Journeys in Family School Engagement

In early 2021, Parents as Allies (PAA) began a journey of collaborating with school teams in a design sprint process to develop creative and innovative solutions, or “hacks” that would address the specific needs of their communities. Their initial, two-month design sprint in 2021 centred around the question: “How might we build stronger engagement between families and schools for the benefit of all students?” Almost one year later, in April 2022, PAA began a second iteration. Parents as Allies 2.0 narrowed its focus to 22 Western Pennsylvania school districts. Joined by design sprint guides, the participating school districts’ Design Teams started with empathy interviews as the main source of inspiration to co-develop the hacks aimed at increasing and strengthening family-school engagement. Following human-centred design structure, the 22 districts participating in the initiative documented their learning journeys, from their practice mini-hacks, to fall and spring hacks and onto the new future of Family School Engagement (FSE) outlined in their sustainability plans.

Bryk, Anthony S. “Organizing Schools for Improvement.” Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 91, Issue 7, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171009100705.

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. “Schools.” Pennsylvania Department of Education: 2023. https://www.education.pa.gov/Pages/default.aspx

Guzman, Gloria and Melissa Kollar. “Income in the United States: 2022. United States Census Bureau: September 12, 2023. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html#:~:text=Real%20median%20household%20income%20was,and%20Table%20A%2D1).

Institution of Education Science. “National Center for Education Statistics.” Accessed September 2023. https://www.nces.ed.gov.

Juris Magazine. “Local Real Estate Based Taxes as the Primary Means of Public-School Funding: The System that Fuels Education Inequality in Pennsylvania.” June 1, 2021. https://sites.law.duq.edu/juris/2021/06/01/local-real-estate-based-taxes-as-the-primary-means-of-public-schoolfunding-the-system-that-fuels-education-inequality-in-pennsylvania/.

Koop, Avery. “UNITED STATES: The one chart you need to understand how income is distributed in the US.” World Economic Forum. July 6, 2022. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/household-income-distribution-wealth-inequality-united-states/.

“Living in Allegheny County,” 2023. Accessed September 5, 2023. https://www.alleghenycounty.us/live/index.aspx.

Mapp, Karen L. “Essential Conditions: Process Conditions.” Accessed November 2023. https://www.dualcapacity.org/framework-in-depth/essential-conditions.

Mapp, Karen L. and Eyal Bergman. “The Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships (Version 2),” 2019. https://www.dualcapacity.org.

Pennsylvania School Boards Association. “Pennsylvania State of Education Report 2023.” PDF file. Pennsylvania: 2023. https://www.psba.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2023-State-ofEducation-report.pdf.

“Uncommon Measures.” Vimeo video, 3:43. Posted by School Retool. February 11, 2015. https://vimeo.com/119362803.

United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey.” Accessed November, 2023. https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat03.htm.

United States Census Bureau. “Quick Facts: Allegheny County.” Accessed September 5, 2023. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/alleghenycountypennsylvania/PST045222.

“What is Human-centered Design?” Schools2023, accessed October 3, 2023, https://schools2030.org/hcd.

Winthrop, Rebecca, Adam Barton, Mahsa Ershadi, and Lauren Ziegler. “Collaborating to transform and improve education systems: A playbook for family-school engagement.” PDF file. Brookings, 2021. http://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Family_School_Engagement_Playbook_FINAL.pdf.

Yu-Ling Chen and Linda Krynski. Interview by Lauren Ziegler, August 2023. Transcript.