A leadership ladder model helps state, regional, district, and school leaders understand their roles in partnering with families to improve learning for students.

Countless studies confirm that, regardless of family background and student achievement level, students do better in school if their families are engaged in their education (Fan & Chen, 2001; Jeynes, 2012; Sheldon, 2019). For this reason, just about every state and every district in the U.S. has an official policy on family and community engagement, usually linked to federal directives in the Every Student Succeeds Act for Title I, Title III, and other funded programs. Even states and districts that differ dramatically from each other have strikingly similar official policies on family engagement. They typically declare — in so many words — that education is a shared responsibility of home, school, and community, and they direct every district to guide every school to communicate and collaborate with all students’ families in ways that support student achievement, behavior, and other indicators of success in school.

Despite near-universal adoption of such policies and agreement about the importance of school, family, and community partnerships, most districts and schools put these partnerships on a back burner as they work on other important school improvement initiatives. And, to date, many educators remain unaware that family and community engagement can actually help them reach the other school improvement goals they pour their energies into (Bryk et al., 2010).

Official policies are necessary but not sufficient for ensuring strong and sustainable family partnership programs at the district and school levels.

As researchers in the U.S. and overseas have found, official policies are necessary but not sufficient for ensuring strong and sustainable family partnership programs at the district and school levels. In short, state policy is just step one in guiding program development. Other structures and processes — including principals’ support at the school level and active facilitation of school teams by district leaders — are important for conducting programs and practices of family and community engagement that improve over time (Epstein, Galindo, & Sheldon, 2011; Epstein & Sheldon, 2016).

The foundation of partnership programs

Any program to engage families in their children’s education must account for the fact that, historically, some families have enjoyed more productive relationships with schools than others, which also means that some students have benefited more than their peers from family engagement. In 1981, an awareness of these inequalities prompted Joyce Epstein and her colleagues to begin asking, if families are so important for children’s education, then how can schools engage all families in ways that support all students’ learning and development? Since that time, each new study has delved deeper into this critical question.

To answer this question, we worked with educators in districts and schools to test specific models and identify ones that resulted in more effective and equitable partnerships. For example, Epstein and colleagues worked in depth with Baltimore City Public Schools for about nine years. Then, since starting the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS) in 1995, we have worked with more than 5,000 schools and several hundred districts. NNPS collects and analyzes data every year to monitor progress, identify new questions for research, and improve practice.

And, over time, we have been able to identify eight essential elements of successful partnership programs (see sidebar), which can be adapted for use in any location, at all grade levels, and with diverse populations of students and families (Epstein et al., 2019). For example, we found that each district must have a designated leader who champions the district’s partnership agenda and is actively involved in schools’ efforts to build their capacity to work with their students’ families. Without a district leader focused on partnerships, some schools may become “islands of excellence” on family engagement, while other schools remain adrift.

At the school level, we found that it’s crucial to take a team approach, rather than depending on an individual to take the lead in this area. Otherwise, family and community engagement plans tend to become unpredictable and transitory. For instance, a school  may rely on a single teacher or parent leader who does not have the time, energy, or ability to engage all families and community partners and who may move or change schools at any time. Further, we learned  that school teams should create a detailed plan for building and sustaining these partnerships, linking that plan to the school’s larger school improvement strategy. Otherwise, efforts to build family and community engagement tend to be squeezed out by other priorities or reduced in importance as disconnected activities.

When districts assign clear responsibility for leading the effort to promote family and community engagement, and when schools create shared ownership of their programs — aligning them with the school’s improvement strategy — they tend to outperform similar districts and schools that leave this work to chance.

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Eight essential elements of effective partnership programs

These eight essential elements guide state, regional, and district leaders and school-based action teams for partnerships to implement strong and sustainable programs of school, family, and community partnerships.

Leadership. A designated leader at each policy level conducts leadership-level activities and facilitates the work of others at the next policy level. At the school level, an action team for partnerships (ATP) leads the school’s development and continuous improvement of family and community engagement.

