Publications

Practitioner Based Publications:

2015: Building Relationships Bridging Cultures: Cultural Brokering In Family Engagement	2015: Data Inquiry For Equitable Collaboration: The Case of Neighborhood House’s Data Carousel	2015: Users Guide for Road Map Family Engagement Survey: Data Inquiry For Equitable Collaboration
A comparative case study, this brief describes cultural brokers—individuals who acts as bridges between families and schools—and three promising strategies they used to engage families, especially those farthest from opportunities, in their children’s education: 1) parent capacity building; 2) culturally specific relationship building; and 3) systemic capacity building. We offer recommendations for cultural brokering strategies that build more reciprocal, collective, and relational family-school collaboration. Download»	In this brief, we describe one example of an inquiry process that engages a broad range of stakeholders in making sense of data to improve the work of an educational organization. We call this process data inquiry for equitable collaboration . Our research suggests that this model has potential to become a “next practice” for building more equitable collaboration between marginalized families, educators, formal leaders and community members. Download»	This user’s guide contains our newest version of the family engagement survey, a tool to measure family engagement from an equity perspective. This survey and user’s guide is the result of a two-year process of design and piloting in the Renton school district. It builds off of our previous work with CCER and the Road Map Project to define indicators of equitable parent engagement. Download»
2015: Families In The Driver’s Seat: Parent-Driven Lessons and Guidelines For Collective Engagement	2014: Charting A Course to Equitable Collaboration: Learning from parent engagement initiatives in the Road Map Project
The Kent Design Team—comprising parents, teachers, principals, district leaders, and researchers— met intensively during the winter, spring and summer of 2014 to create a culturally responsive, asset-based curriculum driven by the interests, priorities, and needs of Kent parents, families, and communities that can be adapted to and shared across the region. The process positioned parents as experts and agents in their own learning and in the collective work of school improvement.  Download»	We stand at a critical moment for understanding the potential of family engagement for addressing persistent educational inequities in our schools and communities. Decades of research suggest parent-family-school relations are pivotal to student success. The case study research reported here sought to understand how district-based and community-based parent engagement initiatives within a collective-impact effort seek to build the participation of parents/families, particularly those from low-income, marginalized communities, in education.  Download»

2014: Towards Equitable Parent-School Collaboration:  Developing Common Parent Engagement Indicators (WhitePaper)	2011: A match on dry grass: Education organizing in Alum Rock	2013: From heroes to organizers: Principals and education organizing in urban school reform
The indicators component of the Equitable Parent-School Collaboration Research Project entails the collaborative development of common parent engagement indicators. The development of common parent engagement indicators supports the Road Map Project’s emphasis on the aligned use of data to encourage strategic action and drive improvement. Download»	In this chapter we discuss how PACT (People Acting In Community Together) organizers and leaders engaged parents and people of faith in the Alum Rock school district. Through intense one-to-one listening and relationship building PACT organizers supported the transformation of parents into school leaders.  Download»	Educational leadership is key to addressing the persistent ineq- uities in low-income urban schools, but most principals struggle to work with parents and communities around those schools to create socially just learning environments. This article describes the conditions and experiences that enabled principals to share leadership with teachers and low-income Latino parents to improve student learning. Download»
2014: When new relationships meet old narratives: The journey towards improving parent-school relations in a district-community organizing collaboration	2014: Rewriting the rules of engagement:Elaborating a model of district-community organizing collaboration
The aim of this study was to examine whether district-level organizing efforts might be associated with improved parent-school relations in schools and how such efforts to build a new relationship may be enacted and negotiated at the school level within the context of a district-organizing group collaboration in a “new immigrant” destination.  Download»	In this ethnographic case study, Ann M. Ishimaru examines how a collaboration emerged and evolved between a low-income Latino parent organizing group and the leadership of a rapidly changing school district. Using civic capacity and community organizing theories, Ishimaru seeks to understand the role of parents, goals, strate- gies, and change processes that characterize a school district’s collaboration with a community-based organization.  Download»