Engaging Families for High School Success

This website includes family engagement resources for district leaders, school teams and family members. The resources are focused specifically on helping districts and schools to improve their family engagement efforts during the critical transition to high school. The goal of these efforts is to improve high school student success rates.  A recorded 20 minute webinar, which you can access here, provides an overview to many of the resources on the website as it frames the issue of family engagement during the high school transition.

District Leader Resources

District leader resources include guidebooks and materials for conducting day-long workshop and shorter (90 minute) professional learning community sessions with school teams focused on planning and implementing family engagement activities. The mini-handbooks contain guidance about using the posted tools and may be most useful to consult first.

School Team Resources

School team materials include tools for planning, implementing, and evaluating their family engagement work (particularly focused on the transition from grade 8 to grade 9). The mini-handbooks contain guidance about using the posted tools and may be most useful to consult first.

Resources to Share with Families

Family resources include a Ninth Grade Family Toolkit, various communication tools, and interactive homework activities for 8th graders to complete with a family member about the transition to high school. The mini-handbooks for district leaders and school teams contain guidance about using the posted tools and may be most useful to consult first.

Resources for District Family Engagement Leaders

Resources developed for district family engagement leaders and posted here include mini-handbooks on building school leader capacity for family engagement, example slides for day-long family engagement workshops and 90 minute regional cluster meeting workshops for school teams, and associated materials for use by participants during these workshops.  You can also access a 20 minute recorded webinar (mentioned above) for an overview here.

See Resources for School Teams and Resources for Families to Find the Following:

• School Team Resources include templates and tools for planning, implementing, and evaluating family engagement activities

• Family resources include a Ninth Grade Family Toolkit, various communication tools, and interactive homework activities for 8th graders to complete with a family member about the transition to high school

School Team Resources

Resources developed for school family engagement team members and posted here include mini-handbooks on engaging families during the transition to high school, example slides for use in meetings with families about the transition to high school, and other materials for use by the school family engagement teams for planning, implementing, and evaluating their work. You can also access a 20 minute recorded webinar (mentioned above) for an overview here.

Resources to Share with Families

Family resources include a Ninth Grade Family Toolkit, various communication tools, and interactive homework activities for 8th graders and a family member about the transition to high school.  

Communication Tools

 APPs for smartphone

Go to APP Store and get free download of AKI KUROSE or GARFIELD HIGH SCHOOL as an example

Example postcards

High School Success | Attendance

Example refrigerator magnets

English | Spanish

Example Flyers (Powerpoint)

Interactive Activities for 8th Grade Families

Background on Interactive Homework Activities

Absences Add Up

Word File | PDF

Destination Graduation:

Stay in the Passing Lane

Word File | PDF

Gaining Powerful Advantage

with a Good GPA

Word File | PDF

Ready, Set, Go! On to High School

Word File | PDF

The development of these resources was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305H150081 to the Johns Hopkins University. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

Project Team Members:

Martha Abele Mac Iver, Steven Sheldon, Joyce Epstein, Douglas Mac Iver, and Eric Rice

Megumi Hine, Rachel Chappell, and Emily Clark 

We are thankful to Margo Siegenthaler and Adie Simmons as well as other district and school leaders from Seattle Public Schools for their collaboration in developing these materials.