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Accelerated academic achievement. Second language learning. Social and emotional skill development. Increased attendance and engagement. Higher graduation rates. A handful of astonishing student-level benefits. We partnered with BetterLesson on a white paper where we explore the research-backed benefits of family engagement, signals that a school system is under-investing in family engagement, and high-impact strategies for student success. Who should be thinking about this?District administrators are grappling with looming budget cuts and a need to streamline technology. Building leaders are grappling with chronic absenteeism and persisting learning loss. Teachers are grappling with feelings of overwhelming to do lists and burnout. Educators are beginning to prepare for the upcoming academic year. Addressing these persisting systemic challenges will require collaborative problem solving to address root causes. Incremental steps to improve family engagementBuilding leaders and classroom educators can take several steps to incrementally adjust their current practices.
Educators are grappling with wide-ranging challenges including absenteeism, persisting learning loss, teacher retention, and looming budget cuts. The schools that are effectively addressing these systemic challenges are making investments in family engagement and, more specifically, implementing high-impact strategies for engaging families in student learning. Elisabeth O’Bryon and Megan Lorio joined the team at EdReports to discuss family engagement as an essential strategy for student learning success. This podcast is a must listen for school leaders planning for the next school year. Move beyond performances and potlucks: the surprising benefits of family communicationDecades of family engagement research demonstrates strong connections between consistent school-home communication that is focused on instructional goals with key outcomes for teachers, families, and students.
How to level-up your family engagement strategyBuilding a comprehensive strategy takes time and planning. Before starting the planning process, it is essential to gather input from families, teachers, and the community to understand the current state of your school. What is working well? What needs additional time or attention? We’d recommend that you read our blog that covers 5 actions that school leaders can take to build strong home-school connections. In this podcast, Elisabeth and Megan share high-impact strategies and tips for maximizing your family engagement efforts to support student learning. Are you planning for next school year? Our expert team has designed a family communication toolkit with practical tips and messages that you can use as you plan for back-to-school
We’re excited to share the first blog in a 3-part series written alongside our partners at Illustrative Mathematics. Our series will explore the surprising opportunity at the intersection of high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) and family engagement practices. Toka Hussein is a K-5 Curriculum Specialist at Illustrative Mathematics (IM) and former elementary school teacher. Toka brings unique insights into the classroom and the crucial role that instructional materials play in shaping students’ educational experiences, including improved student learning outcomes and student engagement. Elisabeth O'Bryon is a co-founder and the chief impact officer at Family Engagement Lab (FEL). Her experience as the parent of elementary school students and her background in school psychology fuels her deep passion for family engagement. Elisabeth recognizes the impact of HQIM on student learning outcomes, which is only further enhanced when families are kept in the loop and invited to partner with teachers to support their child’s learning. Cultivating growth mindsets for mathOur collaboration with Illustrative Mathematics and research with families has revealed an opportunity to boost the impact of both high-quality instructional materials and parent communication by ensuring they are tightly aligned to support student learning. Increasingly, we’re learning that a growth mindset in math is an essential skill that empowers students to take ownership over their learning. With a growth mindset, students believe that their skills and ability grow with their effort. When faced with a challenge, they are more willing to persevere and work harder, believing that their efforts will help them overcome barriers. In this post, we’re exploring the connection between hiqh-quality instructional materials and regular parent communication, highlighting the importance of supporting students’ growth mindsets. Toka shares that “problem-based curriculum, like Illustrative Mathematics, set the foundation for and create the structures that support the development of positive math mindsets.” Elisabeth adds that “families can play an essential role in modeling the power of persistence, perseverance, and resilience.” It is critical that families are equipped with specific information about the skills and concepts that students are learning to effectively support them. Elisabeth highlights the role that consistent teacher-parent communication can play in helping promote students’ positive math mindsets. Recommendations for developing positive math mindsetsTrusted adults in a students’ learning journey - teachers and families - play an essential role in cultivating a positive math mindset. Toka and Elisabeth share detailed recommendations for cultivating students’ growth mindsets related to math.
