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…

Schoolwide positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) is a systems-level approach to promote appropriate behavior, increase academic achievement, and improve school climate. The PBIS infrastructure engages families as partners in school systems and extends evidence-based positive behavior support to the home. The article discusses a…

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…

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…

Partnerships with families in education settings should emphasize their roles as active and engaged co-equal partners. However, common practices in schools are to involve families at school-based events and share information with them about their child's education in a manner that does not promote two-way interactions. The purpose of this paper is…

We want students to master academic standards, and we want them to be confident, adaptive, and socially responsible. Above all, we want them to find meaning and satisfaction in their lives. Achieving these goals requires a concerted focus on the social-emotional skills that empower students in and beyond the classroom. In "Teaching to…

The William Penn Foundation launched Philadelphia's Informal Learning Initiative (ILI) to support the development of literacy-rich programming for families with children aged 3 to 9. The initiative was designed as a network of partnerships in which a cultural organization--usually a museum--paired with one or more, community-based organizations…

Significant declines in outdoor activity and engagement with the natural environment are growing concerns with negative impacts on well-being. We pilot-tested an intervention encouraging outdoor activity among adult mentor and child mentee pairs and families, in partnership with Milwaukee's Urban Ecology Center. The study used a mixed methods…

ANEER, the National Initiative for Early Childhood Education in Rural Areas, is an innovative and impactful project bringing preschools to remote Moroccan villages. Launched by Zakoura Foundation in 2015, in partnership with the Moroccan Ministry of Education and UNICEF, the free ANEER program aims to create the most favorable conditions for a…

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…

School counselors are called to collaborate with families to support student success and achievement. Although the need for collaboration is apparent in the ASCA National Model as well as research on family-school engagement, an organized view of what this collaboration between school counselors and families may look like and how existing or…

Growing evidence suggests that Positive Youth Development (PYD), a holistic approach to developing assets and competencies, can help prepare young people for success in adulthood, including success in the workplace. At its core, PYD focuses on creating a supportive, developmentally appropriate learning setting by emphasizing positive…

Family involvement in a child's education is a complex system that extends beyond the presence of partnerships between families, schools, and the community (Epstein, 2011). By measuring families' feelings of connectedness and membership to the school community, this study explores families' motivations for participating in their child's learning…

This practical guide has been developed to help facilitate collaboration and build effective partnerships at the local level between local educational agency (LEA) and vocational rehabilitation (VR) personnel. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula that will instantly create these partnerships; however, there are proven strategies and processes…

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…