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From talking with Latino parents and parents in two low-income Anglo neighborhoods, we have gained insights about why they feel disenfranchised from school settings. In order to include such parents in the educational conversation, we need to understand the barriers to their involvement from their vantage point, as that of outsiders. When asked, these parents had many suggestions that may help educators re-envision family involvement in the schools.

What most people don't understand about the Hispanic community is that you come home and you take care of your husband and your family first. Then if there's time you can go out to your meetings.

Diverse linguistic and cultural practices. Parents who don't speak fluent English often feel inadequate in school contexts. One parent explains that “an extreme language barrier” prevented her own mother from ever going to anything at the school. Cultural mismatches can occur as often as linguistic conflicts. One Latino educator explained that asking young children to translate for their parents during conferences grates against a cultural norm. Placing children in a position of equal status with adults creates dysfunction within the family hierarchy.

That said, less than 10 percent of Americans appear to be using electronic medical records, with almost half saying they're not even clear if their doctor actually offers access, according to a Harris Interactive/HealthDay survey of more than 2,000 American adults

blacks and Hispanics were only half as likely to sign up for personal health record access compared with white patients, the authors noted, and the wealthiest patients were 14 percent more likely to initiate personal health record use than the poorest patients.

Older patients, between the ages of 51 and 65, constituted the largest slice of the high-user group, they found, accounting for four in 10 among such patients.