Trust Is Not Soft. It’s Infrastructure. I have spent enough time in American public education to know that we are not short on diagnoses—we are short on the willingness to treat the root cause like an emergency. Chronic absenteeism. Teacher attrition. Declining family trust in public schools. Every superintendent I know can recite these numbers: nearly one in four students missing enough school […]
Wisconsin Teachers Are Powering School Change In Madison and Milwaukee last week, more than 60 educators spent their day doing something that rarely shows up in job descriptions: preparing to visit students’ homes to build trust with families. It marked the launch of WE-Lead (Wisconsin Educators Leading Family Engagement), a new partnership between the National […]
We Are Living History This February marks 100 years since Carter G. Woodson established Negro History Week in 1926 – an insistence, in the face of exclusion, that Black life and achievement would be studied, named, and remembered, not “overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed.” His response was to institutionalize the study and commemoration of Black history—to create structures that would ensure these stories could […]
PTHV Board of Directors: New Members And New Leadership We’re happy to announce that our Board of Directors has elected four new members: Shital C. Shah, who returns to the Board after previously serving from 2015 to 2019 and has been elected as Board Chair; Georgia Rhett, Superintendent of Arvin Union School District; Mary Jane […]
A Year of Connection, Growth, and Transformation: A Reflection on Leading Parent Teacher Home Visits in 2025 Dear Friends, As 2025 comes to a close—my first year as Executive Director of Parent Teacher Home Visits—I’ve been reflecting on something family engagement pioneer Anne T. Henderson shared on our podcast. She described joining her first PTHV […]
A Conversation with Family Engagement Pioneer Anne T. Henderson In celebration of National Family Engagement Month, we’re sharing highlights from our latest podcast episode featuring four decades of insights on building authentic family-school partnerships. This November marks National Family Engagement Month 2025, a time when we come together to celebrate and advance the work of […]
From “Taco Night” to Transformation – How Home Visits Ignite Deep Learning and Community Connection This week, I came across a research brief from Towson University’s Maryland Center for Community Schools that stopped me in my tracks. Titled “What Does the Community School Classroom Look Like? A Systematic Literature Review of Teaching and Learning in […]
Our Annual Impact: Celebrating Progress Amid Change We’re pleased to share the results of our annual network-wide census, highlighting the impact and reach of Parent Teacher Home Visits during the 2024-25 school year. This year’s data tells a nuanced story—one of resilience, strategic growth, and the enduring commitment of educators and families to build meaningful […]
When Schools Change, Families Must Come Along Change is a given in education. Over my career, which began in the classroom many moons ago, I’ve seen—again and again—how the best-intentioned changes in schools can create chaos when families aren’t brought along for the journey. I learned the hard way that even a joyful innovation can […]
Strengthening Schools with Home Visits: Key Insights from Parent Teacher Home Visits Week 2025 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEfZMSJGuEA This week, as educators and families across the nation celebrate Parent Teacher Home Visits Week, we hosted a powerful webinar showcasing how authentic relationships through home visits can transform schools and support student success. The conversation brought together practitioners, researchers, […]
PTHV advances student success and school improvement by leveraging relationships, research, and a national network of partners to advance evidence-based practices in relational home visits within a comprehensive family engagement strategy.
PTHV is a nonprofit grassroots network that must raise its operating budget every year. Like the local home visit projects we help, our network is sustained by collaboration.
