What do we mean by family engagement?

Family engagement is a partnership between families, educators and community partners to support children’s learning and development. This includes working hand in hand with families so they can fulfill their responsibility, with support from schools and community organizations, to get their children to school. Dr. Karen Mapp’s Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships describes the skills families and educators need to develop in order to work together effectively to support students. To learn more about this framework, click through the Framework in Depth pages.

Family engagement can come in a variety of forms. Joyce Epstein’s research identifies six types of family involvement (parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making and collaboration) which states can use to develop policies and guidance for districts and schools to deepen family engagement.

Why does it matter for attendance?

If families have a voice in the decisions that affect their children, understand the impact of attendance on their children’s well-being, believe that sending their children to school will lead to a better future, and have faith that schools will support them, they are more likely to get their students to attend school.

What is the evidence that family engagement improves attendance?

Research shows strong family engagement improves attendance:

• Higher impact family engagement is associated with improved attendance. For example, the Family Engagement Impact Study from Learning Heroes and TNTP shows that during the Covid-19 pandemic, schools with strong family engagement had much lower levels of chronic absence than schools with weak family engagement.
• Relational home visiting models, such as Parent Teacher Home Visits or Connecticut’s Learner Engagement and Attendance Program that build positive relationships between families and schools can improve student attendance.
• Improving home-school communications with two-way texting improved attendance for kindergarten students, as seen in a study of students in Pittsburgh, PA. Similar results were seen for K-5 students in Tulsa, OK. in a study by Talking Points.

Should family engagement be a major route to reducing chronic absence in your state?

In order to determine whether family engagement is a major strategy for reducing chronic absence in your state, consider these questions:

• What are the current levels of family engagement connectedness based on qualitative and quantitative data?
  • Does your state or districts in your state conduct surveys of school climate that include questions for families, or other types of surveys that capture information about engaging parents in the education of children?
  • What insights can be gained from statewide family surveys about educators’ mindsets and practices around family engagement? Many states including Georgia, Kansas, Illinois and California conduct family surveys.
  • Are other measures of family engagement available in your state or at the district level? Scholastic suggests looking at other ways schools or districts invite families to partner with them, such as home-school communications or the school website. Read more in the blog post How to Assess Family Engagement Using Data, Not Intuition.
  • What tools can be used to collect data on family engagement? For example, Panorama offers a template for surveying family relationships which may already be in use among districts in your state using this system.
• What assets and resources can you build upon?
  • Who are the champions for family engagement at the state or local levels? For example, there may be programs with strong family engagement components such as Head Start. Your state may also have a Statewide Family Engagement Center or a network of family resource centers.
  • How can federal, state or local funding that has been allocated for family engagement be leveraged? For example, Title I, Part A can be used to train staff and support family engagement.
  • Are there existing initiatives aimed at creating opportunities for family engagement? For example, family engagement is a key component of the community schools approach.
  • Are there bright spot schools or exemplary programs that demonstrate effective approaches to family engagement? For example, a 2024 study from Great Schools reviews research on family engagement and provides insights from its own work to engage families in identifying barriers and designing solutions to improve attendance.

How do your policies support strong family engagement?

States can play an important role in family engagement. According to NAFSCE, state education agencies have significant responsibility for ensuring compliance with federal requirements. When considering whether family engagement should be a priority route to improved attendance, consider the following questions:

• What are reinforcing policies that increase the type of family engagement that improves attendance? NAFSCE offers resources and examples of effective state practices designed to support strong family engagement.
• Are there counterproductive policies? For example, does your state require or encourage sending threatening truancy notifications which may cause families to feel alienated and distrustful and do not in fact result in better attendance? Read our blog post about a research study on Writing Truancy Notices That Can Improve Attendance and this report, Disparities in Unexcused Absence Across California Schools.