Teamwork. Leaders across policy levels stay connected to build knowledge and skills for effective partnership programs. At the school level, parents, teachers, administrators, and others on the ATP work together to reach out to and engage all parents at all grade levels in ways that support all students’ learning and development.

Annual written plans for partnerships. At the school level, a written plan schedules family and community engagement activities that ensure the school has a welcoming climate and that help students attain key goals in the school improvement plan. At the district, regional, and state levels, leaders write an annual leadership plan for partnerships to outline their partnership agenda and to show how they will facilitate the growth of others’ knowledge and skills to conduct effective programs.

Implementation. Bringing written plans to life is everything for school improvement. The activities in leadership plans and action plans for partnerships must be put in practice as scheduled to have an active partnership program.

Evaluation. The quality of each engagement activity should be assessed after it is implemented, and the progress of a partnership program should be reviewed at the end of each school year. These assessments produce information that enables states, regions, districts, and schools to improve partnership plans and activities in the next school year.

Adequate funds. A “thrifty” partnership program requires adequate, not extraordinary, funding to support planned activities and ongoing improvements to engage all families in productive ways. States, regions, districts, and schools have Title I and other funds to conduct well-planned, goal-linked programs of school, family, and community partnerships.

Collegial support. Support at each policy level indicates that work on family and community engagement is valued and appreciated by others and encourages continuous program improvement. Collegial support encourages a culture of partnerships in all schools in a district and all districts in a state.

Networking. At each policy level, leaders benefit from sharing ideas, identifying challenges, and designing solutions to engage all families in ways that support student learning and development.

When the eight essential elements are operating, states, regions, districts, and schools report stronger programs of school, family, and community partnerships. NNPS provides tools and training to ensure that each element is developed by leaders and teams at all policy levels (Epstein et al., 2019).

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A statewide leadership ladder in Ohio

Given that effective family and community partnerships require careful and intensive work, local educators may need support as they design, implement, and continually improve their programs. Unfortunately, most state education agencies lack the resources and knowledge to offer districts and schools much guidance. However, a recent federal investment — the Statewide Family Engagement Centers (SFECs) program, launched in 2018 — has provided grants to 12 state agencies to develop their capacity in this area (U.S. Department of Education, 2018).

Over the last few years, one grantee, the Ohio Statewide Family Engagement Center (OhSFEC), housed at The Ohio State University and directed by Barbara Boone, has been testing the feasibility of a multilevel leadership ladder (Epstein & Sheldon, 2006; The Ohio State University, 2018), which is meant to clarify and define the responsibilities of leaders in each part of the school system, so that everyone’s role is clear and everyone works to apply the state’s family engagement policy in their local community.

With colleagues at the Ohio Department of Education, OhSFEC selected the NNPS at Johns Hopkins University — directed by Joyce Epstein — to provide professional development and national support and to study this work as it proceeds alongside the OhSFEC team (Boone, 2020). This project is the first to test whether and how a full leadership ladder can support statewide implementation of effective and equitable partnership programs.

The goal is for leaders at the state, regional, district, and school levels to use research-based strategies to organize and continually improve their work on family and community engagement. However, there is no such thing as one size, or one strategy, fits all in this program. Each school’s plan for partnerships is based on goals in its own school improvement plan. Many examples are provided to spark ideas for goal-linked activities, and a template guides schools to select two academic goals, one nonacademic/behavioral goal, and one overall goal for a welcoming climate. Many schools, for example, select family engagement in reading as an academic goal for partnerships, select or design reading-related engagement activities, and learn from each other during the year about which activities work well.

