not only the everyday stresses of par-enting, but also must manage stresses associated with having a child with a disability, compounded by the stresses associated with being culturally differ-ent in a society that often views such differences as "deviant, difficult, infer-ior, or wrong " (Brantlinger & Guskin, 1985, p. 1). Because these parents face many unique challenges, educators seeking to develop collaborative rela-tionships with them are likewise chal-lenged