Family Engagement & Student Learning

Our mission

Family Engagement Lab's mission is to ignite the power of families to support learning, so that poverty does not dictate a child's destiny. Family engagement includes the ways in which school systems commit to engaging families in meaningful ways, and the ways in which families are committed to actively supporting their child's learning and development (NASFCE). Family Engagement Lab believes that high-impact family engagement is collaborative, builds on the assets of educators and families, and is focused on student learning.

For Teachers

For Family Engagement Staff

For School Leaders

For District Leaders

What we offer at Family Engagement Lab

Family Engagement Lab is a national nonprofit that advances research-based efforts that improve literacy and math achievement for underserved students experiencing poverty, students of color, and multilingual learners. We co-design family engagement solutions with families, teachers, and curriculum developers, and study their effectiveness in diverse communities. Our insights inform best practices in PK-12 education.

FASTalk -
engaging parents and caregivers in learning

FASTalk equips schools to send families brief, weekly tips and activities to support learning at home. Our unique approach blends behavioral science, research-backed learning strategies, and curricular & instructional alignment to make family engagement coherent, effective, and easy.

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Thought Leadership -
building awareness, capacity, community

Family Engagement Lab is committed to shaping the field's understanding of families and the powerful role they play in supporting student learning. We do this through awareness, capacity, and community building efforts. Explore recent publications and research from the field.

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More students on track to academic success

Millions of families put their trust in our nation's education system as the pathway to opportunity and upward mobility. Yet, children living in poverty enter school with fewer of the academic skills needed for success and they lag further over time, limiting access to higher education and opportunity.

Poverty does not have to dictate a child's destiny. Parental involvement is shown to have more than twice the impact on student achievement over socioeconomic status or parent education level (Melhuish et al., 2018).

Our research-based approach: Behavioral science meets the science of learning

FASTalk sends families brief, weekly tips and activities to support learning at home. Our unique approach blends behavioral science with research-backed learning strategies to make family engagement effective and easy for schools.

Learn more about FASTalk

FASTalk delivers sustainable impact on academic achievement

FASTalk delivers results that are comparable to high-cost intervention, providing significant academic gains for students. Research shows that our program improves academic achievement more effectively than traditional approaches focused on teacher quality or other family engagement tools commonly used in schools.

Sources: FASTalk average effect size calculated by Johns Hopkins University for Evidence for ESSA; “The Promise of Tutoring for PreK–12 Learning: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence” (Nickow, Oeropoulos, and Quan, 2023); “The Effect of Teacher Coaching on Instruction and Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Causal Evidence” (Kraft, Blazar, and Hogan, 2018); “The Distribution of Teacher Quality and Implications for Policy” (Hanushek and Rivkin, 2011); Academic average effect size for Talking Points communication tool on Evidence for ESSA.

Explore Evidence of Impact

What is authentic family engagement?

Educators meet families where they are, with accessible technology and learning-focused activities in their home language.
Teachers share welcoming and inclusive activities that are aligned with high-quality curriculum and standards-based objectives.
Families know what their children are learning and are empowered to support at-home learning.

READ FAMILY ENGAGEMENT BLOG

Who we serve at Family Engagement Lab

71% low-income families

33% non-English speaking families

67% people of color

Would you like to learn more?