Guidelines for Effective Family Engagement

The following is a guide to establishing sound, research-based practices for effectively engaging parents and families in student learning. These guidelines should be interpreted and customized to appropriately suit every stage of the educational continuum.

Partnerships between home and school need to be trusting and sustained in order to achieve the outcomes they target. Engagement initiatives must include a focus on building the capabilities of adults in children’s lives and strengthening the communities that together form the environments essential to children’s lifelong learning, health, and behavior. 

Initiatives can build these adult capacities in a variety of ways: through learning and professional development for adults in children’s lives and educators; through workshops, seminars, and workplace and community-based education for parents and families; and/or as an integrated part of parent-teacher partnership activities.

To help parents and caregivers adopt the various roles they can take throughout their child’s growth in the critical early literacy period of birth to age eight, see the age-specific information below on how to forge positive partnerships with families from the start:

Birth to Age 2

• Emphasize that parents and families, caregivers, and educators have shared responsibility in a child’s learning.
• Support parents, families, and caregivers with parenting and child- rearing skills that help them understand child development.
• Engage parents and families in regular, meaningful, two-way communication about how a child learns.
• Actively involve parents and families as volunteers and audiences at the community or education setting or in other locations to support their child’s learning.
• Involve parents and families with learning activities at home.
• Encourage parents and families to use the language in which they are most competent.
• Focus on learning, improvement, accountability, and innovation.
• Make parents and families equal partners in decisions that affect their child.
• Work together to inform, influence, and create practices, policies, and programs

Ages 3-4

• Guide parents and families to observe, promote, and participate in the everyday learning of their children at home, school, and in their communities.
• Encourage parents and families to advance their own learning interests through education, training, and other experiences that support their parenting, careers, and life goals.
• Invite parents and families to support and advocate for their child’s learning and development as they transition to new learning environments.
• Support parents and families in forming connections with peers and mentors in formal or informal social networks that are supportive and/or educational and that enhance social well-being and community life.
• Involve parents and families in leadership development, decision-making, program policy development, or in community organizing activities to improve children’s development and learning experiences.

Ages 5-8

• Schools create a welcoming environment for all parents and families.
• Every parent or family receives personal invitations to student-centered activities linked to academic achievement and learning.
• Schools provide parents and families with targeted and clear student-performance data throughout the school year.
• Teachers, parents, and families set and evaluate short-term and long-term academic goals.
• Educators coach parents and families in the learning skills necessary to meet the students’ academic goals.
• Parents and families attend school- provided training to create a supportive learning environment at home.
• Schools create opportunities for parents, families, and educators to develop trusting and collaborative relationships.
• Schools provide targeted support services to meet parents’ and families’ needs.
• Data is used regularly to monitor progress, plan and modify instruction, and create and adjust instructional groups.

Key Components and Effective Practice Standards

Research suggests that there are certain components of effective family engagement that must be present in order for adult participants to come away from a learning and engagement experience with new knowledge and with the confidence, ability, and desire to apply their learning and change their behavior or daily routines in new ways to support their child’s learning. Research also suggests that important organizational conditions must be met in order to sustain and grow these opportunity efforts across community sites or schools.