“The Family Engagement Playbook is a collection of promising research-based approaches to strengthen individual competencies and organizational support for meaningful family engagement.”
Family Conversation Starter Tools
From the Brookings Institute’s Playbook for Family-School Engagement: “The tools include: A contextualization checklist of the steps for adapting the tools to a specific context and to other actors. A short parent survey that can also be adapted to other stakeholders, such as students. A short teacher survey that can also be adapted to other stakeholders, such as school …
Case Study: Cajon Valley Union School District
This case study from the Brookings Institute’s Playbook for Family-School Engagement describes how one school district strategically hired multilingual staff to serve as community liaisons and support family engagement. The case study describes the process for hiring these caregivers, as well as the district’s 8-week parent university, family-teacher teams, annual family engagement survey, and Parent Teacher Home Visits.
Re-imagining and Humanizing Parent-Teacher Conversations and Interactions Through Role-Play
Role-playing can be used as a strategy to unpack and re-imagine powered relationships between teachers and marginalized families. This brief shares examples from the Los Angeles Unified School District, as well as guidance and recommended resources for other districts.
Building Relationships Bridging Cultures: Cultural Brokering in Family Engagement
“Drawing on previous research and a comparative case study, this brief describes cultural brokers—individuals who acts as bridges between families and schools—and three promising strategies they used to engage families, especially those farthest from opportunities, in their children’s education: parent capacity building; culturally-specific relationship building; and systemic capacity building. We offer recommendations for cultural brokering …
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Case Study: EdNavigator
This case study from the Brookings Institute’s Playbook for Family-School Engagement describes how EdNavigator, a nonprofit agency based in New Orleans, uses creative strategies to connect families and schools. Strategies include developing “congratulations packets” to build trust between families and schools and using navigators to help parents make decisions for their students.
Panorama Family-School Relationships Survey
“Research shows that when schools successfully engage families, students earn higher grades, score higher on tests, develop better social skills, and are more likely to graduate. The Family-School Relationships Survey was developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to provide schools with a clear picture of family attitudes about several key topics.”
Enhancing Family-School Collaboration with Diverse Families
“This brief is designed to help inform school leaders about how intentional collaboration with diverse families can be created through environments in which educators work alongside families on behalf of the students they serve. Recommendations for action are included.” Authors: Amanda Witte, Felicia Singleton, Tyler Smith and Patti Hershfeldt
Principal Connection / Swimming with Your Shoes On (ASCD)
This ASCD article digs into how school leaders can support educators in improving communication with caregivers and families. This article encourages educational leaders to pose the questions: “When was the last time you focused a professional development session on parent-teacher conferences? Or led teachers in reflecting on the effectiveness of their parent conferences and what they …
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DCPS Home Visitation Consent & Verification Form
This form from Washington DC Public Schools (DCPS) offers an example of a home visit consent form. This can serve as an example for other districts and schools to start and/or formalize home visiting programs that strengthen family partnerships.