As we head back to school this year, one of the most sobering realities of the COVID-19 moment is that it is responsible for the biggest increase in educational inequities in a generation. While various factions within and without education tout a range of recovery and catch-up activities to get us “back to normal,” their plans are not only woefully unmatched to the dire amount of learning loss our nation’s learners have experienced, but they are also ignoring the very reason we had any progress at all during the shutdown: families and communities.

The pandemic brought families and communities into the classroom in ways that were at once unconventional, uncomfortable, but effective. Families had to monitor and assist with their children’s learning and most importantly, they had to talk with their children’s teachers more and more every day. This communication and daily collaboration fostered relationships between home and school, and they fueled the daily activities of learning. It will be a mistake to discard this cooperative model as we move forward.

We cannot resolve the problem of unfinished learning if we push families and the resources of our communities to the sidelines. For 25 years, we’ve been studying how intentional family engagement impacts students’ academic and social-emotional success and helping schools put it into practice. The promise is clear: it improves test scores in reading and math. It prevents chronic absenteeism and can help reconnect disengaged students. And it provides a safe space in which students can get their mental health needs met.

The less tangible, but nevertheless critical results of intentional family engagement are that families and educators change their mindsets about each other. Families begin to understand their efficacy in helping their children learn, and they have more favorable opinions about their children’s teachers and schools and how welcoming they are. 

Teachers’ increased engagement with families breaks down previously held assumptions, some of which are mired in biases around language, race, culture, religion, and family economics. The way is paved for teachers to check in with parents, find out what’s going on and what specific needs their children have. Teachers get insights into what motivates students for learning, and over time, a level of trust is built, relationships flourish, and teachers can take what they learn from developing relationships with families and incorporate it into instructional practices.

In this back-to-school season, we believe intentional, systemic family engagement must accompany all plans to recover lost learning. There are three steps schools, districts, and educators can take to get the ball rolling.

• Educators can commit to personally meet with the families of their students outside of school. Face-to-face is ideal, but we now have multiple technologies that help us meet anytime, anywhere. The off-campus part is important: it changes the power differential, and it communicates to families that their work schedules, language needs, or other issues that often keep them from parent-teacher conferences and back-to-school nights need not impede their ability to connect.
• Districts can commit to training teachers to more deeply engage with families. Few teachers leave their training grounds prepared to engage with the wide variety of families in their school communities. Ongoing professional development in developing relationships of trust between home and school is needed to foster academic progress.
• Together, we can create community-wide cultures that prioritize high-impact family engagement. We are at risk of returning to random, event-driven, and compliance-based family engagement practices as schools reopen unless we create a culture that prioritizes and systematizes high-impact engagement that makes all families feel welcomed, supported, and valued as equal partners. Systemic family engagement occurs when engagement principles are integrated into a school or district’s core priorities, policies, and practices. It requires strong leadership, strategic alignment, collaboration, capacity-building, clearly defined expectations and accountability, and investment of time and resources.

As school bells once again beckon learners back to the classroom, and the disruptions of the pandemic fade into memory, it’s important to take stock of what we’ve learned from this experience, and what got us through. It was always us, rolling up our sleeves, and working together for the good of our children.