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www.HFRP.org

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.

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Successful Family Engagement in the Classroom: What teachers need to know and be able to do to engage families in raising student achievement

HFRP invited the Flamboyan Foundation—a private foundation focused on improving educational outcomes for children in Washington, DC and Puerto Rico—to share its classroom family engagement rubric with FINE. This rubric, and accompanying article, provides districts, school leaders, and teachers with a clear picture of what effective family engagement looks like in the classroom through concrete descriptions of how teachers demonstrate strong family engagement through their conversations and daily practice.

Lela Spielberg (March 2011) Research Report

Update: New Skills for New Schools

Since the 1997 publication of New Skills for New Schools by HFRP, the education reform landscape has changed, making it necessary to align teacher preparation and professional learning for family engagement with the goals of a twenty-first century education. Harvard Family Research Project is working to gather information about promising teacher education practices to prepare teachers to partner with families for student success. A preview of these practices—to be published in our forthcoming policy brief—is summarized in this update.

Margaret Caspe , M. Elena Lopez, Ashley Chu, and Heather B. Weiss (March 2011) Research Report

Free. Available online only.

Preparing Teachers to Engage Families Around Student Data

Maria C. Paredes is the Director of Community Education at Creighton School District in Arizona. Our October 2010 FINE Newsletter: Using Student Data to Engage Families, profiled Creighton District’s work with Academic Parent–Teacher teams. In this follow-up to the October article, Paredes describes how Creighton prepares teachers and parent liaisons to share student data with families through Academic Parent–Teacher Teams.

Maria Paredes (March 2011) Research Report

Ongoing Child Assessment and Family Engagement: New Opportunities to Engage Families in Children’s Learning and Development

This paper by the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement, a new center formed by HFRP and Brazelton Center at Children's Hospital Boston and other partners for the Office of Head Start, focuses on child assessment data as a tool for parent and family engagement in the early childhood arena. It is the first in a series that will help early childhood care and education programs identify ways that they can share information in order to strengthen partnerships and work toward common goals.

National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (March 2011) Research Report

Commentary from the National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group on the Extending the Grant Period for the Parental Information and Resource Centers

The National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group, a collaborative of leaders in the family engagement field including Harvard Family Research Project’s Heather Weiss, submitted recommendations for the U.S. Department of Education's proposal to extend the grant period for the National Parental Information and Resource Centers (PIRC) program. This extension period would allow the centers to operate through fiscal year 2012. The Working Group recommended that the extension place an emphasis on data collection, research, best practices, and program outcomes that will assist in the development of a strengthened PIRC program.

National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group (February 2011) Research Report

Free. Available online only.

Community Partnerships to Support High School Success

Recognizing the need for a comprehensive approach to keeping teens in school and successfully completing high school, AT&T Foundation and United Way Worldwide (UWW) started a new initiative—Family Engagement for High School Success. The goal of this grant was to identify promising family engagement strategies with a strong likelihood of raising high school graduation rates, and to share that information with communities around the country. Together with HFRP, UWW worked with communities to develop plans for high school success. This report highlights the innovative approaches developed and the early outcomes at eight of the UWW grantee sites

Harvard Family Research Project (February 2011) Research Report

Breaking New Ground: Data Systems Transform Family Engagement in Education

HFRP and the National PTA® have teamed up for the second issue in our series of ground-breaking policy briefs. Breaking New Ground cites six case studies from across the country that reveal innovative efforts by early childhood programs and school districts to use student data systems to improve family engagement. Each profile illustrates a segment of a data pathway beginning in early childhood and continuing through students' academic careers. The brief also includes a set of policy recommendations to help support the current trends in education that focus on twenty-first century learning and the vital role of technology.

Heather B. Weiss , M. Elena Lopez, & Deborah R. Stark (January 2011) Research Report

Family Engagement: Looking Back and Moving Forward

In this issue’s commentary, Heather Weiss, M. Elena Lopez, and Heidi Rosenberg honor FINE's 10th anniversary by looking at the growth and learning in the family engagement field over the last decade. Family engagement is shifting from a “random acts” approach—numerous social, fundraising and educational activities that lack broad and deep connections to school improvement goals—to a more systemic, integrated, and sustainable framework of true family engagement. This commentary discusses what that means for HFRP and FINE in 2011 and beyond.

Heather Weiss , M. Elena Lopez, and Heidi Rosenberg (December 2010) Research Report

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

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.  Because education reform will succeed only when all students are prepared for the demands of the twenty-first century, the paper also examines the role of families in transforming low-performing schools.

Heather Weiss , M. Elena Lopez, and Heidi Rosenberg (December 2010) Research Report

Free. Available online only.

