SEDL and the U.S. Department of Education are proud to present Partners in Education: A Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family–School Partnerships, a new family and community engagement resource for educators.

Partners in Education: A Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family–School Partnerships
Written by family and community engagement experts Karen L. Mapp and Paul J. Kuttner, Partners in Education addresses an important challenge for educators: principals and teachers report that they value relationships with families, yet they receive little training for engaging families and say that they feel underprepared to develop these partnerships. Mapp and Kuttner outline a framework that focuses on helping both educators and family members develop the necessary skills, knowledge, confidence, and belief systems—the collective capacity—to sustain these important home–school relationships.

The Dual Capacity-Building Framework was developed in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education and is intended to serve as a scaffold for educators and policy makers planning new engagement initiatives and as a tool for facilitating dialogue among the varied stakeholders involved in these efforts. The framework

• Outlines the challenges that stakeholders must address to cultivate effective home–school partnerships;
• Explains the conditions that are integral to the success of family–school partnership initiatives and interventions;
• Identifies the desired intermediate capacity goals that should be the focus of family engagement policies and programs at the federal, state, and local level; and
• Describes the capacity-building outcomes for school and program staff as well as for families.

The publication also includes three case studies, featuring a school, a district, and a county whose efforts to develop capacity around effective family–school partnerships embody the Dual Capacity-Building Framework.