Funding and Collegial Support

My work at Johns Hopkins University has been funded over the years by various governmental agencies, including the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) and its predecessor, the National Institute of Education (NIE) in the U.S. Department of Education, and by a recent five-year grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). At Johns Hopkins, my program on family and community involvement has been housed at the Center for Social Organization of Schools (CSOS) in centers that changed names with each new governmental grant, including the Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools (CREMS); Center for Research on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged Students (CDS); Center on Families, Communities, Schools, and Children’s Learning; and Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR). To give research on partnerships a permanent home, I established the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships within CSOS in 1995.

Grants from the Lilly Endowment, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Leon Lowenstein Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts, Disney Learning Partnership, Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds, and MetLife Foundation also supported my research and development projects. Over the years, many funders became colleagues in helping me think about needed directions for school, family, and community partnerships. They included Oliver Moles and Ron Pedone at OERI; Joan Lipsitz, Gayle Dorman, and Kent McGuire at Lilly; John Van Gorder at Lowenstein; Hayes Mizell at the Clark Foundation; Jane Quinn and Catherine Pino at Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds; Laurie Lang, Tony Jackson, and Pamela Rubin at Disney Learning Partnership; and Rick Love at MetLife Foundation. I value their ideas and support.

Special thanks are due to educational leaders in Baltimore who supported, assisted, and inspired me for many years. They included Jerry Baum, who directed the Fund for Educational Excellence and who was a partner in fieldwork for nearly 10 years; Lucretia Coates, the first facilitator for school, family, and community partnerships in the Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS), whose deep knowledge about schools and families continues to influence this work; and Vivian Jackson, who assisted middle schools for several years in implementing interactive homework. Other talented facilitators for school, family, and community partnerships worked with more than 160 elementary, middle, and high schools in Baltimore City to learn how leadership on partnerships could, in fact, be organized in a large, urban school district and how all schools in nine areas could organize teams of educators, family members, and community partners to plan and implement effective partnership programs. They included (by history of participation) Marsha Powell-Johnson, Paula Williams, Brenda G. Thomas, Joyce Bowyer, Marsha Greenfeld, Patricia Kidd-Ryce, Joann E. Brown, Sandra E. Morgan, and Anjali Patel. Their knowledge and talents helped many schools turn research into action and helped me learn about the real world of district leadership and school-based program development.

Other district leaders in Baltimore supported the work of their facilitators and schools in developing programs of partnership. They included (by history of participation) Gary L. Thrift, Clifton Ball, Cynthia Janssen, Christolyne Buie, Charlene Cooper Boston, Sandra L. Wighton, Ellen D. Gonzales, Anne Carusi, Jeffrey Grotsky, Barry Williams, Patricia E. Abernathy, Cecil Ramsey, Irby Miller, and Carole Seubert. These area superintendents and other administrators taught me valuable lessons about how different district leadership styles contributed to improving schools’ connections with families and communities.

Several local foundations in Baltimore also supported fieldwork conducted with my community-based partner, the Fund for Educational Excellence. I owe a great debt to the Fund and to BCPS for making it possible to systematically gather ideas and data from countless teachers, principals, parents, other family members, and students. Baltimore was a “learning laboratory” for school, family, and community partnerships for more than a decade and helped identify the challenges and possibilities for organizing district programs of school, family, and community partnerships in elementary, middle, and high schools. Knowledge gained in BCPS contributed to the development of NNPS and underlies many of the processes that are used, now, in districts and schools across the country.

At this writing, the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS) at Johns Hopkins University has grown to include about 1,200 schools and 150 school districts located in more than 35 states, as well as 21 state departments of education and over 50 organizations that work with schools and districts on partnerships. I am grateful to thousands of teachers, administrators, parents, and students who have worked with me and my colleagues over the years. They showed that with skill and will it is possible to develop programs that engage all families in ways that help students succeed in school. Their trials, tribulations, and triumphs contributed to the practical approaches that are included in this volume.

Many colleagues and students at Johns Hopkins University worked with me on studies in this volume and on countless other publications that are referenced here. I am indebted to all of them, especially Henry Jay Becker, who met the challenge in 1981 to start our research program with a survey of educators and parents. His creative work and collaborative spirit helped generate many questions for the studies that followed. Other valued research partners at Hopkins included Susan L. Dauber, Susan C. Herrick, Seyong Lee, Lori Connors-Tadros, and many other helpful graduate and undergraduate students.

