The Latino Family-School Connection Project began in 1992 as a collaborative venture between the Rice University Center for Education and the Houston Independent School District to study the complex relationships, particularly the barriers, between Latino students and families, and their school experience. Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. created this program while a professor at Rice University and continues as Affiliate Researcher in the Center for Education. While at Rice, Dr. Valenzuela completed the research for her book, Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican American Youth and the Politics of Caring, which won the 2000 Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Valenzuela is currently Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin and Faculty Associate with the Center for Mexican American Studies there. At this time, she is involved in a research project studying the concept of additive schooling with a focus on effective teaching practices with respect to Latino youth located in reform-oriented, inner-city Houston schools.
Just Released! Leaving Children Behind: How "Texas-Style" Accountability Fails Latino Youth, edited by Angela Valenzuela. The book's contributors provide new data that demonstrate how current policies exacerbate historic inequalities, fail to accommodate the needs and abilities of English-language learners, and that the dramatic educational improvement attributed to Texas' system of accountability is itself questionable. The book proposes a more valid and democratic approach to assessment and accountability that would combine standardized examinations with multiple sources of information about a student's academic performance.
Current projects of the Rice University Center for Education address the particular concerns of the Latino community:
Dr. Judy Radigan 's latest research documents from the student perspective the effects of school and community forces on the number of students who fail to graduate from high school. High school students and Rice University education students learned research techniques and interviewed students at risk and who had already dropped out. The students presented their findings to the HISD Superintendent and board members at an April 2004 conference, Expectation: Graduation.
The School Writing Project benefits many Latino youth in the Houston Independent School District. Student writing groups encourage creativity, literacy, and community. Each April, student writers attend the SWP Spring Readings held at Rice University. 