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.

Harvard Family Research Project (October 2010) Research Report

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.

Harvard Family Research Project (October 2010) Research Report

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.

Harvard Family Research Project (October 2010) Research Report

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.

Harvard Family Research Project (October 2010) Research Report

Logged In: Using Technology to Engage Families in Children’s Education

Based on research of promising practices in school districts and communities, Harvard Family Research Project has identified a range of technological innovations that have the potential to boost key dimensions of family engagement: positive parent–child interactions, home–school communication, and parent responsibility for a child’s learning.

Harvard Family Research Project (October 2010) Research Report

ARIS Parent Link: Five Lessons in Linking Families to Student Data Systems

In this Voices from the Field article, Shael Polakow-Suransky, the New York City Department of Education's Deputy Chancellor in the Division of Performance & Accountability, discusses five lessons gleaned from the ARIS Parent Link data system, one of the many tools NYC schools employ to help educators and families evaluate student learning and support student achievement. 

Shael Polakow-Suransky (October 2010) Research Report

“For the first time I understand what it takes for my own child to graduate”: Engaging Immigrant Families around Data

D’Lisa Crain, Grant Administrator for the Nevada State Parent Information & Resource Center and Parent Involvement Coordinator for the Washoe County School District, talks about using case studies to help immigrant families better understand data as well as training parents to use an online data tool to track student learning and attendance. 

D’Lisa Crain (October 2010) Research Report

Data for Measuring Growth: Poway Unified School District

As told to the FINE team by Linda Foote, Technology Integration Specialist for Poway Unified School District, this article discusses how data helps students create their learning goals and helps parents create family goals to support their children’s learning. The article also shares ideas for how to build community around data. 

Harvard Family Research Project (October 2010) Research Report

Making Data Come Alive for Families through Young Children’s Play

Amy Horenbeck, training director from the Tools of the Mind program based at the Center for Improving Early Learning at the Metropolitan State College of Denver in Colorado, discusses a different approach to early childhood education and using children's work as a unique type of student data to track development and share children's progress with parents.

Amy Horenbeck (October 2010) Research Report

Data on Data: A Resource Guide to Engaging Families with Student Data

This resource from HFRP offers a compilation of articles on families’ use of data to support, guide, and advocate for student achievement and schoolwide improvement. Resources are grouped into three categories: Perspectives that offer lessons learned from family and community use of data, program examples that illustrate what it takes to make data actionable for families, and tools that help everyone understand how data can be analyzed.

Harvard Family Research Project (October 2010) Research Report

Academic Parent–Teacher Teams: Reorganizing Parent–Teacher Conferences Around Data

Maria C. Paredes, Director of Community Education at Creighton School District in Arizona, discusses one of the district’s family engagement strategies that was developed—in part—from data she collected demonstrating that parents were more interested in attending academically-oriented activities than other types of events such as potlucks or family-fun nights. 

Maria C. Paredes (October 2010) Research Report

Parent–Teacher Conference Tip Sheets (Hojas de Consejos Para Las Reuniones de Padres y Maestros)

Even with technological advances that allow parents to track their child’s academic progress remotely, and more transparency in student data (such as test scores and attendance rates), face-to-face interaction between parents and teachers is still the cornerstone of school family engagement efforts. These newly revised tip sheets provide key strategies for both parents and teachers to walk into conferences informed and prepared, in order to ensure the most successful outcomes. A tip sheet aimed at school principals also outlines how school administrators can support parents and teachers to that end. Now available in Spanish, this tool is a powerful resource for families and educators alike.

Harvard Family Research Project (October 2010) Research Report

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.

Harvard Family Research Project (September 2010) Research Report

Advocating for the Rights of Undocumented Families

Moria Cappio and Melanie Reyes from The Children’s Aid Society share their experiences reinventing family engagement strategies in their East Harlem Early Head Start/Head Start program to reach out to immigrant families by including parent civic advocacy. Cappio and Reyes also describe how using an advocacy evaluation tool helped them navigate these uncharted waters.

Moria Cappio , Melanie Reyes (May 2010) Research Report

Family Involvement News: May 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.

Harvard Family Research Project (May 2010) Research Report

Featured Teaching Case: "Daddy Says This New Math Is Crazy"

Harvard Family Research Project’s Teaching Cases support teacher training and professional development by highlighting challenges that schools, families, and communities may encounter in supporting children’s learning. In this issue, we feature "Daddy Says This New Math Is Crazy," which highlights the dilemmas that arise when innovations in teaching methods and curriculum are neither developed in collaboration with families and communities nor well-communicated to these critical stakeholders. 

Harvard Family Research Project (May 2010) Research Report

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