Looking to keep up with the latest resources?AUTHOR: Elisabeth O'Bryon Family engagement in learning has a powerful impact on students’ academic success. A growing literature base demonstrates that family engagement promotes wide-ranging positive student outcomes, including second language learning, motivation, and academic achievement, as well as increased on-time high school completion and lower rates of high school dropout. And the influence of families is significant, with research revealing that the home learning environment can have more than twice the effect on student learning than either parents’ education levels or socio-economic status. Critically, early parent engagement can start a positive cycle of continued family engagement over time, sustaining achievement gains and student motivation, which highlights the importance of establishing strong home-school partnership from the beginning of students’ educational journeys. Parental Involvement or Family Engagement?While the terms parental involvement and family engagement are often seen, at Family Engagement Lab, we believe that family engagement is a more inclusive and encompassing term for how parents, caregivers, and families interact with the school system to support their child’s learning. The shift from involvement to engagement represents a deeper level of partnership and collaboration between educators and families. Our approach to family engagement builds off of the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnership, which highlights how relationships between educators and parents are central to supporting student’s learning outcomes. The Impact Parental Involvement on Academic SuccessActive involvement of parents and families in children’s education is also associated with critical school-level factors that support student success. For example, recent research from Harvard, TNTP and Learning Heroes revealed that schools with strong family engagement practices had 6 percentage points less chronic absenteeism than similar schools without. Moreover, The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research identified involved families as one of five essential factors to improving school outcomes. Most strikingly, researchers noted that “a persistent weakness in even just one of the essential factors reduced the likelihood of school improvement to less than 10%,” underscoring how critical family engagement is for successful schools and positive student learning outcomes. Challenges in Parent-School CommunicationUnfortunately, a number of challenges can make regular, meaningful two-way communication and collaboration between teachers and families difficult. For example, limited time is a barrier for both teachers and parents who have demanding schedules as well as wide-ranging responsibilities and commitments. Families’ technology access is another potential obstacle that can impede communication between school and home. Families without reliable internet access or technology devices may have difficulty staying informed and engaged. These and other obstacles such as limited teacher training in family engagement and a mismatch between teachers’ and families’ home language can prevent families from receiving the accessible, actionable, learning-focused information that they are eagerly looking for and that ultimately promotes student learning. Introducing FASTalk: Bridging the Communication GapAddressing parent-school communication challenges requires proactive efforts to understand the specific needs of families in the school community. With key information from families about communication preferences (i.e., type of information families are looking for, preferred channels of communication, preferred language, etc.), schools can establish equitable effective communication practices that can foster a culture of collaboration and partnership with families to support student success. School parent communication software designed to equitably facilitate family engagement in learning can play a meaningful role in supporting schools’ and families’ efforts to partner. Indeed, we have seen this firsthand at Family Engagement Lab with our signature tool, FASTalk (Families and Schools Talk). Features and Benefits of Using School Parent Communication SoftwareDistricts and Schools should consider parental school communication software that takes into consideration the needs and perspectives of families, while also reducing teacher workload. Most importantly, these school parent communication software should be proven through rigorous evaluation to improve student outcomes. FASTalk builds partnerships between teachers and historically underserved families by sharing engaging, at-home learning activities via text messages in each family's home language. FASTalk has wide-ranging benefits for parents, teachers, and students: Parent-specific benefits: Through regular text messages that describe what students are learning and simple ways to help – all delivered in one of 100+ home languages – FASTalk builds parents’ knowledge of at-home learning strategies and an understanding of what their child is learning at school. FASTalk also opens critical lines of communication with teachers while promoting equitable access to home learning resources. Families are also invited by SMS to share their observations about their child’s learning with the teacher to support personalized instruction in the classroom. Teacher-specific benefits: FASTalk helps teachers share research-based content and engage diverse families in students’ learning. FASTalk is coordinated with the school’s academic calendar and supports two-way messaging with language translation. Our learning activities are written by former classroom teachers with subject matter expertise, professionally translated into each family’s home language, and scheduled in advance to save teachers time. Teachers have access to a web app and mobile app to preview the scheduled messages and send and receive their own text messages with families that are translated on the fly by Google Translate, which can help overcome language barriers that can prevent parents and teachers from engaging in regular, ongoing, two-way communication and can hinder their ability to jointly collaborate to support student success. Student-specific benefits: Multiple quasi-experimental research studies of FASTalk have linked FASTalk to improved student academic achievement, particularly for students furthest behind their peers and for students whose parents do not share a common language with their teacher. More FASTalk students meet literacy benchmarks, achieve greater gains on literacy assessments, and demonstrate accelerated report card growth than their peers who do not. FASTalk accelerates and improves students’ literacy achievement in grades TK-K and 3-5 compared to similar non-users, especially when families use the tool more often and when parents do not share a language with their child’s teacher. Success Stories: FASTalk in ActionA closer look at FASTalk’s implementation in New Orleans’ Morris Jeff Community School provides a powerful example of FASTalk’s impact in an urban school community. FASTalk helped 98% of families find new ways to support their child’s learning - and more! Hear from families and educators in Louisiana about their experiences using a learning-focused school parent communication software. With FASTalk, families are incorporating learning into the home environment - reinforcing classroom instruction through weekly curriculum-aligned tips, activities, and conversation starters. Importantly, FASTalk is meeting a unique need for families. A 2023 survey found that 85% of FASTalk families report that FASTalk is the only place that they receive learning-focused information and activities to support their child. And this is despite their schools using up to seven other tools to communicate with families. Parents tell us they not only “enjoy knowing what is going on” with their child but also feel “more connected” to their child, the teacher, and the school. FASTalk helps them “reiterate concepts that were presented in class in a home setting,” helping “turn everyday life into fun learning.” Teachers also report that FASTalk saves them time and breaks down common family-teacher communication barriers. How to Implement FASTalk in your SchoolFASTalk is an innovative school parent communication software that makes it easy for teachers to translate classroom instruction into tips and activities families can use to prompt learning-focused conversations outside of school. We’ve found that families are ready and willing to support when they have insight into what their child is learning, how their child is progressing, and access to tips for how they can help. Engaged families lead to successful students.
Family Engagement Lab works closely with our district partners to ensure that platform is customized to meet their curricular needs. Our dedicated customer success representatives ensure that every partnership is successful by providing support with FASTalk configuration, training for teacher-users, and implementation materials for schools. Connect with our team to learn more. Learning-focused family engagement is an emerging priority for K-12 learning. Several announcements signal a shift in the K-12 education landscape and the teaching profession. We’ll explore the implications of this shift and how districts can stay ahead of these changes to ensure that students are thriving academically. Federal and state announcements signal changes in K-12 educationDoubling-down on proven solutionsThe Biden-Harris administration has signaled a strong commitment to advancing the state of education through investments in the Statewide Family Engagement Centers (SFEC) Programs and the 2024 Improving School Achievement Agenda. Continued investment in the SFEC programs ensures continuation of statewide efforts to meaningfully engage families in learning. The 2024 Improving School Achievement Agenda affirms the critical need in K-12 education to support initiatives that have demonstrated proven impact on student achievement. The administration recently announced an extension of ESSER funds use, with the stipulation that school systems utilize funds to implement proven solutions in three priority areas: addressing chronic absenteeism, providing personalized learning support, and offering extended learning opportunities. These announcements emphasize the important role that effective family engagement strategies can have on boosting attendance and supporting student learning. California recognizes the potential of the teacher-parent relationshipThe California Commission on Teacher Credentialing approved a revised set of Standards for the Teaching Profession, which are slated to be adopted in the 2025-26 school year. The most notable additions to the standards include: culturally responsive teaching, social-emotional learning, and family engagement. The standards will require teachers to adopt effective strategies for communicating and creating relationships with families. While this change will be taking effect in the state of California, this signals a shift in the education system towards prioritizing families as a key stakeholder in learning. Insights from district leaders underscore importance of attendance, and surface needs around supporting teachers.Our own research with district and school stakeholders has revealed an increasing sense of urgency and prioritization in the following areas:
What's needed for student success: aligning instruction, academic interventions, and family engagement to deliver coherent learning experiencesDistricts and schools have focused their efforts on delivering coherent learning experiences for students that align high-quality instruction with tailored interventions to address individual student needs. Yet, this approach overlooks a critical stakeholder in student success: families. Moving from fragmented solutions to an aligned strategy will require district and school leaders to:
Equipping and supporting teachers in delivering high-quality instructionTeachers have entirely too much on their plates to fit into the school day. They carry the responsibility of preparing and delivering effective lessons, assessing student learning and making adjustments to instruction, managing their classrooms, addressing behavioral challenges, providing personalized support to students…. and the list goes on. District and school leaders must find ways to ensure that teachers feel supported and successful. Adopting high-quality instructional materials can help streamline lesson planning and selecting assessment solutions that improve the grading experience will go a long way to help lighten teachers’ workload. Additionally, implementing technology solutions that support classroom management in increasingly complex digital learning environments helps improve the instructional experience for teachers and students. Implementing proven solutions for individualized supportIn addition to providing support to teachers to improve direct instruction, schools are also focused on implementing programs that provide individualized support to students. Many schools have elected to deliver programs like high-dosage tutoring, which extend teacher capacity and provide additional touchpoints for students to engage with learning materials and reinforce important concepts. The Biden-Harris announcement emphasizes the importance of programs that offer additional touchpoints for learning, including extended day and summer learning opportunities. More significant emphasis on family engagement to support student successDistrict and school leaders will prioritize family engagement as a critical component of their student success plans, with an emphasis on strategies that meaningfully engage families in their child’s learning. The Biden-Harris fact sheet calls out home-visit programs specifically, and we believe that districts should also consider adopting solutions that support consistent learning-focused family communication, and programs to build family capacity to support with Math and ELA. When districts implement parent teacher communication software that provides consistent and actionable learning-focused communication to parents and families, the student academic gains are remarkable. When families are equipped with tips and activities to support what their child is learning, they can play a significant role in accelerating academic success and shaping mindsets about learning. Family Engagement Lab helps districts and schools make the most of their family engagement strategy.Connect with us to explore how to accelerate academic achievement through family engagement.
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