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.
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.
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.
Free. Available online only.
Research Update 4: 21st CCLC-Funded Afterschool Programs
The 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) initiative provides funds for afterschool programs across the country and is the only federal funding source dedicated exclusively to afterschool programming. This issue in our Research Update: Highlights from the OST Database series, discusses the features and benefits of afterschool programs funded by the 21st CCLC initiative.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Expanded Learning Opportunities in New Jersey—Pathways to Student Success
This Expanded Learning Opportunities (ELO) policy brief, prepared for New Jersey After 3’s Expanded Learning Time Summit in September 2010, describes the potential benefits of participation in a range of well-implemented ELO programs and initiatives for students of all ages, including afterschool and summer programming, and underscores the benefits of strong partnerships for learning between schools and out‐of‐school learning supports. It concludes with a set of key policy factors to consider when adopting different ELO approaches.
Grantmaking to School Districts: Lessons for Foundations
This brief offers lessons and best practices from foundations across the country on grantmaking to school districts. It offers advice to foundations that are considering school district investments for the first time. It also offers a useful "check" to more experienced foundations that want to examine their thinking and approaches against the lessons and practices of other foundations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Creating Environments to Promote Innovation
For this issue's FINE Newsletter commentary , HFRP consultant Margaret Caspe talks with Heather Weiss, Sherry Cleary, and Jane Quinn about innovation in their respective disciplines. Caspe, who is also Associate Director of Early Childhood Programs at the Children's Aid Society, presents the central themes through a framework designed to help schools and organizations move beyond typical problem solving to discover new ways of thinking.
New Visions for Public Schools: Using Data to Engage Families
Barbara Taveras and Caissa Douwes from New Visions for Public Schools and Karen Johnson from BASE High School in New York City share how high schools in New York City have begun to engage families in students’ academic success and college readiness by supporting parents in understanding achievement data. This case study makes clear that supporting parents in grasping and utilizing this information is a shared responsibility among schools, families, and students.
Free. Available online only.
Engaging Older Youth: Program and City-level Strategies to Support Sustained Participation in Out-of-School Time (RESEARCH SYNOPSIS)
This research synopsis summarizes the findings from Engaging Older Youth, a new report from Harvard Family Research Project and Public/Private Ventures that highlights key strategies to promote out-of-school-time program participation among older youth.
Free. 12 Pages.
Engaging Older Youth: Program and City-level Strategies to Support Sustained Participation in Out-of-School Time
This new report from Harvard Family Research Project and Public/Private Ventures highlights key strategies to promote out-of-school-time program participation among older youth.
Free. Available online only.