Beyond Random Acts: Family, School, and Community Engagement as an Integral Part of Education Reform. National Policy Forum for Family, School, & Community Engagement

The policy forum brought to the center what is now on the periphery of education reform: family, school, and community engagement (FSCE) as a strategy to support student success. The forum sought to serve as a catalyst for reframing what FSCE should look like in the twenty--first century, and for repositioning this engagement as a major contributor to twenty--first century learning and school turnaround efforts. There is a substantial amount of innovation intentionally linking family engagement to learning, as well as a strong base of practice experience on which to build more systemic, integrated, and sustained approaches. This paper set the stage for the forum by presenting a research-based framing of family engagement. It examines the policy levers for change in promoting systemic FSCE, and focuses on data systems as a powerful tool to engage families for twenty-first century student learning. Because education reform will succeed only when all students are prepared for the demands of the twenty-first century, the forum also aimed to examine the role of families in transforming low-performing schools. This paper aims to start the conversation and to help shape what role federal policy will play in supporting FSCE efforts in schools across the country. (Contains 6 textboxes and 36 footnotes.)