Parental and family involvement in the transition of youth with disabilities from school to the adult world is vital. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 emphasized the important role that families play in their children's education, and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004 mandated parental…

Schools alone cannot reverse the high rates of school failure in the poorest communities in Europe; they need the contributions of the entire community. Coordination between families, the larger community, and the school has proven crucial to enhance student learning and achievement, especially for minority and disadvantaged families. However,…

This rejoinder provides responses to the conceptual concerns expressed in the nine critiques published in this issue of "Educational Researcher" of the 2008 National Early Literacy Panel report. It explains the necessity of adhering to clearly established study selection parameters in conducting trustworthy meta-analyses and the need to be…

This brief examines the role that afterschool programs can play in increasing family involvement in schools, demonstrating that when parents and family members are involved in their children's school, children, schools, and families benefit. Studies show that the majority of parents want to be involved in their children's education, but many face…

This article highlights the importance of nurturing preservice teachers as they develop the dispositions essential to establish empowering relationships with children's families. The authors identify and describe several key dispositions necessary for working with families and offer suggestions for ways that these elements might be integrated into…

How do schools address safety issues, discipline students, and provide effective instruction? These are questions parents and educators need to answer together. Parents of children whose special needs put them at risk for being bullied worry about the school's ability to protect their vulnerable children. Conversely, parents of children who…

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center has conducted a national survey of more than 1500 parents of children ages 2-10 to find out how much of children's media time is devoted to educational content, platform by platform, age by age. "Learning at Home: Families' Educational Media Use in America" is the first comprehensive analysis of parents'…

Research demonstrates that parental involvement can have a positive impact on students' academic, emotional, and social success; however, there are few studies of how to improve parent advocacy and home-school collaboration in special education. The focus of this qualitative case study was to understand perceptions of the special educators…

This article describes parents' and educators' perceptions of home-school relationships that benefited children and their families in one school district. Family involvement literature and social network theory, especially Burt's (2001) structural holes, served as the theoretical framework. In semistructured interviews, 39 participants, including…

This article begins with vignettes illustrating some of the concerns that parents have about relationships in child care. It may be helpful for teachers, students, and directors to reflect on the feelings of parents about relationships in child care. It may also be helpful for parents to recognize the universality of common questions of parents.…

It is a widely held belief that increased family involvement enhances student academic achievement. When considering children with special needs, involvement is not only beneficial; it is often an essential ingredient in a child's success. Families of children with special needs are often limited by time constraints that inhibit school…

Educators sometimes misjudge immigrant families' ability to contribute to their children's school success, especially those of English learners (August and Shanahan 2006). However, families powerfully influence the academic achievement of their children, and most take a strong interest in what happens in schools (Au 2002). Cummins (1986, 2003)…

Parental participation and cooperation in children's educational experiences is positively related to important student outcomes. It is becoming increasingly evident that context is a significant factor in understanding academic achievement, and the setting in which a child, family, and school is situated is among the salient contexts…

Making Connections was the Annie E. Casey Foundation's signature place-based, community-change initiative of the 2000s. It sought to build on previous work and launch an effort focused firmly on the framework of family strengthening. The Foundation started Making Connections in 22 places, focusing eventually on first 10, then seven sites. It…

This Internet-based study involved experimental manipulation of family-centeredness in written early intervention evaluation reports and employed a 3 x 4-vignette factorial design with 1 participant variable (role: parent, professional, parent-professional) and 1 randomly assigned independent variable (level of family-centeredness in report…