By Danielle M. Perry & Joanna Geller
Executive Summary
In her 2021 speech on strategies to build meaningful family-school partnerships, Dr. Karen Mapp posited that “This is the moment where we can have an impact on changing the practice of family engagement, now and forever.” Over the last four years, we’ve experienced a global pandemic that shifted the landscape of schools, national uprisings and justice movements, book bans and anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) bills. This upheaval has impacted student learning, especially among historically and presently marginalized communities due to their racial/ethnic, linguistic, religious, or socioeconomic backgrounds. Now more than ever, we understand the critical role that families play in ensuring schools are welcoming and affirming spaces for all students to learn.
Creating opportunities for families and schools to learn from each other, and build better practices to enhance student learning and success became the work of the Kentucky Statewide Family Engagement Center, otherwise known as the “Kentucky Collaborative for Families and Schools.” The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence served as the lead grantee, and was joined by three regional partner organizations and a school district that each offered a variety of programming and services for children, young people, and families throughout their regions: Learning Grove, Partners for Rural Impact, the National Center for Families Learning, and Daviess County Public Schools. The Kentucky Department of Education, served as a statewide agency/policy lever.
The NYU Metro Center was contracted by the Prichard Committee to evaluate the KY Collaborative and research the statewide impact of transformative family engagement. We used mixed methods to explore the following questions:
Research Questions:
- How does the KY Collaborative support schools?
- What is the depth of schools’ engagement in KY Collaborative offerings, and how does engagment change over time?
- How and to what extent are schools implementing the Dual Capacity-Building Framework? How does this change over time?
- What is the relationship between implementation of the Dual Capacity-Building Framework and changes in family-school partnerships over time?
- What is the relationship between changes in family-school partnerships and changes in school-level outcomes (academic, attendance, discipline, school climate)?
2. How do CIPL fellows experience personal transformation, engage in collective action, influence public officials and school officials, and create more equitable educational systems? What condtions facilitate or hinder success?
3. How does the KY Collaborative support integrated, systemic, and sustainable family engagement? What conditions facilitate or hinder success?
- What changes do families report as a result of participation in KY collaborative programs?
- What is the statewide impact of the KY Collaborative?
We conducted survey research in schools and case studies in three regions of the state to understand the implementation of the Dual Capacity Building Framework in schools, districts, and community-based organizations.