Family Engagement in Curriculum

Family engagement, or the myriad ways in which parents support their children’s education, is a multidimensional construct that encompasses parents’ activities at home, at school, and in the community. Family engagement has been linked to both academic and social-emotional outcomes for students across grade level, racial/ethnic group, and community type. Moreover, benefits of family engagement during the preschool and early elementary school years appear to have long-lasting effects, linking to positive outcomes in high school and early adulthood. Research suggests that promoting positive family engagement early in children’s education might help address achievement disparities between low- and middle-income children and between dominant and nondominant ethnic groups. For this reason, programs like Head Start, the largest federally funded early childhood intervention program serving low-income, ethnically and ...