The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
Federal Funding in Out-of School Time With Accountability Requirements and Evaluations
These Web documents were produced by HFRP as part of its initial efforts to “map” the out-of-school time field, and detail federal funding streams for out-of-school time programs and related programming alongside their accountability requirements and evaluations. A summary section offers a narrative description of each funding stream. Funding streams are classified as major or minor depending on the amount of money they make available for out-of-school time efforts.
Free. Available online only.
Family Involvement News: September 2015
Explore how libraries are taking a leading role in learning, discover ways to reimagine learning in your community, and learn how parents—through policy and advocacy—are being empowered to engage in their children’s learning.
Teacher Preparation
This premier issue of FINE Forum represents the first step in a bold new initiative to strengthen teacher preparation in family and community engagement in education.
Free. Available online only.
Research Spotlight: Get Started!—Resources on Using Evaluation for Continuous Improvement
This Research Spotlight, which follows up on our 2013 fall FINE Newsletter, has been compiled in response to our readers’ interest in using data for continuous improvement.
Family Involvement News: October 2010
We at Harvard Family Research Project are committed to keeping you up to date on what's new in family involvement. This list of links to current reports, articles, events, and opportunities will help you stay on top of research and resources from HFRP and other field leaders.
Family Involvement Makes a Difference in School Success
Family involvement helps children get ready to enter school, promotes their school success, and prepares youth for college. This Research Brief presents findings from HFRP's ongoing, in-depth review of research and evaluated programs that link family involvement in children's education to student outcomes.
Free. Available online only.
Diverse Communities
This issue of the FINE Forum provides some promising approaches to preparing teachers to partner with diverse families and communities.
Free. Available online only.
Family Engagement for High School Success: Final Grant Report to AT&T
As part of our evaluation work with United Way Worldwide on the Family Engagement for High School Success Initiative, HFRP worked with 15 local United Way chapters and their surrounding communities to develop comprehensive family engagement strategies through partnerships with schools, students and their families, and the local community, in support of boosting high school graduation rates and academic achievement. This grant report details the planning process with the 15 grantees and the lessons learned during the process.
Promoting Educational Equity Through Family Engagement: The King Legacy
To honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of freedom and justice, we highlight key messages from our contributors about transforming family engagement to promote educational equity.
Featured Teaching Case: Defining “Fine”—Communicating Academic Progress to Parents
Harvard Family Research Project’s Teaching Cases are designed to support teacher training and professional development by highlighting challenges that schools, families, and communities may encounter in supporting children’s learning. In this month’s newsletter, we feature Defining “Fine”—Communicating Academic Progress to Parents, a case that highlights one elementary school’s efforts to use and understand data about student progress toward state standards and to communicate the meaning of these data clearly to parents.
A Human-Centered Approach to Family Engagement
A human-centered design approach – an approach that is based on observation, empathy, optimism, collaboration, and experimentation – opens new possibilities for educators to motivate and sustain family engagement.
Academic Achievement
This issue of FINE Forum explores new forms of and strategies in family involvement, all of which share a common goal: expanding and deepening family and community roles to help students meet high standards.
Free. Available online only.
Family Involvement News: December 2011
We at Harvard Family Research Project are committed to keeping you up to date on what's new in family involvement. This list of links to current reports, articles, events, and opportunities will help you stay on top of research and resources from HFRP and other field leaders.
Taking the Lead in Family Engagement: A Message to Our Followers on Presidents’ Day
Presidents’ Day is a time to reflect on the importance of leadership. Learn how policymakers, researchers, and practitioners are leading the field of family engagement.
Webinar Brief: Data Driven—Making Student and School Data Accessible and Meaningful To Families
This is a briefing on the third webinar in the series Achieving Excellence and Innovation in Family, School, and Community Engagement brought to you by the U.S. Department of Education in partnership with United Way Worldwide, National PTA, SEDL, and Harvard Family Research Project. The webinar, which took place on August 10, 2010, featured Kevin Jennings from the U.S. Department of Education and a number of speakers from across the country discussing examples of how data can be used to engage families in programs, schools, and school districts.
Early Childhood Education
As we celebrate the Week of the Young Child, the FINE Forum presents some innovative ideas and practices in family involvement in early childhood education.
Free. Available online only.
Commentary from Harvard Family Research Project on the Promise Neighborhoods Program
Harvard Family Research Project submitted recommendations to the National Register Notice regarding the Promise Neighborhoods program's proposed priorities, requirements, definitions, and selection criteria.
Free. Available online only.
Family Engagement Policy Resources
We've added a section to our website to inform stakeholders of our policy-related work in family engagement. This work seeks to promote the broader definition of family engagement that stresses shared responsibility and cross-context learning within a cradle-to-career approach to education. Visit our new policy page for more details, including our comments in the Federal Register regarding the U.S. Department of Education’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund competitive grants program.
Free. Available online only.
Breaking New Ground: Data Systems Transform Family Engagement in Education
In this issue’s commentary, Heather Weiss and M. Elena Lopez from Harvard Family Research Project and Deborah Stark, Commissioner of First 5, Alameda County revisit the new definition of family engagement—as a shared responsibility, across multiple settings, from cradle to career—as applied to student data use. They discuss how data can effectively bring families, teachers, and administrators to the table, and engage everyone around student learning and performance.
University–Community Partnerships
This FINE Forum features the Jane Addams School for Democracy, a university-community partnership in which Hmong and Latino immigrants, professors, high school teachers, parents, and students all work together on public issues.
Free. Available online only.
Aiming for Accountability: Lessons Learned From Eight States
This report highlights some of the important lessons in designing and developing results-based accountability (RBA) systems, based on the insights gained from studies of eight states: Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, and Vermont. The report includes information on how these states overcame challenges in developing effective RBA systems and what the characteristics of promising RBA efforts are.
$7.00 . 54 Pages.
Family Involvement News: March 2016
Are you looking to break free of traditional strategies for promoting family-school-community partnerships? Discover how video games, human-centered design thinking, and digital media resources are making this happen!