Drawing from a qualitative approach and through individual "pláticas" (processes of co-constructing knowledge through dialogue) as a linguistic and cultural framework, this work explored informal contextual factors valued by Spanish-speaking Latina mothers of children, three to five years of age and enrolled in a nonprofit California…

Despite growing Indigenous Latine/x immigrant populations, Indigenous Latine/x parents' and families' diverse forms of involvement across schools and communities continue to be absent from greater discourses in education. This article explores an Indigenous Quechua and Mexican family's perspectives on multilingualism, culture, learning, and…

Objective: To gain insight into the extent of body mass index (BMI) change during an academic year for children with overweight or obesity at entry to an early learning programme with nutrition and physical activity components ("Head Start"). We explored whether meeting with families to discuss weight and nutrition and age of entry in…

In 2016, California voters approved state Proposition 58, repealing an almost 20-year ban on bilingual education for English Learners (ELs), who represent nearly 20% of the state's public school students. The state's reversal on bilingual education reflects a national trend of promoting bilingualism and expanding bilingual (also referred to as…

Youth who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits experience disparate educational, employment, and economic outcomes when compared to youth with disabilities who do not receive these entitlements. Promoting the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE) was a 6-year national research demonstration project that…

Familial engagement is a cornerstone in comprehensive alternative education; however, implementing high-quality parental outreach is difficult. Traditional approaches to parent outreach view diverse families from a deficit perspective and seek to change their behaviors, instead of building on their funds of knowledge. This article presents a case…

The purpose of this pilot study is to understand the impact of Family Group Conferencing (FGC) on the collaboration among general education and special education teachers, teachers' attitudes toward family outreach and perceived outcomes of preschool students with and without disabilities enrolled in inclusive classrooms during distance learning.…

The Individual with Disabilities Education Act specifies that families should be include in the special education process and they must provide informed consent. However, families from Spanish-speaking backgrounds, often report barriers to participation. In this study, we provided a forum for Spanish-speaking families to tell their stories using…

This article explores an action-oriented research study designed to provide better understanding of ways to leverage school and community partnership through family engagement, focusing on the development and enactment of an approach to nurture family-school partnerships. Specifically, in partnership with seven school districts, a team of…

This study assesses the impact of five years of community level activities in the Pomona Youth and Family Master Plan (PYFMP) on four school-related risk and protective factors including academic failure, low school commitment, school opportunities for prosocial involvement, and school rewards for prosocial involvement. The intervention and…

Parental involvement plays a significant role in students' social and academic outcomes. Nevertheless, systemic ways of gathering parental views have not been used or highlighted in the policy arena or the literature. Using data from the first major statewide survey of parents in California, drawn from the California School Parent Survey (N =…

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…

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…

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…