Colleagues who worked with me from 1990 to 1995 in the Center on Families, Communities, Schools, and Children’s Learning included codirector Don Davies and researchers Carole Ames, Josephine Bright, Melvin Delgado, Larry Dolan, Charles Glenn, Nitza Hidalgo, Vivian Johnson, Sharon Lynn Kagan, Colleen Morisset, Saundra Nettles, Diane Scott Jones, Sau-Fong Siu, and the late Susan M. Swap. These researchers conducted many studies that deepened an understanding of the scope of school, family, and community partnerships from birth through high school. Their work and that of many other researchers cited throughout this volume influenced my thinking about the content of courses to prepare teachers, administrators, social workers, school psychologists, sociologists of education, and other education professionals to understand and conduct school, family, and community partnerships.

Ongoing Research and Development

Special thanks are due to my colleagues at the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships, currently including researchers Mavis G. Sanders, Steven B. Sheldon, and Frances Van Voorhis; facilitators Marsha Greenfeld, Darcy Hutchins, Brenda Thomas, and Jenn Ganss; and, in recent years, Claudia Galindo, Natalie Rodriguez Jansorn, Cecelia S. Martin, Mary G. Nesbitt, Karen Clark Salinas, Beth S. Simon, and Kenyatta Williams. The work we did together influenced the topics, discussions, and activities in chapters throughout this volume and new research underway.

Other longtime colleagues and valued friends at Johns Hopkins University supported and encouraged my work for many years, including James M. McPartland, Edward L. McDill, and the late John H. Hollifield. All of the researchers and facilitators at CSOS are working to show that social and educational research can help educators improve schools for all students and benefit families and communities.

I am convinced that researchers learn most about schools by collaborating with educators, parents, students, and others who implement programs, evaluate their efforts, and report their results. All that we know or ever will learn about school, family, and community partnerships depends on researchers, educators, families, students, and others sharing the role of expert. All of my projects, publications, presentations, and collaborations with other researchers, educators, parents, and others have been a true delight, making thirty years seem like a very short time indeed.

My family’s interest in my work has been most appreciated, including my late parents’ unconditional support and my sisters’ ongoing encouragement. My son Paul’s experiences in school literally brought my theories and research to life. He showed how important it was for his mom and dad to be positively involved in his education and how crucial it is for every child—all students—to be the focus of school, family, and community partnerships. Now Paul and daughter-in-law Adrienn continue to support my work that is built on family history.

What Is New in the Second Edition?

A direction-shaping survey that Mavis Sanders and I conducted asked over 160 deans and other leaders in colleges of education across the country how well their institutions prepared future teachers and administrators to involve families and communities in children’s education. Their responses revealed a dramatic gap between their belief that family and community involvement is a very important topic for future teachers and administrators to master and their honest reports that their graduates were unprepared to conduct effective programs of school, family, and community partnerships. Those data inspired the completion of the first edition of this book as one way to help new teachers and administrators begin their professional lives with a better understanding of useful approaches to family and community involvement.

Some progress has been made since the publication of the first edition of this book. Research on partnerships has improved each year, as more and better studies using ever more rigorous methods are completed. Inservice education has increased to help practicing educators improve their plans and partnership programs. And there are more preservice and advanced education courses on partnership program development—but not enough. Most new teachers and administrators are inadequately prepared to work effectively with all students’ families in communities across the country.

At the end of the first edition of this book, published in 2001, I noted: “Today’s students are tomorrow’s parents. They are witnessing and experiencing how their schools treat their families and how their families treat the schools. They are learning by example how parents are involved at school and at home in their education.”

Some who were middle and high school students in 2001 now are reading this book—preparing to be teachers! They need to know how to engage their future students’ families and communities in productive ways. In this edition, some readings, comments, and activities were retained from the first edition to ensure that future teachers, administrators, and researchers of school, family, and community partnerships understand the history and development of this field of study. Other sections are “new and improved” to share the progress that has been made in research, policies, and practical programs of family and community involvement.

• New readings include a literature review that discusses new directions for partnership program development; a summary of research on homework; and new approaches to district-level leadership, state-level leadership, and policies on family and community involvement.

• Comments, discussion topics, activities, references, and projects were added and updated to enable future teachers and administrators to “think new” about and delve deeper into many aspects of school, family, and community partnerships.

The new edition of this book aims to encourage more professors of education, sociology, psychology, and related fields to incorporate topics covered across chapters in required courses that will prepare the next generation of education professionals to understand and implement programs and practices of family and community involvement to increase student success in school.

Joyce Levy Epstein
Baltimore, October 2010