Charting a Course to Equitable Collaboration: Learning from Parent Engagement Initiatives in the Road Map Project

“This multiple case study report represents the culmination of over a year of research by the University of Washington’s (UW) Equitable Parent-School Collaboration Research Project. The project sought to understand, document, and support promising district and neighborhood-based parent engagement efforts and indicators aimed at improving student outcomes and success within the context of a regional …

Equity in Family Engagement Toolkit

“Based on a Parent University collaboration with Academy of Music Production Education and Development (AMPED), Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS), and the National Center for Families Learning (NCFL), stakeholders produced this Equity in Family Engagement Toolkit to support educators as they engage with families toward student learning and achievement. Captured throughout 12 meetings, family voice …

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.

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 …

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.

Recasting Families and Communities as Co-Designers of Education in Tumultuous Times

“This policy memo, jointly released by the National Education Policy Center and the Family Leadership Design Collaborative, explores how justice-based approaches to family engagement can enable parents and families, particularly from communities of color, to contribute as fellow leaders in transforming schools and educational systems to better serve all children, families, and communities.” Authors: Ann …

Fostering Family Engagement through Shared Leadership in The District, Schools, and Community

In this ethnographic case study, Ann M. Ishimaru examines how a collaboration emerged and evolved between a low-income Latino parent organizing group and the leadership of a rapidly changing school district. Using civic capacity and community organizing theories, Ishimaru seeks to understand the role of parents, goals, strategies, and change processes that characterize a school …

Joining Together to Create a Bold Vision for Next Generation Family Engagement

“This challenge paper starts with a brief overview of what we have learned over the past 50 years of family engagement research, practice, and policy, and a look at how this work has guided the challenge we have laid out. We go on to suggest key design principles and processes for building next generation family …

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