Engage families and communities through literacy events, mentoring programs, and take-home learning resources. We'll help equip your team with new and impactful ways to invite families into their child’s learning.
Family, School, and Community Engagement
Teamwork Makes the Education
Dream Work
Family Engagement Is an Instructional
Strategy
Establishing effective practices for high-impact family, school, and community engagement is a key instructional strategy for the most successful districts and Scholastic has proudly partnered with many of them. Our shared approach to this work centers on four research-backed practices:
DEVELOP
strong connections with families to boost student achievement
EMPOWER
families with resources, knowledge, and confidence
ENGAGE
all students and their families with welcoming learning environments
PARTNER
with communities to offer literacy instruction and support
Undeniable Outcomes
The positive impact of effective family and community engagement has been proven by decades of research, recent case studies, and every educator’s firsthand experience. Students with involved families and communities:
- Get better grades and score higher on standardized tests
- Have better attendance records and are less likely to drop out
- Have more positive attitudes about schoolwork and homework
Renowned Researchers.
Revered Practitioners.
We partner with some of the most respected researchers and practitioners in family, school, and community engagement. These innovative thought leaders and passionate educators apply their research findings and experience to our programs, services, and professional books—equipping our schools and districts with proven strategies to drive real outcomes.
Karen Mapp, Ed.D
Author, Researcher, Educator, Family, School, and Community Engagement Expert
Anne T. Henderson
Founder of and Senior Consultant for the National Association for Family, School and Community Engagement (NAFSCE)
Jacqueline L. Sanderlin, Ed.D
Educator, Author, Speaker, Expert in Developing Meaningful Community Connections
Christian Adair, M.Ed.
Education and Community Engagement Practitioner and Consultant
Linda C. Mayes, M.D
Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology; Chair of the Yale Child Study Center
Don Vu, Ed.D.
Educator, Administrator, and Author
Solutions and services for at home, in school, and with the community
Our solutions and services are created to help districts build powerful and effective family, school, and community engagement habits, not moments. We integrate effective practices with the research-backed tools needed to develop your teams, empower your families, engage and welcome all students, and build meaningful community partnerships.
Create a Welcoming School Environment
Elevate Cultural Responsiveness
Grades K–5
Bring authentic culturally relevant texts into your classrooms—so every child can see themselves in the books they read and celebrate the experiences of others.
Enhance Classroom Libraries
Grades K–8
Meet the needs and interests of all students with these engaging and relevant book collections. They’re the ultimate foundation for every classroom library!
Diversify Your Decodables
Grades K–5
Celebrate diverse voices and elevate foundational skills with culturally relevant decodable texts and meaningful phonics practice.
Foster Life Skills
Grades PreK–5
Nurture life skills and well-being with this empowering classroom library featuring take-home books for every student.
Empower Your Families
Make Reading a Daily Habit
Grades K–5
Encourage students to read more with take-home books they can connect with personally.
Make Reading a Daily Habit
Grades K–5
Encourage students to read more with take-home books they can connect with personally.
Get Kindergarten Ready
Grades PreK–K
Send-home books and activities help families build foundational reading and well-being skills before their child's first day of school.
Partner with Your Community
Celebrate Every Family
Grades PreK–3 / Ages 0–9
Empower families to support literacy growth at home with training events that celebrate their cultures and respect their time.
Provide Reading Mentor
Grades K–8
Recruit and equip mentors from your community to support students' academic success and make a lasting impact on their lives.
Support Classroom Learning
Grades PreK–5
Developed with Dr. Karen Mapp, these 90-minute events empower families to extend learning at home with innovative reading and writing activities.
Develop Your Team
Our professional books provide practical strategies and actionable best practices for cultivating strong family, school, and community connections.
Consultative Planning and Coaching Implementation
Our consultative specialists collaborate with your leadership to establish systemic practices that embed family engagement as a core component of your instructional strategy.
Our coaching teams then partner with staff to develop progress-monitoring tools specific to your goals, tracking participation and providing guidance to help optimize impact along the way.
Dr. Karen L. Mapp Family and Community Engagement Workshop Series
3 full days | In-Person
The Dr. Karen L. Mapp Workshop series focuses on training a team with voices from leadership, instruction, home, and the community. The team will explore family engagement core beliefs, review current practices, and implement a plan for aligning family engagement strategies to academic outcomes.
Family Engagement Assessment
Multi-Day Visit | Virtual or In-Person
The Family Engagement Assessment (FEA) is a process that measures a school’s capacity for developing effective home-school partnerships and recommends solutions for enriching and prioritizing family engagement practices.
Increasing Student Attendance through Effective Home-School Partnership Practices
Six-Hour Session | Virtual or In-Person
Creating a culture of attendance begins by engaging students and families positively, establishing trust, and creating a sense of belonging. Address chronic absenteeism using data to better understand attendance barriers that families face and implement a tiered system of family support.
Effective Practices to Welcome All Families
Six-Hour Session | Virtual or In-Person
Families say that feeling welcome and being treated with respect by school staff is the key to feeling connected to the school. In this session we’ll explore how to welcome families into your school and have dialogue that empowers them to become active participants in their children’s education.
Foundations of Family Engagement
Six-Hour Session | Virtual or In-Person
Build your staff’s ability to implement effective family engagement efforts while advocating for the impact of family engagement on student learning. Identify the five process conditions that must be addressed in every family engagement activity.
Foundations and Impact
Research informs everything that we do. We build on research-based evidence and then measure what we’ve built to ensure our solutions are effective. That way our partners have the knowledge and assurance they need when curating programs for their schools and districts.
Research Library
Scholastic R.E.A.L. Foundation Paper
Learn how R.E.A.L. incorporates evidence-based practices to improve students’ relationship with reading through interactive read-alouds, modeling by adults, and increased family engagement.
Home Libraries Topic Paper
Details the importance of creating a literacy-rich home environment for all children and outlines the essential components of a student home library.
Empowering Students and Families to Address Summer Reading Loss
This case study examines the impact of summer initiatives on student reading scores as well as student and family attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors toward reading.
Fresh Takes on Family, School, and Community Engagement
Explore these additional articles and videos from our partners and colleagues.
Bridging Family and Community Partners to Propel Student Achievement
by Christian Adair, Tina Hike-Hubbard, and Dwaine Millard
Reducing Chronic Absenteeism by Strengthening Family-School Partnerships
by Dr. Nea Hearn, and Jenni Brasington