Leaders at each policy level should be responsible for championing partnerships from their respective offices (leadership activities) and for training and providing ongoing coaching and technical assistance to the leaders at the next policy level down the ladder (facilitation activities). The ultimate goal is to ensure that strong partnership programs exist at the school level to engage all families in ways that contribute to student learning and development. This is how OhSFEC defines the specific leadership roles involved in the work:

• State leadership. OhSFEC and the state education association (SEA) oversee all aspects of the family engagement project. OhSFEC leaders are responsible for training and communicating with regional coaches for partnerships in all 16 regions of Ohio. The SEA issues a clear expectation that one or more regional team members will serve as leaders for partnerships to guide district leaders in their regions. In this way, together, OhSFEC and the SEA build the capacities of the state’s existing regional support teams to guide the development of district- and school-based family engagement programs. This is in contrast to somewhat typical patterns of state leaders trying to reach all families, which we have learned is impossible to do. Nor is this intended to be a top-down reform. The goal here is for leaders to guide and support those who are closer to families.
• Regional leadership. With professional development and support from OhSFEC, the state’s 16 regional coaches build their expertise to initiate and continually improve regional leadership activities. They also conduct facilitation activities to coach district leaders as they build their capacities to work with schools. Each of the 16 regional coaches recruit and coach three districts (a total of 48 districts over three years) that serve high percentages of students from families with low incomes, English learners, and other vulnerable populations.
• District leadership. District leaders for partnerships engage in leadership activities at the district level, with support from their regional coaches. They are responsible for actively facilitating schools’ efforts to build their capacities to connect with their students’ families. Across regions, three cohorts of district leaders select at least one elementary and one secondary school to support (a total of 96 schools over three years).
• School leadership. Each school in the project will form a partnership team consisting of teachers, parents, an administrator, and, at the high school level, students. These teams receive professional development and technical assistance from OhSFEC, the National Network of Partnership Schools, and their district leaders to enable them to plan, implement, evaluate, and continually improve family engagement programs and processes that are linked to goals in their school’s improvement plans. The teams will implement a framework of six types of involvement — parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and collaborating with the community — to create a welcoming school and engage parents in different ways and at different places (Epstein et al., 2019).

All regional coaches attend the OhSFEC-NNPS workshops for district leaders, and regional and district leaders attend the OhSFEC-NNPS training activities for school teams. These shared experiences will enable leaders to conduct similar workshops and refresher sessions on their own, as needed, with new district leaders and new school teams after the OhSFEC study has concluded.

The first cohort of 16 regions, 16 districts, and 32 schools in the project implemented its first full year of planned partnership programs in the 2020-21 school year. The second cohort of districts and schools attended professional development workshops and started implementing partnership plans in the 2021-22 school year. The third cohort will attend training workshops in spring 2022 and will start projects in the 2022-23 school year.

Prior studies indicate that the structures and processes selected by OhSFEC are equally effective in diverse communities (Epstein & Sheldon, 2016). The three cohorts include a range of districts and schools — from small, single-building schools in rural districts to large elementary, middle, and high schools in urban districts — that serve demographically different populations of students and families. The next evaluation of OhSFEC will include information on how the training workshops and facilitation activities are affecting the quality and progress of partnership programs in urban and rural regions of Ohio.

Results

OhSFEC’s design to scale up effective partnership programs across the state is promising, but how is it working? The external evaluator, Becce Coaching and Evaluation, analyzed demographic data, surveys, interviews, observations, and documents from partners at all policy levels to gauge the project’s progress at the end of its first full year of implementation by the first cohort of districts and schools (Becce, 2021).

Organization and basic training

The evaluators found that OhSFEC was successful at organizing and initiating a scalable statewide family engagement infrastructure that connects the SEA, all 16 regions of Ohio, and three cohorts of districts and schools. Further, OhSFEC’s “national and state partnerships are strong, collaborative, and productive” (Becce, 2021, p. 15). Over the first three years, the NNPS training and templates have been integrated at the state, region, district, and school levels, and outreach to families and students is increasing. OhSFEC has conducted monthly virtual Colleagues Connect meetings in which attendees receive timely updates and just-in-time training, share best practices, and discuss challenges. Similarly, regional coaches conduct monthly meetings with district leaders in their regions.

Despite disruptions caused by the COVID-19 crisis, the first cohort of district leaders and school-based partnership teams completed training workshops, wrote action plans, and conducted more than 360 family engagement activities in the 2020-21 school year.

