Family Engagement Matters

Students do better in school and in life when their families are engaged. A strong body of evidence is clear that family engagement, from birth through adolescence, contributes to a range of positive student outcomes.

Forward Together: Building a Field that Works for Families.

The coronavirus pandemic revealed the necessity, the complexity, and the tremendous value of building strong ties between schools and families. To ensure continuity of learning, schools were forced to rely heavily on families and caregivers to support learning in the home.

Collaborating to transform and improve education systems: A playbook for family-school engagement. Brookings Institution.

This playbook on family-school collaboration makes the case for why family engagement is essential for education systems transformation and why families and schools must have a shared understanding of what a good quality education looks like. By providing evidence-based strategies from around the world and other hands-on tools that school leaders and partners can adopt …

Summer Learning and Beyond Opportunities for Creating Equity

Review the Introduction to Learning Policy Institute’s Summer Learning and Beyond report, which introduces six design principles for promoting equity in summer learning programs. Dive deeper into any of the six principles for an overview, key ideas and practices arising from the principle, and additional resources. Or, see page 16 for a case study detailing how a district in California is putting the principles into action.  

Getting to Work on Summer Learning Recommended Practices for Success

Rand’s second edition Getting to Work on Summer Learning provides recommendations for district leaders and their partners who are interested in launching or improving summer learning programs. Key suggestions outlined on page ix include: Commit in the fall to a summer program and begin planning and recruiting instructors by January.  Select a director with the requisite time and authority to lead planning.  …

Guidelines for designing middle-school transition using universal design for learning principles

Review this article by Australian researchers to understand how UDL principles can be applied to transition planning and activities. Annex 1 includes a table with examples for reaching students with diverse needs (e.g., modeling a high school schedule for middle schoolers, soliciting student feedback through surveys and group discussions, goal setting for incoming students).  

Added to Action Planning Tool

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Our online library has hundreds of practitioner-friendly resources to support putting evidence into practice.