4 Things Principals Can do to Improve Family Engagement At Their School

Incremental steps that school leaders can take to improve student outcomes

Chronic absenteeism, persistent lags in academic achievement, concerns around student well-being and more - reporting has surfaced increasingly alarming challenges that school leaders are grappling with solving. A powerful, but largely underutilized, student success intervention is a strong and well-executed family engagement strategy that centers student learning. Indeed, schools that have invested in family engagement have seen improvements in student outcomes that persist over time. 

School leaders play an essential role in setting the school strategy, equipping teachers with the resources and best practices to execute the strategy, and helping to set the tone for implementation.

Address root causes instead of symptoms with a strategy that delivers benefits for schools, families and students

Family engagement is a shared responsibility between schools and families to collaboratively support students’ learning and development. With strong family engagement, students are able to develop and practice key skills across multiple settings, inside and outside of the classroom. 
Schools seeking to develop effective family engagement practices have an invaluable, research-based guide at their disposal: the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnership. The Framework highlights how relationships between educators and families are central to supporting student learning outcomes; the essential process and organizational conditions that promote success; the importance of capacity building for both educators and families, and more.

Family engagement strategies can range from potlucks, performances, and celebrations to home-visits, teacher-parent conferences, and curriculum nights. With a myriad of options, it can be difficult to select strategies that align with your school priorities, while balancing the level of effort required to implement those strategies. Our research and work with school systems across the country has revealed a few key strategies that have the highest impact on student learning:

• Consistent communication with families that provides insight into what students are learning, how they’re progressing, and builds family capacity to support.
• Parent-teacher conferences that are centered on student learning and include shared goal-setting.
• Home-visits where teachers and families focus on building trusting and collaborative relationships - the foundation for partnering to support student success.​​

4 things principals can do to improve family engagement efforts and maximize impact on student learning

Before adding anything new to your strategy, we’d recommend considering the following actions that you can take to make the most of your current capacity: 

• Step 1: Take stock of your current family engagement practices including your school’s communication practices. Who is responsible for engaging families? What expectations have been set for school staff? What strategies or practices are they currently implementing? What input have you received from families about the communication they receive? 
• Step 2: Gather your family engagement team. Consider bringing together a group of stakeholders who are responsible for advancing your school’s family engagement efforts. This might include school site coordinator, teacher(s), parent leader/liaison, and others. These stakeholders will be able to help fill any gaps of information identified in step 1. 
• Step 3: Collaborate with your team to set your school goals, select strategies, and define clear expectations for the school year. Collaborative planning and goal setting offers the opportunity to determine what to stop, pause, or start for the upcoming academic year. Consider these reflection questions - what will you keep from previous years? What should you stop?  What will you add? What resources will your team need to be successful?
• Step 4: Communicate your plan with school staff and families and carry out action steps. Set the tone for the academic year by ensuring that information about your student success plan is accessible (e.g., translated into home languages, available in multiple formats including digital). Any communication shared with school staff and families should be specific, actionable, and include an opportunity for feedback. 

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