How did participants feel about the training? Regional coaches reported they were “moderately prepared” to guide their district leaders for partnerships and “very well prepared” to conduct monthly meetings with district leaders. They gave high ratings to the training on leadership roles, step-by-step guidelines for successful district and school implementations, and workshop opportunities to practice strategies. Some regional coaches felt so prepared that they were able to expand training and coaching to additional districts beyond the three cohort districts. District leaders rated training workshops as “clear,” with good information on action steps. And, like the regional leaders, several district leaders already expanded training and support to additional schools beyond those in the OhSFEC project.

This support was felt at the school level, with school-based partnership teams reporting that their district facilitators did more to support their work on partnerships at the end of the school year than they did at the beginning of the year. This suggests that ongoing guidance from their regional coaches and OhSFEC helped district leaders to better guide their schools’ partnership teams. Similarly, school-level teams reported that they became more adept over the year in conducting team meetings and implementing planned activities with family and community partners.

Implementation in action

The outside evaluators found that schools’ partnership teams are implementing their planned activities and that they are doing “moderately well” across all six types of engagement in the NNPS framework. And surveys of parents indicated that large percentages reported they are better able to work with their child’s school and service providers.

An important aspect of the engagement programs was ensuring that they were linked to schools’ overall goals and not just one-off activities. One high school, for example, set a goal in its school improvement plan to increase the number of graduating seniors who attend college. With this goal in mind, the school’s partnership team conducted a virtual meeting to help students and parents complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form. The school provided translators and interpreters for families with different home languages, and the team recorded the session for students and families who could not attend the live online event.

Similarly, an elementary school conducted an activity at school to enable families to help their children practice specific skills at home that aligned with the school’s academic goals for students. For example, at the math table, students and teachers demonstrated how they use playing cards for math games to strengthen math skills, and all attendees received their own card decks and a book of math activities to play at home. The team promoted further engagement and community-building among parents by having them introduce themselves to two parents whom they did not know before and encouraged supportive communication with teachers by having them talk with a teacher about their dreams for their children. The activity combined student participation, family engagement, and positive social exchanges in a spirit of partnerships for student success (Thomas et al., 2021, p. 42).

OhSFEC, regional and district leaders, and school teams are collecting and sharing best practices that other project sites can adopt or adapt. At the end of the 2020-21 school year, OhSFEC held an end-of-year celebration in which the first cohort of regions, districts, and schools shared progress updates and discussed challenges that arose during the school year. Each school reported on one best practice from its One-Year Action Plan for Partnerships and its observed impact. Several conducted activities to help parents work with the children at school or at home on reading; these included providing books for students and parents to read together and literacy bags with ideas for reading at home. Many focused on creating more welcoming schools for all students’ families. (A summary of school results is available at bit.ly/ohiosummary) The opportunity for such sharing across schools, districts, and regions is one benefit of statewide initiatives.

Emerging challenges

All new projects face implementation challenges, and the evaluation report identified a few that the OhSFEC project will need to address in the current and upcoming school year.

Training needs. After their initial training, school-based partnership teams requested “more workshops” to continue to improve their programs (Becce, 2021, p. 27). OhSFEC and regional and district leaders responded in the 2020-21 school year with “booster” training sessions on how to design and implement goal-linked practices to engage families with students in reading or other goals for student learning and behavior.

Awareness needs. The external evaluator reported that there is room for growth in parents’ and teachers’ awareness of partnership team activities and their school’s program of family engagement. Teachers and parents who were aware of the partnership team rated the quality of their school’s partnership program higher than those who were not. This is a persistent challenge in most school improvement initiatives as, at first, only some parents and teachers are tuned in to a new program. In response, OhSFEC made awareness-building strategies part of all monthly meetings and trainings with regional and district leaders. NNPS provided another new training session on strategies to engage more families by communicating with multiple technologies and approaches and by including students as active partners, inviters, presenters, and performers to encourage family participation in activities at school and at home.

