Over the last decade, there has been debate about whether parents should be involved in their children's schooling. Although some have argued that parent involvement benefits children, others have argued that it does not and even has costs. Drawing on the large body of research relevant to this controversy, we make the case that, in general,…

Based on the intersection of different systems at school entry, children and families often experience uncertainty about their preparedness and impending shift from other early childhood settings. This study used a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design and investigated the perspectives of parents and caregivers on kindergarten readiness with…

This study evaluates the effects of a weekly home-visiting parenting program designed to enhance parent-child engagement with educationally-enriching activities and its potential interaction with children's participation in state-funded preschool. Utilizing a comprehensive dataset linked across various administrative sources, we employed a…

This is an evaluation of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) Family and Community Engagement (FACE) program. The FACE program is designed to support parent and schools and promote effective family and community engagement in every HISD school. FACE provides or promotes training and professional development, community partnerships,…

Family engagement is a major component in assisting student success and academic growth; however, within the inner city, it can be difficult to get families engaged due to many different factors. Schools can increase family engagement by giving families the knowledge to be successful. The purpose of this dissertation is to present how effective it…

Background: In 2019, Arkansas had the nation's fourth-lowest reading scores (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2019). Grounded in evidence that parents and guardians can play a pivotal role in developing their children's reading proficiency (Carnegie Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy, 2010), the Arkansas Department of Education…

The purpose of this study was to systematically map and synthesise literature on interventions that promote the involvement of parents of school-aged children with disabilities in education. The study focused on peer-reviewed, primary intervention studies published in English between 2000 and 2021. Nine databases were searched, and 21 articles…

Text-message-based parenting programs have proven successful in improving parent engagement and preschoolers' literacy development. This study seeks to identify mechanisms of the overall effect of such programs. It investigates whether actionable advice alone drives previous studies' results and whether additional texts of actionable advice…

This dissertation in practice focused on the use of Motivational Interviewing in the school environment between school staff and families. More specifically, this program evaluation sought to see if the use of Motivational Interviewing by school staff could improve parent participation rates in student attendance improvement conferences (SAICs).…

Background: Strong connections between children's teachers and their parents fosters their learning and development in early childhood and throughout their schooling. Developing strong connections in preschool may ease the transition to elementary school for children. Objective: The goal of this study is to examine the initial implementation of…

Background: Strong connections between children's teachers and their parents fosters their learning and development in early childhood and throughout their schooling. Developing strong connections in preschool may ease the transition to elementary school for children. Objective: The goal of this study is to examine the initial implementation of…

This toolkit is for school districts that are considering using text messaging to improve attendance. Text messaging can reach large numbers of parents with minimal cost. This toolkit is intended to enable district leaders and staff to: (1) Consider goals and priorities for using text messaging to communicate with parents about student absences;…

The Midwest Child-Parent Center (CPC) Expansion began preschool implementation in fall 2012 in 5 Minnesota and Illinois districts. This study reports preschool and kindergarten impact findings for the Saint Paul Public School District. It is the first impact study of CPC outside of Chicago. After documenting that implementation quality was…

In recent years Rhode Island's Providence Public School District (PPSD) has put initiatives in place to reduce high chronic absenteeism. This study explored attendance supports aimed at reducing chronic absenteeism that PPSD schools implemented in the 2018/19 school year. Although some schools had attendance supports in place before 2018/19, in…

This Study Snapshot highlights key findings from a study that explored attendance supports aimed at reducing chronic absenteeism that Rhode Island's Providence Public School District (PPSD) schools implemented in the 2018/19 school year. The study investigated what attendance supports were most commonly implemented with fidelity in 2018/19 by…