A secret sauce for family and community engagement emerged as a result of a technical assistance project that supported Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership grantees in California. Power-sharing, communication, creativity, and continuous recommitment to families were key ingredients of that sauce. When these were present, programs were able to…

Access to early learning before kindergarten has wide-ranging positive effects for children--effects that are evident from a child's early years into adulthood. Despite these facts being well-known within many education spaces, children from low-income families and children of color lack consistent access to public early learning programs. This…

Family involvement is an essential component of the special education process for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). In addition to the legal requirement that parents should be equal partners in the decision-making of the student's individualized education program (IEP) program (IDEA, 2004), a bulk of empirical research…

Since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down public school buildings across the United States in early 2020, research on academic indicators has documented disproportionate--and potentially long-lasting--impacts on Latino students. This report examines several strategies and practices that have tremendous promise for accelerating Latino students'…

Transitioning Together is a multi-family intervention designed to support families of adolescents on the autism spectrum as they prepare for the transition to adulthood. Questions remain regarding its wide-scale adoption and implementation in real-world settings such as high schools. We examined student, teacher, and school-level facilitators and…

The purpose of the study was to examine the quality of high school programs for students with autism spectrum disorder in the United States. The Autism Program Environment Rating Scale--Middle/High School was used to rate the quality of programs for students with autism spectrum disorder in 60 high schools located in three geographic locations in…

Community partnerships empower charter schools by strengthening their capacity to serve the needs of students, families, and staff through deliberate partnerships with community-based entities. The autonomy that charter schools are afforded uniquely equips them with the flexibility to engage partners and even design schools for which one or more…

This appendix provides additional details on the underlying data, statistical models, and results presented in "The Big Lift Descriptive Analyses: Progress across Three Kindergarten Classes." First the authors describe how they created each control and outcome variable and its source (e.g., parent report), followed by an overview of the…

This guide aims to support state education agencies and early education partners develop coherent, research-based policy by guiding thinking, discussion, data collection, and gap analyses of current practices and policies that can lead to more intentional decision making relative to young Dual Language Learners (DLL) and English Learners (EL).…

Culturally and linguistically diverse families face substantial barriers in the special education system and seek support from cultural brokers to help them navigate it. We used a qualitative design to study cultural brokering experiences among Latinx families of children with extensive support needs and cultural brokers. Through individual…

One of the key purposes of public education is to prepare young people to reach their full potential as independent adults and engaged citizens. This transition to adulthood may be especially challenging for youth with disabilities. Students enrolled in special education often need additional supports and coordinated planning to prepare for…

The Big Lift™ (Big Lift), a collective impact initiative extending from preschool through third grade in San Mateo County, California, aims to boost reading proficiency and kindergarten readiness through four programmatic pillars: High-Quality Preschool, Summer Learning, Attendance, and Family Engagement. In this report, the authors present…

Family engagement is a shared responsibility among families, educators, and communities to support children's learning and development. For families, it is about the knowledge, attitudes, values, and behaviors that enable children to be motivated, enthusiastic, and successful learners. For libraries, this means having respectful partnerships with…

The authors investigated cultural resourcefulness among seven Black middle-class families who proactively collaborated to ensure their children's academic excellence in a highly racialized suburban community in southern California. Their children achieved high grades and successfully entered and completed higher education at elite U.S.…

Community school strategies have emerged as a promising approach to mitigate the social and learning impacts of COVID-19. This brief draws on how the crisis-motivated responses of educators and school leaders might serve as integral investments in successful and sustainable community schools. Schools and districts interested in such an approach…