An out-of-school program for fourth-grade English learners in Austin, Texas – jointly developed by the school district, the City of Austin and a local community group – has co-constructed a curriculum that incorporates the Aztec dance or ceremony Danza Mexica as a core component.
Family and Community Engagement
Family and community engagement is a proven strategy for raising student achievement and strengthening schools. Organizing groups across the country in communities that have been poorly served by our education system are building the power to demand and win real improvements.
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In Nashville, the school district has partnered with law enforcement, juvenile justice, community organizations, parents, and students in efforts to tackle inequitable disciplinary practices.
We Are A Village, a program funded by a federal Investing in Innovation grant focused on family engagement in early childhood, fosters parent collaboration during early learning transitions to help families feel welcome, valued, and respected.
Successful implementation of family engagement programs requires buy-in, leadership, and collaboration at all levels – from the superintendent to parents.
Parent engagement coordinators provide the foundation for family engagement by modeling shared leadership, facilitating trust, and creating space to build partnerships with parents and schools.
School principals can play a key role in family engagement by believing in the leadership capacity of parents and viewing families as partners in their school community.
Comunitario projects in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley offer a community-based alternative to the traditional PTA model, fostering the participation and collective leadership of youth.
Strategies for Scaling Up: Promoting Parent Involvement through Family-School-Community Partnerships
Flexibility, creativity, and collaboration are required to successfully meet the needs of each school when scaling up family engagement programs across a diverse range of communities.
Parent focus groups reveal insights about the communication, collaboration, and community buy-in needed for successful family engagement in an under-resourced urban district.
“I think people see this as a call to really stand up, and say, ‘Our schools will be safe places. Our schools will be sanctuaries. We will have good public schools in our communities, and we will fight for them.’”
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