Background
Family Engagement Solutions, an initiative of National PTA’s Center for Family Engagement, was established with a clear purpose: to unleash the potential of families in students’ educational paths. This hub builds on the Center’s work helping schools implement strategies that reach all families—especially those who have not received the same educational opportunities as their peers—in ways that make a difference for student outcomes.
This commitment comes from the conviction that families are capable of contributing greatly to improving different aspects of school life—from increasing literacy and math achievement to reducing absenteeism, and more.
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History
Recognizing that district and school leaders lacked an easy way to find vetted programs that align to their needs, in 2023 National PTA’s Center for Family Engagement received funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Overdeck Family Foundation to fill this gap. Through this work, we embarked on a project, in partnership with the with the School Superintendents Association, to hear from district leaders about their challenges engaging families and what mattered to them in finding solutions to these challenges.
What we heard from district leaders was a desire to strengthen family engagement but a lack of time, funding and expertise to make changes or assess the many different providers and programs that offered to help. In response to this learning—as well as the educational challenges intensified by the pandemic—National PTA brought in an expert in research and evaluation through the Johns Hopkins University Center for Research and Reform in Education, which manages the popular EvidenceforESSA.org. Through this partnership, Family Engagement Solutions seeks to identify evidence-based programs that respond directly to the significant challenges schools face. Selected based on criteria such as proven success, replication in multiple communities and a strong focus on high-quality family engagement, these programs underscore the initiative’s commitment to making meaningful family engagement a central element of educational recovery efforts.
By providing a user-friendly platform, Family Engagement Solutions facilitates schools in discovering, researching and implementing these proven engagement strategies. Schools of any size can benefit from these resources and use them to build a cooperative community that makes every child’s potential a reality.
