Empower families to partner and advocate for high-impact tutoring

Empowering families to advocate for high-impact tutoring begins with early and meaningful collaboration. Engage families from the very start, involving them in planning and program design. However, districts can cultivate authentic partnerships, grounded in trust and a deep understanding of families' experiences at any point in the process. Effective programs maintain continuous engagement with families, actively soliciting their input and providing the necessary support to strengthen their advocacy efforts. Below, we share insights gathered from family focus groups, along with tailored recommendations to address their concerns.

What we heard from families 

• Families and caregivers would like to partner with districts early, beginning with the planning and design of your high-impact tutoring program. 
• It is never too late to begin authentic partnerships. Even if they were not part of the original design process, families and caregivers are interested in being involved throughout the year.
• Families suggest building their trust by dedicating time to learn more about their experiences. 
• Once an advocacy or partnership idea has been co-designed, school districts, schools, and tutoring programs can provide the resources necessary to empower families in these efforts. For example, Innovate Public Schools collaborated with parents to produce this report describing high-impact tutoring.
• Families sometimes work with local parent leadership and advocacy organizations to advocate for and find opportunities for students to participate in high-impact tutoring.
• When district or school leadership changes, parents/caregivers and parent/caregiver leaders sometimes have trouble maintaining their relationships and continuing advocacy efforts.

Recommendations to empower families 

• Ensure families feel welcome, heard, and seen by collecting, valuing, and acting upon their input early in the process. This kind of two-way meaningful partnership builds trust between families and schools. Reflect on your district’s current practices for engaging families and identify areas of strength or improvement that can help or hinder your roll out of your high-impact tutoring initiative. These reflections can inform the input you seek and how you act upon this input to continue to build trust with families whose students are participating in high-impact tutoring.  
• Leverage existing structures, such as your district’s office of family engagement or your school-based family ambassadors, to partner with families on your high-impact tutoring initiative. Leaders working in these spaces have expertise and experience in developing strong relationships with families, offering valuable insights to learn from. Existing city government partnerships can also serve as supportive connections for family partnership. 
• Develop a plan to engage families in high-impact tutoring throughout the school year considering your goals, activities, and who will lead these efforts from the district side. Refer to existing family engagement plans your district has used in the past for ideas as well as these communications templates for suggestions of activities and moments during the year to engage.
• When developing a task force or working group to design or revise your high-impact tutoring program, make sure families have a “seat at the table.” In other words, partner with parent leaders and family engagement organizations to identify family representatives for the task force or working group. Provide adequate time for representatives to work with the families they represent throughout the task force or working group meetings. If possible, consider compensating families for their time.
• Ask families for regular feedback about their child’s experience in high-impact tutoring. Address family needs and seek feedback on your proposed solutions. 
• Keep parent and family communities apprised of any leadership or key personnel changes, and offer opportunities for new staff to engage with the parents/caregivers in a timely manner.

Opportunities for Engagement

Consider hosting formal and informal gatherings with families to understand their thoughts and ideas about academic student supports and their willingness to provide support, including how to advocate for and support high-impact tutoring efforts.

• Programming Input:
  • Include parents and/or parent leaders on the task force or working group that is designing or revising the tutoring program. 
  • Establish a family advisory group for your high-impact tutoring program - or incorporate the topic into an existing family advisory group, if one already exists - to maintain regular partnership with parents and/or parent leaders. 
  • When schools and/or district leaders have budget meetings, invite families to provide input into how high-impact tutoring is being funded. If families need additional context to offer informed input, share information through pre-meetings and communications. 
• Programming Support: 
  • When or if district/school leadership changes, engage fellow parents in establishing connections, including to support high-impact tutoring in your district and/or school. 
  • When or if district/school leadership changes, engage fellow parents in establishing connections, including to support high-impact tutoring in your district and/or school.
• Direct Service Support: 
  • Host 1:1s with families and tutoring program staff (i.e., program managers instead of individual tutors) before or after school to check in and get feedback on the program. Use the time to ask families how they would like to engage and design engagement strategies around what families say is most important to them. 
  • Hold community events such as BBQs, pickup basketball games or coffee and bagels to provide an open space to build rapport with families and to hear directly from families about their ideas for high-impact tutoring advocacy efforts.

Opportunities for parent partnership can and should extend beyond seeking feedback on programming led by others. Parents have a wealth of knowledge, skills, and resources that can contribute substantially to your high-impact tutoring program. These are some of the examples we’ve seen in the field: 

• Serve as leaders in the work: Parents are able to help spread the word about tutoring opportunities. Be sure to start by meeting to understand how parents would be able to support instead of just requesting their support without co-development. 
• Serve as paid tutors: Several organizations, such as the Oakland REACH, have developed parent partnerships to train and support parents to be tutors for a specific program. This opportunity should come with adequate and equitable compensation. 
• Help find tutor applicants through community connections: In addition to asking families if they’re interested in serving as tutors themselves, parents can also help find additional community members to serve as tutors. Be sure to start by meeting to understand how parents would lead these efforts instead of requesting their support without co-development. 

Communications to empower families

We know that district leaders have full schedules and that taking the time to craft communications to families takes time. To support districts in implementing the recommendations and opportunities outlined above, we developed communications templates with sample emails, flyers, meeting agendas, etc. The language in these templates is crafted based on conversations with families, particularly around the definition of high-impact tutoring, and is written in a way that is open and inviting to families to help build trusting, authentic partnership. Explore these communications templates that support the goal of empowering families to partner and advocate for high-impact tutoring.

Additional Resources

• Visit the Family and Caregiver Toolkit for language and resources co-created with families for Partnering and Advocating. 
• Encourage families to use these questions throughout their child’s tutoring program. 
• Consider these suggestions for continual communication with families about high-impact tutoring. 
• Read about how some district leaders have developed a team approach - including families - to help their tutoring programs succeed. 
• Use this survey to get feedback from families about their child’s tutoring experience.
• Review the Dual Capacity Framework, one of the most frequently cited family engagement frameworks used by U.S. school districts, to learn more about authentic partnerships and the importance of relationship-building and trust. 
• Review Chapter 5: Establishing Partnerships with Families in this Newcomer Toolkit to learn more about partnering with families of newcomer students.  
• Share parent leader training opportunities and empower parents to learn how to organize with other families.  We’ve included a few examples for you here: 
  • Community Organizer Training Program (COTP) Bootcamp 
  • COFI Center for Action and Learning
  • United Parent Leaders Action Network (UPLAN)