affordable housing—that account for
about two-thirds of the variance in
student achievement (Rothstein, 2010).
These connections can also improve
parents’ feelings of efficacy and increase
community support for schools.
What’s the Difference?
To create the kinds of school-family
partnerships that raise student
achievement, improve local communities, and increase public support,
we need to understand the difference
between family involvement and family
engagement. One of the dictionary
definitions of involve is “to enfold or
envelope,” whereas one of the meanings
of engage is “to come together and
interlock.” Thus, involvement implies
doing to; in contrast, engagement implies
doing with.
A school striving for family
involvement often leads with its
mouth—identifying projects, needs, and
goals and then telling parents how they
can contribute. A school striving for
parent engagement, on the other hand,
tends to lead with its ears—listening to
what parents think, dream, and worry
about. The goal of family engagement is
not to serve clients but to gain partners.
It’s not that family involvement is
bad. Almost all the research says that
any kind of increased parent interest
and support of students can help. But
almost all the research also says that
family engagement can produce even
better results—for students, for families,
for schools, and for their communities
(Ferlazzo & Hammond, 2009).
Empowering Families
and Communities
Effective family engagement requires the
school to develop a relationship-building
process focused on listening. One way
to begin this process is for teachers
and other staff members to make prearranged visits to students’ homes.
Unfortunately, in many urban
Help them to discover for themselves what ought to be done, and they will not be satisfied until it is done.
neighborhoods, the only public entities
that usually send representatives to visit
are the police and child protective services. Schools can fill this void and send
a different, more positive message.
At Luther Burbank High School, an
urban school serving 2,000 students
in Sacramento, California, scores of
teachers, counselors, and classified
staff make hundreds of home visits
each summer. We visit the homes of
all incoming freshmen, as well as all
older students who have not yet passed
the California High School Exit Exam.
These visits are not just to tell students
and their parents what to expect when
they enter high school or to harangue
them about the need to work harder to
graduate. Our primary goal is to listen
to the wisdom that parents have gained
in more than 14 years of raising their
children. We want to learn about their
hopes and dreams for their children and
discuss how the school can work with
them to make those dreams a reality.
The school coordinates its home visits
with the nationally recognized Parent
Teacher Home Visit Project (www
. pthvp.org), which works with school
districts throughout the United States to
set up similar programs. Independent
evaluations of this project have shown
that such visits result in numerous academic benefits for students (Cowan,
Bobby, St. Roseman, & Echandia, 2002;
Tuss, 2007).
The listening process can take many
forms. The home visitors sometimes
respond to the concerns that parents
express by encouraging them to connect
with one another and move toward
broader action. For example, during one
of our home visits with a Hmong immigrant family a few years ago, the father
told us how impressed he was with the
online literacy program the school was
using to help his son. He added that he
wished he could afford to have a computer and Internet connection at home
so that he and the rest of the family
