Mentoring High School Latino Students: Realism Versus False Hope
Maria Mejorado (UC Davis)

Mentoring in K-12 schools is currently experiencing the strongest push ever as a major intervention in the educational reform movement. It seems to have become a fashionable concept which calls for the revival of volunteerism. Governor Wilson's multi-million dollar Mentor Initiative has been touted as the way to combat the structural changes in society such as the breakdown of the traditional family, and the erosion of the neighborhood and community networks. The perception is that mentoring is easy, inexpensive and a win/win situation for the mentor, the mentee, for schools and for society in general. However, some researchers have expressed concern with the notion of mentoring, which do not readily surface in discussions.

Mentoring is a highly complex and labor intensive undertaking (Freedman, 1993). The recruitment, screening, matching, training and monitoring of mentors and mentees all require an extensive investment of time, effort, and money. These "planned" or formal mentoring relationships require great care for it cannot be assumed that they will flourish on their own as they do in a more natural or informal situation. Furthermore, there are a wide range of unresolved issues in mentoring. If mentoring is to be viewed realistically rather than as a false hope, these issues must be acknowledged.

One issue is the lack of an operational definition of mentoring in the field of education and corporate management (Jacobi, 1991) which leads to confusion regarding what is being measured or what is successful (Meriam, 1983). Everyone seems to "know" what mentoring is, but the term is used loosely. Second, there is a lack of an empirical link between mentoring and academic success. Research has demonstrated behavioral changes as a result of mentoring as found in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America and only a slight improvement in academics (P/PV, 1993). Other studies have found academic success indirectly linked to mentoring (Erkut & Mokros, 1984, Wilson et. al., 1975). Third, there is lack of agreement about who is most appropriate to be a mentor. There are questions about culture and language. for example, how is the mentoring relationship impacted when mentors cannot speak Spanish to Spanish speaking parents? How is it enhanced when they do? Over the last three years, three statewide surveys were conducted of Latino mentors involved in high school programs targeting Latino students in the 9-12th grades.

Over three hundred mentors representing eighteen different high schools were asked questions regarding who is the most appropriate type of person to mentor Latino students and what role they should play. In addition, we asked about the importance of mentors being linked to the schools, and what impact they envision. Finally, we examined the influence of culture and language on mentor's satisfaction with the mentoring relationship.

We hypothesize that successful mentoring relationships among Latino high school students and Latino mentors increase when matched using criteria such as family background and upbrining, language and socio-economics status. We believe this foundation leads to engaging Latino parents in promoting their child's academic achievement in ways schools have been unable to achieve. Furthermore, as successful members of the Latino community, mentors model for students the value of and comfort with parents which may raise the status of the parents in the students' eye. Sharing this research is timely and links with the school reform efforts to increase the achievement of Latino high school students in the state of California