Illuminating Progress Toward Transformative Family-School Partnership in Kentucky

By Danielle M. Perry, Joanna D. Geller, Jeremy T. Martin, Mellie Torres, and Benjamin W. Fisher

Executive Summary

Introduction

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Education awarded 5-year grants to 12 states ranging from three to five million dollars to develop Statewide Family Engagement Centers. The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence is the lead grantee for the Kentucky Statewide Family Engagement Center, otherwise known as the “Kentucky Collaborative.” The Prichard Committee is a nationally recognized, independent, non-partisan citizen’s advocacy organization based in central Kentucky. The Prichard Committee has operated the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership (CIPL) for close to forty years, which builds families’ knowledge, skills, and power related to improving public education.

In addition to the Prichard Committee, the KY Collaborative includes three regional partner organizations that each offer a variety of programming and services for children, young people, and families throughout their regions. The regional partners include Learning Grove in Northern Kentucky; Partners for Education, which is situated in Berea College, in the Appalachian region; and National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) located in Louisville. The Kentucky Department of Education is an additional partner.

In 2020, the KY Collaborative decided to create the Family Friendly Schools (FFS) Learning Cohort, a cohort of 58 schools (as of October 2021) throughout the three target regions that have committed to strengthening their family-school partnerships. In contrast to programs and services that are often adjacent to the “real work” of schools, FFS represents an effort to deeply and sustainably embed family engagement into the culture, practices, policies, leadership, and decision-making of schools throughout the state. Hence, FFS offers a unique opportunity to learn about the successes and challenges schools, districts, and community-based organizations experience when striving to build equitable family-school partnerships.

The Prichard Committee hired NYU Metro Center to both evaluate and research the Kentucky Collaborative. In this report, we share findings from the first year of a 3-year research project on the relationship between family-school partnerships and student outcomes. The main questions guiding this report include:

1. What is the state of family-school partnerships in schools across the state of Kentucky?
2. How are institutions—including a school, a district, and a community-based organization—building effective partnerships between families and schools? What are successes and challenges?