This report demonstrates the impact of a two-way multilingual family engagement communication platform, TalkingPoints, on student outcomes at a large, urban, K-12 school district. The study used a difference-in-differences model to examine how the introduction of TalkingPoints influenced attendance, behavior, course proficiency, and state…

Minority parents are less likely to engage in their children's school though they are not less interested in their children's education or less involved in their children's lives at home. This gap in parent engagement affects the educational success of their children and has significant implications for minority communities and states with large…

Background/Context: The challenges documented in the literature on research-practice partnerships and similar school-university collaborations are outlined in the literature review in this issue. Yet only a collaboration among multiple educational and community organizations could create a synergy powerful enough to achieve the multifaceted goals…

Professional Development Schools (PDS) were intended to be a comprehensive approach to total-school reform targeted toward the effects of poverty and educational disadvantage. This paper examines the processes and contexts found in PDSs and tests how they might be logically and empirically linked to measurable improvements in achievement. The…

Family, school, and community partnerships are a critical part of student achievement, but the successful establishment of meaningful partnerships with low-income and minority populations remains elusive. In 1994, legislators in the United States passed a version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that seeks to address this…

This study examined the mental models of the desert environment held by fourth- and seventh-grade students in the USA and whether those mental models could be affected by: (1) classroom field trips to a desert riparian preserve, and (2) interaction with family members at the same preserve. Results generally indicated that students in this study…

The full-purpose partnership (FPP) schoolwide model primarily focuses on prevention and early intervention. This model brings the tenets of service coordination directly into the school and focuses efforts to involve families from a strengths perspective before behavioral issues become significant. A preliminary evaluation has shown that this…