Beyond Random Acts: Family, School, and Community Engagement as an Integral Part of Education Reform

Heather B. Weiss, M. Elena Lopez, and Heidi Rosenberg

This paper, authored by Harvard Family Research Project, served as the foundation for panelists’ discussions at the National Policy Forum for Family, School, and Community Engagement. Beyond Random Acts provides a research-based framing of family engagement; examines the policy levers that can drive change in promoting systemic family, school, and community engagement; and focuses on data systems as a powerful tool to engage families for twenty-first century student learning.

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Reframing Family Involvement in Education: Supporting Families to Support Educational Equity

Heather B. Weiss, Suzanne M. Bouffard, Beatrice L. Bridglall, Edmund W. Gordon

Family engagement in education is a powerful but often neglected tool to support children’s learning and development. Over 40 years of steadily accumulating evidence show that family involvement is one of the strongest predictors of children’s school success, and that families play pivotal roles in their children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development from birth through adolescence. However, resources for and commitments to promoting meaningful family involvement have been few, weak, and inconsistent. Disadvantaged children are both more likely to benefit from increased family involvement and to come from families who face the greatest barriers to such involvement. To reframe public understanding of the benefits of family involvement in children’s education, this paper lays out a research-based definition of and more equitable approach to family involvement and positions it as a component of a broader complementary learning system, as continuous, cross-context family involvement is necessary to meet the goal of educational equity. The paper is part of the Equity Matters research initiative at the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University.

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The Federal Role in Out-of-School Learning: After-School, Summer Learning, and Family Involvement as Critical Learning Supports

Heather B. Weiss, Priscilla M. D. Little, Suzanne M. Bouffard, Sarah N. Deschenes, Helen Janc Malone

What, in conjunction with good schools, is necessary to increase the chances that all children, especially disadvantaged ones, will enter and leave school with the skills they need for 21st-century success?

Four decades of research demonstrate it is necessary to redefine learning—both where and when it takes place—if the country is to achieve its national goal of educating all children. Commissioned by the Center on Education Policy, this report from HFRP makes a research-based case for federal provision of out-of-school complementary learning supports from birth through high school, particularly for poor children, so that all students gain the skills that economists, educators, and employers agree are necessary for success in the 21st century.

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From Periphery to Center: A New Vision for Family, School, and Community Partnerships

Heather B. Weiss, Naomi Stephen

This chapter—which will appear in the Handbook of School–Family Partnerships—presents a comprehensive, integrated family, school, and community partnership framework that can help level the playing field for disadvantaged children and ensure that they have access to the parental involvement and community engagement practices of their more advantaged peers in order to enhance their learning.

Changing the Conversation About Home Visiting: Scaling Up With Quality

Heather B. Weiss, Lisa G. Klein

Are early childhood home visiting programs an investment worth scaling up?  The answer is a qualified “Yes, if certain conditions are met.” In order to bring quality home visiting to scale, programs must engage in ongoing program evaluation, regularly collecting and reporting information to ascertain if desired outcomes are being achieved. New and continuing funding must ensure that providers have both the commitment and capacity to incorporate lessons from research and program evaluations for program improvement. In bringing home visits to scale, the policy discussion shifts from individual program effectiveness to how high quality home visiting can achieve impacts on both parents and children.

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Home Visition Hearing: Heather B. Weiss

“Home visits in the early years potentially establish a pathway of parent involvement that begins at birth and continues through school, and when you create that pathway, you increase the likelihood of long-term benefits we all want for children,” states Heather B. Weiss, founder and director of Harvard Family Research Project, during her testimony at an Education and Labor Committee hearing on home visitation.

In the following video, Weiss discusses her interest in home visitation for its capacity to help parents acquire the knowledge, skills, and support that they need to help their children succeed. Citing 40 years of research showing that parenting and family processes are the strongest predictors of children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development, Weiss notes that family engagement is one of, if not the, most powerful sources for improving outcomes for children, and that home visits help ensure that parents are able to be proactive in their children’s learning and growth.

Heather B. Weiss testifies at an Education and Labor Committee hearing concerning H.R. 2343, the Education Begins at Home Act, on June 11, 2008.

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