The Ohio Statewide Family Engagement Center offers a wide range of free resources and research for educators, families and community organizations.
“I am not typically one to attend and engage for a full day (seminar), but I couldn’t tear away,” said an Ohio school district administrator about the Ohio Statewide Family Engagement Center’s 2023 Summit. “It was the most profound learning I have had in a very long time.”
“I used to think that family engagement was about big, whole group events, but now I think that it is about the small, everyday, inclusive things we do each day,” wrote an Ohio educator who attended one of the center’s Foundations of Family Engagement Seminars.
“The center helps you learn how to connect and become an active part of a school community,” wrote a parent who sits on the engagement center’s advisory council.
Since 2018, the Ohio Statewide Family Engagement Center, a grant project of the college, has worked to connect educators and families to boost school children’s success.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Education renewed the five-year, $4.6 million grant to the center, located within the college’s Center on Education and Training for Employment (CETE).
The only organization of its kind in the state, the engagement center is one of 20 such centers across the country that received the federal grant. The Ohio center offers a wide range of free resources and research for educators, families and community organizations, said Professor Ana-Paula Correia, director of CETE.
“The Statewide Family Engagement Center also collaborates with dedicated College of Education and Human Ecology faculty members who are deeply concerned with the challenges faced by students and families in today’s schools,” she said.
“These faculty members are eager to create a positive impact by implementing practices grounded in robust research findings. Their partnership with the Statewide Family Engagement Center makes this goal a tangible one.”
“The new federal grant supports CETE and the engagement center in providing educators statewide with access to Ohio State’s academic research. We translate it into day-to-day practices for them,” Correia said.
The engagement center offers professional development and coaching for educators. For parents and caregivers, it provides research-based tips and workshops on how to help their children improve their academic achievement. Online tutorials inform educators and families on a variety of topics, including kindergarten readiness, literacy and attendance.
Evidence of its reach, plans for the next five years
In the first five years of the grant, the engagement center served more than 19,500 families.
In addition, 48 Ohio school districts and 109 schools received direct support. This included access to the evidence-based family engagement model, which helped guide programming and decision making. The engagement center partners with the National Network of Partnership Schools based at Johns Hopkins University. Its research-based approaches organize and sustain excellent programs of families and community interaction.
Each district also had access to a coach for monthly meetings. All together, the center provided professional development to about 12,000 educators through webinars, seminars and other presentations.
The center’s website, with about 450 free resources, has had 40,000 unique visitors since launching in 2019. Its News and Guidance email reaches 2,250 people monthly with research-based family engagement ideas, examples and news.
“The Center on Education and Training for Employment is committed to delivering innovative practices to those who will benefit the most,” Correia said. “With the new grant, these practices can be implemented more effectively and expanded on a larger scale.”
“CETE and the engagement center also provide technical assistance and professional development to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce,” said Barbara Boone, director of the engagement center.
“Members of our team sit on more than five state-level advisory groups covering topics from literacy to whole child supports, special education and postsecondary transitions. They work together to embed family engagement into all of the department’s state-level work.
To ensure the engagement center meets needs, it has the Statewide Advisory Council, which provides input during quarterly meetings. More than half of the council’s 50-plus members are families who apply from all over Ohio. New families are recruited annually.
“Research in many fields makes it clear that when educators, families and students all work together, students are more successful in school, have better mental health and better long-term outcomes in life,” said Boone, a 2002 PhD graduate from the college in human development and family science.
“We have networks of educators that are growing, and we will continue to reach more districts and schools.”
Delivering new, research-based opportunities
New in the coming years will be the Statewide Family Leaders for Schools Academy. Boone said the goal is to include at least 120 parents or caregivers. Participants will better understand the education system and advocate for students’ needs in schools, districts and communities.
“We’ll continue our commitment to develop resources for all families, whether those are workshops or print products or online products,” she said.
Another new initiative is the Statewide English Learner Outreach program. It will provide resources for 2,000 families of multilingual students, helping them support their children’s education, Boone said.
A third new initiative is the Statewide Student and Educator Mental Health program. It will equip school counselors to lead school-level, evidence-based interventions for both school and home. The purpose is to address the impact of COVID on students and staff social, emotional and mental health.
“We want to work with 40 or more school counselors from middle and junior high schools,” Boone said. “They will receive high-quality professional learning and resources for assessing and providing interventions for students, families and staff.”
“We do so many different types of outreach, and we have so many avenues of working with schools,” Boone said. “We have extended seminars for teachers. Our annual virtual summit draws hundreds of participants from across Ohio, the United States and internationally.”
“We feel fairly confident that we have in some way touched all counties of Ohio, whether that’s people accessing our resources or coming to the summit or seminars.”
