Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.

Cooperation between colleges and schools is considered in seven chapters. Attention is directed to academic standards, accelerating students, teacher preparation, experiments in transition, minorities, and special models. The analysis is intended to illustrate the great diversity of partnership activities in progress. In an introduction by Ernest L. Boyer, conclusions of the publication are identified as follows: high schools and colleges should cooperate to determine the content and specific skills considered essential for college entrance; students should be free to move at their own pace to make the transition from school to college; programs for beginning and senior teachers should be collaboratively developed by colleges and schools; experimental transition schools should be established that combine the school-college years and avoid curricular overlap and duplication; collaboration is required to identify disadvantaged students at an early age and to provide the assistance they require as they move from school to college; and colleges and universities should establish a partnership with one or more school districts to provide educational and cultural enrichment as determined by principals and teachers at the schools. (SW)

Unusual because they involve students above the primary level, the programs described in this report are designed to involve parents more fully in the education of their children. Presented are 28 programs in grades 4-12 initiated by school systems in large cities and operating during the 1980-81 school year. Information about the programs was gathered through telephone conversations and through visits to seven programs. School systems were asked to provide information on programs that might help parents act in educational capacities, such as home tutors, monitors of homework and attendance, or guides for their children in the use of community educational resources. A general discussion section highlights salient features from all programs, promising practices, components of a comprehensive program, and strategies for program development. The 28 program profiles include program objectives, major activities, staffing, target populations, funding, evaluations, materials available, and the name of a contact person. The seven in-depth reports resulting from site visits cover each program's objectives, rationale, development, operation, cost and personnel information, supporting and inhibiting factors, evidence of success, and other areas. A table classifying the main characteristics of each program assists readers in locating programs of interest. (Author/JM)