Featured Report

"Engaged Families, Effective Pre-K: State Policies that Bolster Student Success"

Family members are a child’s first and most important teachers. A new report from Pre-K Now, written by Deborah Stark, identifies policies that can enhance family engagement in state pre-k and highlights examples from states that are leading the way.

As policy makers across the country seek cost-effective strategies to improve pre-k quality and close achievement gaps, they should look to family engagement as a core component of those efforts. By involving parents, grandparents and other caregivers, pre-kindergarten programs can build essential relationships that enhance children’s learning at home and at school, promote supportive, effective parenting and build a lifelong partnership between families and the education system.

Meaningful family engagement that maximizes these effects is a vital element of the quality of any pre-k program. Key strategies include:

• parent-teacher conferences,
• home visits,
• parenting and child-development training for family members, and
• connection to other family support services available in the community.

Additionally, family engagement programs must ensure efforts to respect the linguistic and cultural diversity of the populations they serve.