Family engagement has long been recognized as crucial to a child's overall academic achievement. The National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) recognizes that evolving from traditional parental involvement to effective partnerships between families and family-facing practitioners improves learning outcomes for students as a critical practice that requires deepened commitment. What defines successful family engagement is less about prescriptive, one-size-fits-all strategies and more about learning outcomes: successful family engagement strategies honor parents and caregivers as a child's first teacher. This brief provides an in-depth description of NCFL's approach to family engagement, the models that put that approach into practice, and the work still to be done to ensure that family engagement practices that service all children are embedded in schools and communities across the country.