The Right Question School-Family Partnership Strategy is a pathway for educators and parents to work more effectively with each other – to improve communication, increase parental participation, nurture engagement, and engender better partnerships.
From a school perspective, the strategy is a flexible tool that can be implemented immediately into existing work with parents and families. It does not require additional staff or administration. It can be easily integrated into activities schools are already doing: teachers meeting one-on-one with parents; school counselors or parent liaisons interacting with small groups of parents; Title I staff engaging more families more effectively; staff working with parents during individualized education program (IEP) meetings; and administrators at the school or district level communicating and collaborating more effectively with families
Parents exposed to these strategies explore three key roles to play – to support, monitor, and advocate for their child’s education. They become better able to generate their own questions, improve those questions, and strategize on how to use them, as they examine ways to participate more effectively in decisions.
The broader vision for the school-family partnership strategy is to help foster an environment where schools and families come together to best support children’s education, where parents and guardians ask questions to actively participate in decisions that affect their children, and where educators work with parents to build fundamental skills for working together.