A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

United States Department of Education The Secretary

Dear Colleague:

Many schools throughout the country are working to increase family involvement in children's learning. They are encouraging not only better parent-school communication, but they are also doing a better job of developing more wide-ranging family, school, and community partnerships. These partnerships include family literacy programs, school-based family support programs, and collaborations focused on school improvement. These efforts are to be commended: thirty years of research has shown that family involvement has positive effects on children's academic achievement and school completion rates. That's why I established the Partnership for Family Involvement in Education in 1994. Today, with more than 3,000 members, it seeks to build local partnerships to improve children's learning and to make schools better.

School success in promoting family involvement greatly depends on teachers and principals who possess the knowledge, attitudes, and skills to work with families. Teacher preparation programs, however, have often not kept pace with school efforts to increase family involvement. This report from the Harvard Family Research Project, New Skills for New Schools, makes a convincing argument about why finding promising ways to prepare teachers to involve families in education is critical and how this can be accomplished.

New Skills for New Schools provides a comprehensive training framework to guide educators in their efforts to improve teacher training in the critical area of family involvement. Teacher educators will find many stimulating and practical illustrations of this framework as applied by a number of American colleges and universities. These examples highlight a range of instructional methods to help student teachers develop communication, problem-solving, and collaboration skills. They also illustrate the opportunities to develop hands-on training with families, schools, and community institutions. The report's recommendations lay out the steps that educators, policymakers, and professional organizations can take to ensure that all America's new teachers are prepared to build partnerships with families and communities to promote children's school success.

To begin a broad national dialogue, the U.S. Department of Education, the Partnership for Family Involvement in Education, the Office of the Vice President, Bank Street College, Teachers College, the University of Minnesota, and Peabody University are hosting a teleconference devoted to teacher training for family involvement. The teleconference provides an opportunity for educators throughout the nation to discuss and add to the ideas and recommendations from this report and to formulate an action agenda. It is my earnest hope that you will join me in using this report and the teleconference as a catalyst to advance teacher preparation for family involvement. Call 1-800-USA-LEARN for more information on the Partnership for Family Involvement in Education and the teacher preparation in family involvement teleconference.

Yours sincerely, Richard W. Riley

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