District leaders are also finding ways to increase awareness of their work on family engagement. For example, one district leader for partnerships conducted professional development sessions on family engagement with all school staff (not just with team members). Another district is extending outreach to all families by hiring part-time, paid family ambassadors who serve on school-based partnership teams. These ambassadors focus, especially, on connecting with families who speak different languages, need community services, have questions and suggestions, or face unique challenges. Still another district is conducting twice-weekly, virtual information sessions at which a district leader talks with families about their questions  and provides information on contacts who may address their concerns. These meetings are translated into multiple languages to reach more families.

The promise of a statewide approach

State policies for family and community engagement have been on the books for years, but most districts and schools have done their own thing when it comes to family engagement. OhSFEC’s test of a research-based leadership ladder that develops expert leaders at all policy levels is proving to be a feasible and effective way to strengthen partnership programs and engage all families in their children’s education. It should be noted that if state support for professional development across policy levels is lacking, district leaders for partnerships can initiate a “short leadership ladder” by facilitating partnership teams and goal-linked plans to engage all families in all schools in their district (Epstein et al., 2019). However, because district leaders benefit from hearing good examples from others, having a network of districts across the state like the one supported by OhSFEC is helpful. Otherwise the good work by some districts within a state may not lead other districts to take state policies as serious directives for effective and equitable partnerships with all families for all students.

It is still too early to tell if OhSFEC and its partners will continue to scale up the number of districts and schools across Ohio, but the evidence is promising. From what we’ve seen so far, OhSFEC’s systematic scale-up strategies are transforming unpredictable family and community engagement programs into planned and sustainable programs at the state, regional, district, and school levels. The lessons learned to date may guide next steps in and beyond Ohio.

Note: This article is partially supported by funding from the U.S. Department of Education (U310A180049) to The Ohio State University and by the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the views of funders or universities.

References

Becce, M. (2021). The Ohio Statewide Family Engagement Center (OhSFEC): Year 3 evaluation report. Melissa Becce Coaching and Evaluation.

Boone, B. (2020). Schools and families launch students to success. Ohio School Boards Association Journal, 64 (2), 34-36.

Bryk, A.S., Sebring, P.B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J.Q. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. University of Chicago Press.

Epstein, J.L., Galindo, C., & Sheldon, S.B. (2011). Levels of leadership: Effects of district and school leaders on the quality of school programs of family and community involvement. Educational Administration Quarterly, 47, 462-495.

Epstein, J.L., Sanders, M.G., Sheldon, S.B., Simon, B.S., Salinas, K.C., Jansorn, N.R., . . . & Williams, K.J. (2019). School, family, and community partnerships: Your handbook for action (4th ed.). Corwin.

Epstein, J.L. & Sheldon, S.B. (2006). Moving forward: Ideas for research on school, family, and community partnerships. In C. Conrad & R. Serlin (Eds.), SAGE Handbook for research in education: Engaging ideas and enriching inquiry (pp. 117-137). Sage Publications.

Epstein, J.L. & Sheldon, S.B. (2016). Necessary but not sufficient: The role of policy for advancing programs of school, family, and community partnerships. Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2, 202-219.

Fan, X. & Chen, M. (2001). Parental involvement and students’ academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 13, 1-22.

Jeynes, W.H.  (2012). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of different types of parental involvement programs for urban students.  Urban Education, 47, 706-742.

Sheldon, S.B. (2019). Improving student outcomes with school, family, and community partnerships: A research review. In J. Epstein et al., School, family, and community partnerships: Your handbook for action (4th, ed., pp. 43–62). Corwin.

The Ohio State University. (2018). Ohio’s Statewide Family Engagement Center (OhSFEC). Proposal submitted to the U.S. Department of Education Office of Innovation and Improvement.

Thomas, B.G., Epstein, J.L., Bostic, B., & Chappell, R.V. (2021). Promising partnership practices 2021. National Network of Partnership Schools at Johns Hopkins University.

U.S. Department of Education. (2018). Five-year statewide Family Engagement Center (SFEC) program grant (CFDA #84.310A). Author.

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This article appears in the April 2022 issue of Kappan, Vol. 103, No. 7, pp. 8-13.