National Congress of Parents and Teachers
Project Title
As a final grant for project support of the District Leader Family Engagement Clearinghouse
Date
Mar. 07, 2024
Duration
18 months
Description
Family engagement is a crucial instructional strategy that has been proven to improve student achievement. However, superintendents, chief academic officers, and school leaders often underestimate its importance. This grant will enable the National Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) to finalize a comprehensive database of evidence-based family engagement interventions that improve student outcomes. This database will serve as a useful tool for superintendents, school leaders, and chief academic officers to select evidence-based interventions that can support student learning. The National PTA will partner with the American Association of Superintendents to launch a pilot, refine the database, and collect data. They will also execute marketing plans to raise awareness of the database and its uses.
Website
Project Title
For project support of the District Leader Family Engagement Clearinghouse
Date
Mar. 09, 2023
Duration
15 months
Description
Decades of research shows that family engagement matters for student success, but despite the importance of family engagement, many schools struggle to prioritize and implement equitable and effective approaches that bring families and educators together in support of students’ learning and wellbeing. National Congress of Parents and Teachers (National PTA) sits at the intersection of school, home, and community, and is a trusted messenger to parents about critical issues affecting the success and safety of their children. A key part of PTA’s role is to both provide guidance on what effective family-school partnerships look like and to advocate for schools to follow that guidance as they make crucial decisions. With support from the Corporation, the PTA will build an online database that is a one-stop shop for district leaders to identify more evidence-based family engagement programs. This will be the first phase of a five-year plan to raise the awareness of family engagement amongst district leaders with “buying power” and make it easier for them to navigate the marketplace of providers offering family engagement programs and interventions.
Website
Project Title
For a project to update the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships
Date
Mar. 10, 2022
Duration
10 months
Description
Decades of research shows that family engagement matters for student success, but despite the importance of family engagement, many schools struggle to prioritize and implement equitable and effective approaches that bring families and educators together in support of students’ learning and wellbeing. National Congress of Parents and Teachers (National PTA) sits at the intersection of school, home and community, and is a trusted messenger to parents about critical issues affecting the success and safety of their children. A key part of PTA’s role is to both provide guidance on what effective family-school partnerships look like and to advocate for schools to follow that guidance as they make crucial decisions. With support from the Corporation, the PTA will update the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships (“the Standards”). The Standards have contributed to greater awareness and capacity for improving family-school partnerships. This proposed update will center the perspectives of families and educators, particularly from under-represented communities and identities, to shape the revisions and tools to maximize the usefulness of the Standards.
Website
Project Title
For project support of the home-school communication landscape analysis
Date
Mar. 04, 2021
Duration
12 months
Description
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools used a patchwork of technologies to communicate with their students’ families. Varied in form and function, these technologies enablefamilies to support their children’s learning at home and at school. From texting services to online portals and everything in between, home-school technologies can disseminate critical information to families, equip them with questions and learning extension ideas, and gather their perspectives on their child’s needs and progress. Unfortunately, as schools closed this spring and many students now learn via virtual or hybrid formats, many families – especially those from marginalized communities – have been out of reach or frustrated by their school’s technologies. With support from the Corporation, the National PTA will begin a long-term project starting with the development and dissemination of a landscape analysis on home-school communication technologies and report on how these models might improve andgo to scale.
Website
Project Title
For project support of season 2 and 3 of Notes from the Backpack: A PTA Podcast
Date
Jun. 04, 2020
Duration
9 months
Description
Although research shows that family engagement is a major factor in student success and school improvement, most public schools across the nation are missing out on this connection and still apply the same family engagement practices used many decades ago. Currently, the information-sharing about home-school partnerships is mostly geared towards educators rather than directly to families and given the school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this communication exchange is more important than ever. The National Parent Teacher Association (PTA), the largest child advocacy organization in the United Stateswith over 3.5 million members, established the Center for Family Engagement in 2018 to take a deliberate and focused approach to reimagine family engagement practices and policies for greater equity and effectiveness. ThePTA’s podcast, Notes from the Backpack, is one of the core tools for this approach. With Corporation support, the PTA will complete and disseminate thirteennew podcast episodes; develop and implement an audience analysis plan to gauge their listeners’ needs and develop a new strategic marketing plan to further reach their target audiences.