“My advice is that we see our families and community members as co-creators and co-producers of the excellent schools and learning opportunities that we want for all of our students.”

• Decades of research have found that what the family does is more important to student success than family income or education. This is true regardless of family income, parental education levels, or student age (multiple studies: Coleman 1966; Epstein 1991a; Stevenson & Baker 1987; de Kanter, Ginsburg, & Milne 1986; Henderson & Berla 1994; Keith & Keith 1993; Liontos 1992; Walberg, n.d.).

• Teacher-family communication is linked to better homework completion, attention during instructional tasks, and class participation rates, as well as improved teacher-student interactions and student motivation (Kraft & Dougherty, 2012).

• Students whose families help them make connections between their current school performance and their long-term goals have higher achievement levels in secondary school (Hill & Tyson, 2009).

• Family involvement is proven to increase children’s positive feelings about literacy, which in turn improves their literacy performance. In other words, children start feeling better about literacy and like literacy more when their parents are involved in their education (Weiss, 2008).

• Whereas previous early literacy research emphasized the importance of daily adult/child reading time and things like having 100 or more books in the home, recent research suggests that reading as a stand-alone activity will not help children with pre-literacy skills and that children need literacy skill-building activities in addition to reading (Phillips et al., 2008; Roberts, Jurgens, & Burchinal, M., 2005).

• According to a 2018 study, families would like communication that is:

  • Conveniently pushed directly to them,

  • Timely, pithy, and focused on what’s most important, and

  • Visual, including video and social media communication (Blackboard, 2018).