![page background](https://cdn.smore.com/_fr/vintagepapers.cd3a96ec.jpg)
Family Engagement
Building Partnerships with Families & Communities May 2022
Families and schools working together, because our students are worth it!
Resources for Pennsylvania Family Engagement
Collaborative Action for Family Engagement (CAFE): The Statewide Family Engagement Center in Maryland and Pennsylvania
"CAFE serves educators and families by equipping them with the strategies, techniques, and guidance that will lead to strong partnerships and successful student outcomes.
We collaborate with all educators – from state agencies to school districts to school staff and early care providers – to develop systems where stakeholders in students’ academic success and social-emotional well-being work together as partners, hold themselves mutually accountable, and have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to succeed at improving achievement for all students.
Interested in learning about reframing the conversation around family, school, and community engagement? Check out the work NAFSCE and the FrameWorks Institute have been doing."
The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) is a primary partner with CAFE.
CAFE is part of the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium (MAEC).
The Frameworks Institute
"Family engagement is about more than caring.
New research shows that many people feel that family engagement is dependent on how much the adults in a child’s life – especially parents and teachers – “care,” and that lower-income families do not engage because they do not value education.
This is a big problem for advocates who are trying to gain support for well-structured family engagement programs and strategic policies that have the potential to advance equity in our education system, and ultimately close the achievement gap."
Check out this link for more information.
National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement (NAFSCE) Toolkit
NAFSCE has a page of resources. "FrameWorks’ research yielded seven key recommendations that, when employed consistently, help audiences access ideas and beliefs about family engagement that foster their support for more productive, expansive, and equitable engagement practices. Visit famengage.org to learn more about the research and recommendations. Read more about the recommendations below.
Click on each recommendation to learn more.
1. Stick with the big story: This is about creating the Conditions of Engagement
2. Use the Space Launch metaphor to explain engagement concretely and memorably
3. Focus on Opportunity for All to promote engagement as an equity issue and a policy matter
5. Engage education practitioners with an appeal to the value of Interdependence
6. Foreground the benefits to both students and teachers
7. Have parents talk about benefits to parents
The Research
- Report: Beyond Caring: Mapping the Gaps between Expert, Public, Practitioner, and Policymaker Understandings of Family, School, and Community Engagement
To learn about the significant differences between how experts explain family engagement and how the public, practitioners, and policymakers feel about it, read the Map the Gaps report.
- Report: From Caring to Conditions: A FrameWorks Framing Brief
A framing strategy that forefronts the Conditions for Engagement shifts people’s thinking, and enables an understanding of what engagement entails, why it matters, and how it can be facilitated.
Advocates for engagement in early childhood can and should be strategic about which frames best suit their specific communications."
NAFSCE also has numerous downloads that may be helpful for schools, families, and communities. A few of their publications are attached, below. Some are infographics and some are several pages of information.