March 2007 Announcement

Dear FINE Member,

Here are this month's FINE member updates. Please feel free to forward this information to your friends and other education colleagues.

Last month, as part of our longstanding commitment to using evidence to build the family involvement field, we shared new resources with implications for practice and policy. This month, we announce our involvement in a new effort to support and build the evidence base for family involvement practice and policy at the federal level: Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP) is collaborating with the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) to serve as the National Coordination Center for the Parental Information and Resource Centers (PIRC) program.

The national PIRC program provides federal funds to 60 centers in states across the country, working to implement successful parental involvement policies, programs, and activities. As part of the Coordination Center, HFRP is providing technical assistance and support to the PIRCs on a variety of topics, including evaluation strategies and approaches.

We are excited about the synergy between our work with the PIRCs and FINE, and we look forward to our audiences informing each other as they continue to build the family involvement field. In the spirit of learning, this month's announcement includes new research-based resources, including the latest FINE bibliography, to support your evidence-based practice.

New From FINE

New Bibliographies: Current Family Involvement Research
Our bibliography of family involvement research published in 2006 is now available online. We have also updated our bibliography of 2005 publications. These two years enjoyed a significant and exciting increase in scholarly output in family involvement. All eight annual FINE bibliographies on our website include journal articles, dissertations and theses, books and book chapters, reports, research briefs, and papers.

Research Brief: Lessons From Family-Strengthening Interventions: Learning From Evidence-Based Practice
In this research brief, we review family-strengthening interventions that have been rigorously evaluated through experimental studies and finds some common elements among programs that worked. We invite you to take another look at the brief—which we first released in October 2006—to see recommendations for creating successful programs and evaluations.

New From HFRP

Upcoming Event: HFRP Symposium at the AERA Annual Meeting
Harvard Family Research Project has organized a symposium session at America Educational Research Association's (AERA) 2007 Annual Meeting in Chicago. The symposium, "Family Involvement Interventions: Shining the Spotlight on Evaluation," will take place on Tuesday, April 10, 12:25 a.m.-1:55 p.m. at the Marriott Chicago Downtown, Denver Room, Fifth Floor. HFRP director Heather Weiss will chair the session. Panelists include Lynn McDonald (FAST), Chad Nye (University of Central Florida), Dana Peterson (SRI), Margaret Caspe (HFRP), and James Rodriguez (San Diego State University). You can find general information about the conference at the link above.
New Evaluation Exchange on Advocacy and Policy Change
Advocacy that influences or informs public policy has the potential to achieve large-scale results for individuals, families, and communities. Consequently, there is much interest in understanding how to make advocacy and policy change efforts more effective. While previously relegated as “too hard to measure,” advocacy evaluation has become a burgeoning field. This 32-page issue of The Evaluation Exchange helps to build this new field by defining the developments that are shaping it and showing how enterprising evaluators, nonprofits, and funders are tackling the advocacy evaluation challenge.

Guides and Tool Kits

Parental Use of Child Care: A Guide for Constructing Parent Surveys
This guide by the Oregon Child Care Research Partnership offers directions for constructing surveys to collect information on the ways that parents use child care.
Working Together: School–Family–Community Partnerships
Created by The Center for the Education and Study of Diverse Populations (CESDP) at New Mexico Highlands University, this tool kit is based on the National PTA’s standards for parent and community involvement programs and is designed to support the development of school, family and community partnerships. The tool kit is divided into three sections: teacher, family, and professional development tools.

Policy

“Getting Ruby a Quality Public Education: Forty-Two Years of Building the Demand for Quality Public Schools Through Parental and Public Involvement”
Arnold Fege from Public Education Network writes about the importance of parental and public engagement for sustaining equity in public education. In a special issue of the Harvard Education Review on assessing No Child Left Behind, he traces the history of engagement from 1954 through 2001.
Immigration and Child and Family Policy
This report, prepared by Randy Capps and Karina Fortuny for The Urban Institute and Child Trends, assesses how the changing demographics of the low-income child population are affecting child and family policies in the United States.

Articles & Reports

Choosing Schools, Building Communities? The Effect of Schools of Choice on Parent Involvement
Based on data from the National Household Education Surveys Program, this paper by Jack Buckley at The National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Columbia University Teachers College demonstrates the complex effect of schools of choice on parent involvement behavior.
The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent–Child Bonds
This report, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, highlights the importance of play in children's development and offers guidelines on how pediatricians can advocate for children by helping families, school systems, and communities to promote play in children's lives.
Involving Refugee Parents in Their Children’s Education
Bridging Refugee Youth and Children's Services offers research-based tips and resources for how to involve refugee parents in activities at school.

Contact Us

If you experience a problem reading this newsletter or have questions and comments concerning our work, we would love to hear from you. Please send an email to fine@gse.harvard.edu.

Enjoy!

The FINE Team at Harvard Family Research Project

^ Back to top