SAN FERNANDO -- Ten dedicated mothers are leading what some call a trailblazing effort in the mostly Latino schools of the northeast San Fernando Valley, teaching fellow parents how to help their children do better in school.

While the Los Angeles Unified School District runs similar outreach programs, Parent Pioneers, as the mothers are called, is one of only a handful in the Valley run by parents, for parents.

"We have parents who don't know how to write and we give them confidence," said Parent Pioneer Elsa Carretero, herself a Mexican immigrant with two children.

Carretero said she remembers how difficult it was when she first arrived in California, sitting down with her kids and struggling to teach them literature and math and trying to approach school officials.

Proponents say the parent-to-parent instruction reassures immigrants, who are often intimidated by the formal education system, and encourages them to become more involved in their children's homework and ultimately to improve their child's academic performance.

"We recognized that Latinos and immigrants, even if they don't have a high level of education, they have an ability to help their children and the community and it's not being tapped," said Rosa Furumoto, an assistant professor of Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge, who helped found the program.

Most of the parents who benefit from the program are Spanish-speaking, educated in another country and can be easily overwhelmed by complicated "standards-based" rules, school administrators and even teachers.

"For many of these parents, they don't know the system because most weren't educated here," Furumoto said.

But her own research has shown that with the literacy classes -- which teach parents how to communicate with teachers and administrators as well as how to help their kids in school -- parents have become more active at the schools, often speaking with teachers about expectations and their child's needs.

Anecdotally, there is also evidence that children's performance is improving, she said.

Parent Pioneers, the brainchild of Furumoto and a former LAUSD teacher, runs on a $150,000, three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that will run out next year. The grant money goes toward small stipends to the mothers and to cover the operational costs to run a bilingual bookstore that serves the community.

But the programs have attracted enough loyalty from the 80 parents completing the program that at least half a dozen have vowed to carry on the work of the original 10 mothers by volunteering at their own schools.

"If I hadn't gone to them I wouldn't have had the motivation to teach my son, to prepare him," said Maria Cerea, who now teaches the literacy class to other parents at Dyer Street Elementary School, where her 5-year-old son attends kindergarten.

After applying ideas she learned in the class, Cerea said she immediately noticed a change in Jerry Jr. He became enthused about school and his first report card showed all top marks.

"They taught me so much," she said. "They are parents and I am a parent. I realized if they can do it, I can do it."

Because of the high number of Spanish-speakers, most of the literacy classes are held in Spanish.

Rosa Perez, a mother of three, attends a literacy class offered at San Fernando Elementary School, where 98 percent of the students are Latino and about 70 percent are native Spanish-speakers. She said the classes introduced reading into her home.

"I bring the books home to my husband and children ... I am reading and they are listening," she said.