1. Building the Capacity for Effective Family-School Partnerships
Karen L. Mapp, Ed.D.
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Start with expectations
Copyright © 2014
Karen L. Mapp

2. Warm-Up Exercise
What areas can you “glow” about when it comes to partnerships with families?
What areas would you like to “grow” when it comes to partnerships with families?
What are the one or two ideas or “take-aways” that you’d like from this session?

3. What is the definition of Family Engagement?
Family Engagement is any way that a child’s adult caretaker (biological parents, foster parents, siblings, grandparents, etc.) effectively supports learning and healthy development.

4. Family Involvement versus Family Engagement
The latin root of the word "involvement" is “involvere” which means to wrap around, cover or envelop; roll, cause to roll.
The latin root of the word "engagement" is “engare” which means to make a formal agreement,  to contract with; to pledge; an obligation to do something.

5. When families are effectively engaged in their children’s education and in the improvement of schools, what are the various roles they can play?

6. Families are engaged as:
Supporters of their children’s learning
Encouragers of an achievement identity, a positive self image, and a “can do” spirit
Monitors of their children’s time, behavior, boundaries and resources
Models of lifelong learning and enthusiasm for education
Advocates for improved learning opportunities for their children and at their schools
Decision-makers/choosers of educational options for their child, the school, and community
Collaborators/co-creators with school staff and members of the community

7. Impact of Family Engagement Students with Engaged Families:
Exhibit faster rates of literacy acquisition
Earn higher grades and test scores
Enroll in higher level programs
Are promoted more and earn more credits
Adapt better to school and attend more regularly
Have better social skills and behavior
Graduate and go on to higher education

8. Organizing Schools for Improvement (2010)
No longer last on the list

10. What do we know about why families engage in their children’s education?

11. O’Hearn School 1999 study
Asked “Why are families engaged in the children’s education? What are the factors that influence their engagement?
Conducted at the Patrick O’Hearn Elementary School (now the William Henderson School), a full inclusion elementary school in Dorchester, MA, with a strong home-school partnerships
Focused the study on families that qualify for free and reduced price lunch, because they are the families that educators often say are “hard to reach.”
In describing the O’Hearn, state that “inclusion” was taken serious to mean building intentional partnerships with all families, in addition to the practice of children with special needs being taught in the regular classroom – no pull-outs.
At the O’Hearn, which conducted parents surveys every year, 98% of their families were participating in one or more of the O’Hearn’s home-school partnership programs. The school was diverse (get numbers)

12. Findings: The Joining Process
Families said that the reason they were so engaged at the O’Hearn was that staff:
Welcomed them into the school and treated them like family
Honored their “funds of knowledge” and validated them for any contribution, large or small, they made to O’Hearn community.
Connected them to their student’s learning
Dr. Mapp calls this the Joining Process – all three elements were important: families feel welcomed by all staff, from the custodian on up, into the school community. Staff and families conducted home-visits to all new families entering the O’Hearn. Front Office staff were welcoming to any visitors that came to the building. There was an open-door protocol for families visiting the building that was designed by families and staff.
Families were honored their knowledge of their children and the community – they were treated like equal partners in the teaching and learning process. Data about the school and children was shared with families, and all events were connected in some way to what the children were to learn that year at the school.

13. The O’Hearn Study began to identify the elements of effective partnerships between families and schools (Welcoming, Honoring, Connecting).
Interestingly, when Dr. Mapp went to work as the Deputy Superintendent for Family and Community Engagement for the Boston Public Schools and began to ask her school leaders to define what partnership looked like, she got as many different answers as they were school leaders.
This should go on the slide that shows Bake Sale: She knew when she and her colleagues wrote Beyond the Bake Sale, that they would have to come up with a way to define partnerships and embed what she had learned from the parents at the O’Hearn. They decided to create a rubric that would represented what schools looked like when there were weak home school partnerships versus strong home-school partnerships.

14. What does an Effective Family-School Partnership Look Like?
Explain why I am starting with these two pieces: what I found from working with principals and school staff.

15. Beyond the Bake Sale The Essential Guide to Family-School Partnerships
Anne T. Henderson,
Karen L. Mapp,
Vivian R. Johnson and Don Davies
The New Press, 2007

16. Fortress School (Below Basic)
“Parents don’t care about their children’s education, and they are the main reason the kid’s are failing”
“Parents don’t come to conferences, no matter what we do”
Principal picks a small group of “cooperative parents” to help out
“We’re teachers, not social workers”
“Curriculum and standards are too advanced for these parents”

17. Come-if-We-Call School (Basic)
Parents are told what students will be learning at the fall open house
Workshops are planned by staff
Families can visit school on report card pickup day
Parents call the office to get teacher-recorded messages about homework

18. Open-Door School (Proficient)
Parent-teacher conferences are held at least twice a year
There is an “Action Team” for family engagement
School holds parent events three or four times a year
Parents can raise issues at PTA meetings or see the principal
Diversity of families is recognized through multicultural nights are held once a year

19. Partnership School (Advanced)
All family activities are connected to student learning
There is a clear, open process for resolving problems
Parent networks are valued and cultivated
Families are actively involved in decisions on school improvement
Staff conduct intentional relationship-building events such as home visits to families
Families are seen as partners in improving educational outcomes
Have them generate a list of areas that their students are struggling (given their data)

20. Why has it been difficult to cultivate and sustain effective family-school partnerships that support student achievement and school improvement?

21. The various stakeholders (families, district/school leaders and staff) have not had the opportunity to develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions, in other words, the capacity to engage in effective partnerships. Example: Title One, section 1118 requirement for families to be engaged family engagement policy development for schools and districts.

24. This is the “how” of the work

25. Video – Stanton Elementary School

26. Video Debrief
What evidence do you see in the video of the five process conditions in the Dual Capacity framework?
Relational
Collaborative
Interactive
Developmental
Linked to Learning

27. This is the what – what you can expect to see in terms of growth and changes in the adults that support the children

31. Example: Scholastic Literacy Events
Linked to Learning
Relational
Developmental
Collaborative
Interactive

32. Requires a shift in mindset
From seeing family engagement as an add-on, extra work, a burden, or fundamentally separate from what we are supposed to do as educational practitioners...
…To seeing family engagement as an essential, fundamental component of proficient and effective teaching and learning practice.

33. Links Summary of the Dual Capacity Framework:
Flamboyan Foundation Parent Video
Partners in Education: