Family Engagement: Beyond Random Acts
The Harvard Family Research Project’s new brief, “Beyond Random Acts: Family, School, and Community Engagement as an Integral Part of Education Reform,” is a must read for both educators and policymakers. Powerfully, the brief takes on a number of important memes:
- It chides reformers for overlooking or minimizing the impact of family engagement, noting that “research repeatedly correlates family engagement with student achievement, yet this strategy is rarely activated as an integral part of school reform efforts.”
- But, at the same time it dismisses the “bad parents” meme that treats disengagement as entirely the fault of parents or circumstances such as poverty. Instead, it sees engagement as a shared responsibility that schools also own — and can take active steps to foster.
- And finally, it calls for “disrupting the current state of practice” where family engagement is a warm and