Family Engagement Leads to Children's Academic Success

Numerous kinds of research have revealed that home-school partnerships boost students' grades, test scores, attendance, and graduation rates, an expert says.

The US Department of Education launched its first online panel discussion with topics focused on its Family Engagement Learning Series.

Senior lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Karen Mapp, spoke at the event and emphasized how family engagement is an "essential ingredient" to students' success in schools. Unfortunately, society is still resisting it and experts are pushing a little bit more for parents and the community to realize and embrace this fact.

Another speaker in the virtual session was Alejandro Gibes de Gac, CEO and founder of the nonprofit Springboard Collaborative, and he strongly agreed with Mapp, stressing that the parent-child relationship is "the most underutilized natural resource in education."

Boost reading and math skills

Gibes de Gac further declared that children's literacy can highly improve when trust is built between parents and teachers. Both parties should understand the student's current level of reading to know the next step to take.

Moving up a reading level takes at least 15 minutes of practice reading at home supervised by the parents, and tutoring or classroom help assisted by the teachers. Working together as a team paves the way for school communities to "unlock their true potential," the CEO emphasized.

Springboard Collaborative is working with more than 60 Title I schools nationwide, with family workshops having an average of 88 percent attendance on a weekly basis. Children in the program gained an average reading growth of 2.3 to 9.5 months in early literacy skills in five to ten weeks, a great amount of instructional time that would be hard and expensive to reproduce if done by teachers or tutors alone.

Family engagement does not only boost literacy but also math skills, educators say.

Mapp pointed out how crucial it is to eliminate the myth that there are specific subjects like math that are too hard for the family to engage in. Further, she stated that various studies have discovered that when families participate in targeted math workshops and do follow-up learning activities at home, there are significant improvements in children's math performance.

She encouraged parent-teacher home visits, as they result in better math outcomes for the students.

"This engagement isn't just good for our students, it's good for our educators. We find that when our educators engage with families, a lot of the deficit-based mindsets they have about families begin to melt away. They start to really appreciate multi-cultural awareness and know how to do those strategies and practices," Mapp declared. 

She added that when schools have solid strategies for family engagement, school staff's morale is high, and schools gain better reputations in the community.

Read More: Parent-Teacher Connection: 5 Ways To Build A Strong Relationship With Your Kid's Teacher

Family Engagement Learning Series

The Education Department's Family Engagement Learning Series is an initiative in partnership with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Overdeck Family Foundation. They aim to uplift family engagement and raise parent voices.

The online series comes after the department disbanded the newly formed National Parents and Families Engagement Council months ago. The council's termination was due to a lawsuit filed by a conservative group of activities claiming that the council's effort has no "balanced" perspectives, K12 Dive reported.

The Education department, however, disagreed and stated that they would continue reaching out to families nationwide by distributing resources and holding town halls.

Related Article: How To Motivate Your Children To Study and Work On Their Education