GradNationCommunity Summits

Family Engagement Toolkit

Guide Content

  1. Introduction
  2. Resources and Best Practices (GradNation.org)
  3. Speaker Recommendations
  4. Additional Alliance Partners
  1. Multi-Media and Suggested Reading
  2. Summit Conveners
  1. Introduction

Parents are a key ingredient of any dropout prevention strategy. As each child’s first and arguably, lifelong teacher, a parent (broadly defined to refer to whoever is a child’s primary caregiver) is well positioned to provide a child with the on-going support and supervision he or she needs to be successful in school. Whether or not children get on the path to high school graduation in the first place and stay on track throughout their school career is significantly influenced by the extent to which parents are able to support them in their educational endeavors.

  1. Resources and Best Practices

Visit the Family Engagement Channel at GradNation.org where you will find a large variety of resources and best practices on this topic.

  1. Speaker recommendations

Below is a sampling of speaker recommendations for this topic. If you would like to find out more about a specific speaker or discuss additional speaker options, please contact your Summit Manager.

Joyce L. Epstein, Ph.D., is Director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships and the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS), Principal Research Scientist, and Research Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. She also received her Ph.D. in sociology at Johns Hopkins University. In 1995, Dr. Epstein established the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS), which provides professional development to enable school, district, and state leaders to develop research-based programs of family and community involvement. Dr. Epstein has over one hundred publications on family and community involvement including School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, Third Edition (Corwin Press, 2009), which guides partnership program development, and a textbook for college courses for future teachers and administrators called School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools, second edition (Westview, 2011). Among recent awards, she was named a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2009 and received the 2009 Elizabeth Cohen Award for Applied Research from AERA’s Sociology of Education Special Interest Group. Her current research focuses on how district and school leadership affects the quality of schools’ programs of family and community involvement and results for students. In all of her work, she is interested in the connections of research, policy, and practice. (For Dr. Epstein’s publications, see the Publications List in the section Research and Evaluation.)

Karen Mapp, Ph.D.,is a lecturer on education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, as well as the director of Education Policy and Management Program. Her work focuses on school-family-community relationships in relation to academic achievement with an emphasis on school and family partnerships. Also, she addresses the barriers that parents face when trying to support their children.

Heather Weiss, Ph.D., is the founder and director of the Harvard Family Research Project. She is also a senior research associate and lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her work focuses on complementary learning by linking families, schools, and communities to support youth in both school and life. She has expertise in evaluating the effectiveness of programs or initiatives put in place.

  1. Additional Alliance Partners

View our list of Alliance Partners for information about their work and for potential local engagement and/or strategy development regarding your summit. If you would like to make a connection, contact your Summit Manager at America’s Promise, who can help facilitate an introduction.

  1. Multi-Media and Suggested Reading

The ABCs of Parent Involvement:

Citizens Academy Parent Engagement Program:

Parents Need Differentiated School Engagement, Study Finds:

PBS NewsHour- Detroit Tackles Dropout Crisis By Engaging Parents, Students:

WAMU - Bridging the Gap Between Home and School:

  1. Summit Conveners

Adams County, CO

Becky Hoffman

Adams County Youth Initiative

Buffalo, NY

Betsy Behrend

Say Yes Buffalo!

Erie, PA

Mary Bula

Erie Together

Los Angeles, CA

LaWayne Williams

Families In Schools

Richmond, CA

Jennifer Lyle

Building Blocks for Kids

Parent and Family Engagement Toolkit1