Family Engagement for Early Literacy
Research shows family engagement is critical to improving literacy outcomes for students and schools. With the right tools, information, knowledge and support, parents and families can be a powerful, positive influence on their child’s reading development from birth through pre-kindergarten, elementary, middle school, and beyond.
It is up to schools, educators, and community-based partners to provide resources and family engagement opportunities that are easy, explicit, evidenced-based, and effective in support of their child’s literacy development. Parents need to be informed that reading proficiently by third grade is a critical milestone for their child’s future academic success (including high school graduation and college attendance); that learning to read doesn’t happen automatically; and that the skills needed to be a good reader start developing from birth.
While parents can be engaged as effective partners in their child’s learning, it is important to note that parents are not solely responsible for teaching their children to read. Every student deserves access to evidenced-based classroom instruction and academic supports that will help them become proficient readers.
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.
Key Component | Effective Practice Standards |
Organizational Management Schools and organizations partnering with families must see family engagement as integral to achieving their key goals and must intentionally design and embed it into its components and structures. | Systemic: Purposefully designed as a core component of educational goals such as school readiness, student achievement, and school turnaround. Integrated: Embedded into structures and processes such as education and professional development, teaching and learning, curriculum, and community collaboration. Sustained: Operating with adequate resources and infrastructure support. |
Cultural Competence Strategies must demonstrate cultural competence and strive for cultural proficiency to be effective with families and caregivers. | Honor and recognize parents’ and families’ existing knowledge, skill, and forms of engagement. Sustain cultures that welcome, invite, and promote family engagement and participation in a variety of ways. Connect all family engagement initiatives to student learning. Build trusting relationships and two-way communications among educators, parents, families, and community members. Recognize, respect, and address the needs of the parents and families. Embrace a philosophy where responsibility is shared and parents and families are effective advocates for their children. |
Relationship-Building Relationship building is the crucial aspect to family engagement. It must be understood as a process that occurs over time and requires building trust. Building positive relationships and seeing parents as authentic partners lays the groundwork for successful initiatives. Focus on building sustained relationships with parents and families, not just on implementing programs. See family engagement as strength-based and collaborative. | Actions, operations, and procedures that are part of any activity or initiative should be: Linked to learning: Initiatives are aligned with achievement goals and connect parents and families to the teaching and learning goals for the students. Relational: Interactions build respectful and trusting relationships between home and school. Collective/Collaborative: Learning is conducted in group versus individual settings and is focused on building networks and learning communities among families. Interactive: Participants are given opportunities to test and apply new skills; skill mastery requires coaching and practice. |
Staff and Family Education Educational opportunities should build the capacity of adults to best meet student needs. This is an ongoing process and requires meeting families where they are and ensuring staff have built the capacity to work well with families. | Assist parents and families in developing more awareness of the need for literacy and learning in the home. Maintain partnerships with organizations to provide effective parenting literacy education. Ensure that tutoring programs provide ongoing education and professional development opportunities for tutors. |
Student Learning Two-way communication around student learning and progress is essential to support positive and shared responsibility for student learning. | Inform, involve, and educate adults in children’s lives about children’s learning activities. Provide educator training on the value of parent involvement at home. Utilize parent/school compacts to support shared responsibility for student learning. |
Evaluation Get quantitative and qualitative feedback from families to understand what was done well and what can be improved. This is an important part of relationship building. | Use validated data collection instruments for evaluating the impact of family involvement and engagement efforts. Ask parents for ideas on what they would like to learn or how they would like to be involved or engaged in the future. |