It is widely accepted that the involvement of parents in their children's education leads to various academic, social, and mental health benefits. Further, parent involvement has been identified as a critical component to ensuring robust and rewarding experiences for students with disabilities throughout their educational journeys and essential in…

Caregiver engagement has been a topic of study due to the resulting benefits regarding student's school experience. Students are better prepared to transition to kindergarten, receive higher test scores, increase attendance, and report fewer discipline problems when caregivers work collaboratively with school personnel. This study addresses…

Encouraging children's academic success and positive outcomes is a critical duty of parents and school leaders. School leaders face a variety of challenges, including encounters with parents. The problem is the challenges school leaders face where parental involvement influences their children's holistic development. An absence of dynamic parental…

This paper draws from a critical race multicase study of Black parents' school engagement experiences in a liberal U.S. public school district, focusing here on 12 mothers and fathers who participated in Parent Teacher Organizations (PTOs) and/or African American parent groups. I apply Critical Race Theory, particularly Crenshaw's notions of…

This dissertation in practice is a qualitative inquiry investigating the struggle to increase connectivity and usage of a parent portal in a mid-sized urban school district in the Northeast, referred to as "Blank" City School District (BCSD). The local problem discussed in this paper connects to the national problem of lack of parental…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), establishes requirements for State educational agencies (SEAs) and local educational agencies (LEAs) to prepare and disseminate report cards that provide information on State, LEA, and school performance and progress in an understandable…

Parents and educators are at the forefront of promoting children's health and well-being. Yet little is known about the factors that contribute to forming a positive relationship between parents and their children's educators. Very few researchers have investigated the perceptions of parents, teachers, and support staff regarding the factors that…

Student absenteeism has remained high following the COVID-19 pandemic and districts need low-cost strategies to improve attendance. In 2020-21, the National Center for Rural Education Research Networks piloted a promising personalized messaging intervention in 8 rural districts in New York and Ohio. We worked with a student information system…

Do market-based policies, like school vouchers, that provide an exit option enhance or diminish parental involvement? I examine this question using original survey data from parents participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation's oldest urban voucher program. Voucher students were matched to a set of public school students…

Engagement unites the home and school as a partnership, elevating parents' roles as vital voices in the school and mitigating barriers to engagement. This current research aimed to fill a gap in the literature by investigating parent engagement from the perspective of the administrators as well as the parent in the context of their…

We report on a project to support teachers and district administrators working with multilingual learners as they deepened relationships and understandings with multilingual families in five Oregon school districts. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which radically shifted the ways educators engaged with students' families, we repurposed this ongoing…

The Title I, Part A program (Title I) is legislation included in the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA), the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). Title I, Part A was designed to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and…

Since 2007, the Cowen Institute has conducted annual polls on perceptions of public education in New Orleans. These polls have served to provide insight on how parents, guardians, and the general public feel about the most relevant issues related to New Orleans' highly decentralized K-12 public education system. In previous editions of the poll,…

The Title I, Part A program (Title I) is legislation included in the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA), the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). Title I, Part A was designed to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and…

This report summarizes some of the parent and family engagement services provided by Austin Independent School District's parent support specialists to parents and families at their schools during the 2017-2018 school year.