Parent & Family Engagement Archives

Raising a Family Shouldn’t Be Unaffordable

Legislation | 07/15/2021

Did you know that starting today, families all across the country will start receiving payments from the expanded Child Tax Credit?

When I heard this news, I was so relieved! It’s going to help out my children so much and will cover the costs of everything they need to be happy and healthy kids.

Raising a family is so expensive, but that shouldn’t be the case. I’m the mother of three little ones, and while I would love to have a job and bring in income, right now I need to stay home with them because daycare just costs too much.

My husband is the main provider, but being a family of five on one income makes it difficult to pay all our bills month to month and buy groceries, medicine, clothing, and all the things kids need as they grow up.

The Child Tax Credit payments will help us cover the cost of child care so I can join my husband and earn money for our family.

Go to whitehouse.gov/child-tax-credit to learn more and find out if your family will receive the benefit.

Home Visits Boost Attendance, Engagement

Parent & Family Engagement | 06/22/2021

A research analysis released this week by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University speaks to the positive impact the Home Visit Project (recently renamed as Home Visit Partnerships) has on student attendance, educator-family communication, and student engagement. Home visits are a family engagement strategy that typically involve teachers visiting students at their homes and creating open channels of communication between educators, families, and students. This study observed the outcomes of visits by teachers to the homes of their students during the 2019-2020 academic year, and was made possible by a generous grant from the W.W. Caruth, Jr. Fund – Communities Foundation of Texas.

The study involved 580 teachers in five Texas school districts – the Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Dallas, Fort Worth, Hurst-Euless-Bedford, and Richardson Independent School Districts. Researchers identified these key findings:

Participation in the Home Visit Project reduced students’ chronic absenteeism, particularly among early elementary students.
Participation in the Home Visit Project improved teachers’ connections with their students and students’ families.
Teachers feel home visits improved students’ engagement and achievement.
Participation in the Home Visit Project made teachers feel more confident in the ability of students to grow.
Parents and students who participated in the Home Visit Project had overwhelmingly positive experiences.

Researchers conducting the study underscored the particular impact that home visits had on students and their families in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic: “We also found that despite the interruption of the COVID-19 pandemic on home visit implementation during the spring of 2020, that early elementary school students receiving home visits were significantly less likely to be chronically absent than their non-visited peers. The disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic has left many students disconnected from school and has resulted in higher rates of chronic absenteeism across the country; this study suggests home visits could be an impactful approach to improve student-school relationships and engagement in the coming recovery years.”

The Home Visit Project began in 2015 when a group of Stand for Children Texas educator fellows identified authentic family engagement as their top need to better support students. After much observation, listening, and learning within the program, especially while navigating the past year, it was clear how important partnerships are between educators and families and how success is based on those partnerships. The Home Visit Project team therefore made the decision to officially change the program’s name to Home Visit Partnerships.

Standing Strong for 25 Years

Who We Are | 06/1/2021

Stand for Children

Twenty-five years ago today, on June 1, 1996, 300,000 people stood together for children at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

What began as an historic rally has become a bold and vital organization impacting the education and lives of children furthest from justice across the nation.

Stand for Children’s 25th anniversary comes at a time of unique possibility to make progress toward racial and social justice.

For the rest of our lives, we may never have a better chance to reduce child poverty, increase economic mobility, root out individual and systemic racism, and close our nation’s racial wealth chasm.

Stand is passionately committed to seizing this opportunity to achieve lasting positive changes for children, for families, and for society as a whole.

We know you are, too, and look forward to standing strong together in the crucial weeks and months ahead.

Thank you for doing all you can, in every facet of your life, to meet this moment.