As public preschool is not widely available in the United States, the Biden-Harris administration proposed a comprehensive early childhood agenda to create a world-class voluntary universal preschool program for children and families that addresses racial and other inequities. This report outlines six key components for a preschool program that…

Communication is an innate behavior people engage in to convey one's thoughts, needs, and interests to others (Knapp, Hall, & Horgan, 2014). Recommended Practices from the Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children (DEC, 2014) encourage teachers to partner with families to implement strategies that support…

Part of the Center for Education Equity, Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium's (CEE's) "Exploring Equity Issues" series, this paper gives a background on the challenges faced by immigrant and EL [English learner] students in public schools and provides strategies on what schools can do to make their schools more welcoming.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education launched the highly competitive Investing in Innovation (i3) initiative. School districts and nonprofit partners nationwide have competed for coveted funds to develop a new program, validate an existing program with some evidence of success, or scale up a program backed by ample evidence. Very quickly,…

Family engagement is a reciprocal relationship between educators and families that supports whole child development. In response to the unique contexts and situations created by the COVID-19 pandemic, a faculty member in the School of Education at Hunter College, City University of New York (SOE), and families that had opted in to 100 percent…

Education reformers must resist the tendency to use "community engagement" as a means for getting stakeholders to rubber-stamp a predetermined agenda. The tokenism of key grassroots stakeholders and the field of community engagement must be avoided. To do so, leaders and their institutions must continually reflect on how they include…

Broadening participation in PreK-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) provides ALL students with STEM learning experiences that can prepare them for civic life and the workforce. In this way, broadening participation has the potential to transform society by reducing social and economic inequities, and by bringing new…

While reflecting on her own educational experiences, author Beth Taone discusses how she came up with an educational philosophy called Tri-Excellence. Taone believes that students will only be able to succeed in school if three things are in place--Student Excellence + Teacher Excellence + Family/Community Excellence. Here she describes…

A substantial body of research focuses on student achievement and the characteristics of schools that regularly produce it. While academic achievement is an important variable to measure, student engagement serves as a related and highly influential variable that merits more attention, particularly as it relates to preventative interventions.…

This Practice Brief was developed as result of the roundtable dialogue that occurred at the 2019 PBIS Leadership Forum in Chicago, Illinois, with the purpose to describe the Family-School-Community Alliance (FSCA) and the FSCA's recent work focused on family-school collaboration in Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). An…

Fifty years ago, the existence of a dedicated parent/ family relations office at a college or university was a rare thing. Parents were not considered as involved a constituency as students, faculty, staff, or alumni. Freestanding parent and family relations offices are a relatively recent development. Many institutions have been working…

Karen L. Mapp--former Deputy Superintendent for Family and Community Engagement for Boston's schools and noted researcher and author on how schools can partner with families--talks with "EL" editor Naomi Thiers on the need to approach engaging family caregivers in students' learning in a new way, starting with emphasizing active…

The work of school leaders is critical in this era, and there is heightened attention on the roles of the leaders as linked to student achievement and school improvement; school culture and climate; and the variables that impact achievement, improvement, culture and climate. The demands on school leaders have significantly changed. About a decade…

Male minority students with disabilities drop out at higher rates than their white peers. Approximately 33% of American Indian or Alaskan Native, 19% of Asian or Pacific Islander, 32% of African-American, and 27% of Latino students with disabilities dropped out compared to 15.5% of White students with a disability (Grady & Bost, 2014).…

This 2-page brief presents 8 new directions drawn from the authors' report "Reflections on the Ready To Learn Initiative, 2010 to 2015" that educational media producers can take to better foster all children's school readiness and success. Since 2006, EDC and SRI have worked together on a series of efficacy studies and evaluations of…