Parents 2021: Going Beyond the Headlines, Part 1

Sherri Wilson:

Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone who’s just joining us. We are so excited that you’re here today. Please, as you’re coming in, log into the chat box and let us know who you are, where you are, what you do. We’d like to know a little bit more about each of you.

Sherri Wilson:

So thank you again for joining us today. We’re going to give everybody another minute to log on. And then we’ll be rolling. It is really exciting today. I’m super excited about our topic. I hope all of you are already familiar with the Learning Heroes research. But if not, you’re going to become as big a fan as I am after today.

Sherri Wilson:

Hi, Sylvia. Hi, Fiona. Hi, Mandy. It’s nice to see all of you today. I see we have Sarah, Risa, Jessica. Please remember when you post messages in the chat box the default goes to just the host and panelists. And we want to make sure that everybody sees the fantastic messages that you post. So change the blue dropdown box to everyone or all so that everybody can see everything that you post. Because I think it’s really nice to see where everybody he’s from. I see a lot of old friends on here today. It’s nice to see all of you again. Thank you for joining us.

Sherri Wilson:

We have a packed agenda today. So I am going to get right to it. One quick reminder. We’re going to have probably lots of questions today. Make sure you put your questions in the Q&A box. If you put those in the chat box, as you can see, it is a very fast-moving stream and we might lose track of your questions. But if you put them in the Q&A box, we will try to get to all of them today.

Sherri Wilson:

So let’s get started. If you want to go to the next slide, please. Bibb, are you out there? Oh, there we go. Today is a real treat for me because I am a total fan girl for Learning Heroes. As I said, when we first started today, if you guys aren’t already familiar with their research, you should become familiar with it. And today is going to be extra special because they’re going to share with us some research that hasn’t really been shared broadly yet. We’re going to learn about research. They did with educators and administrators in addition to their annual parent survey data. So today our topic is going beyond the headlines and looking at parent and educator perspectives, which is going to be super fun.

Sherri Wilson:

Let me introduce you to our panel. First of all, we have the lovely and talented Bibb Hubbard who is the founder and president of Learning Heroes. She founded Learning Heroes to help parents most effectively advocate on behalf of their children’s educational success. She has extensive experience in communications, policy, and advocacy from the public, private, and philanthropic sectors.

Sherri Wilson:

She had leadership positions at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Widmeyer Communications, and Scholastic. Her public sector experience includes positions at the White House and at the U.S. Labor Department. Bibb sits on the board of the New York City Leadership Academy. And she’s the proud mother of two teenage sons.

Sherri Wilson:

Also, we have a real good friend of mine, Dr. Eyal Bergman, the senior vice president at Learning Heroes. Eyal leads Learning Heroes efforts to support schools, districts, and others that want to build their capacity for deeper and more meaningful partnerships with families. He recently earned his doctor of education and leadership from Harvard University, which was a pursuit that included partnering with our dear friend, Dr. Karen Mapp, in coauthoring, the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships (Version 2). There’s a website for that. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.

Sherri Wilson:

Previously, he was the founder of the Family and Community Engagement Office in the Cajon Valley Union School District. Eyal’s work and views are shaped by his professional roots in community organizing and youth mentoring, as well as his personal upbringing in a bilingual-Latino immigrant home.

Sherri Wilson:

And then finally, we have Windy Lopez, I’m going to say this wrong, Aflitto, the vice president of content and partnerships. Windy, please tell me how to say that right when you come on later. A former elementary school teacher, Windy has 20 years of experience in family engagement, education and philanthropy.

Sherri Wilson:

She came to Learning Heroes from American Express where she worked on the nonprofit leadership development philanthropic platform. Previously, Windy was with Scholastic for nearly a decade, helping to develop family and community engagement initiatives. She’s been a guest lecturer at NYU and at the University of the South in collaboration with the Yale child Study Center.

Sherri Wilson:

She’s a proud mama of two young daughters. You can see we have a powerful panel for you today. And they have some fantastic research to share with you. So we’re going to go ahead and get started. And I’m going to turn it over to Bibb.

Bibb Hubbard:

Thanks so much. Let’s see if I can get my computer to respond. Thank you so much, Sherri, and thank you to everyone who’s joining us here today. We’re thrilled here and really appreciate your time.

Bibb Hubbard:

So, as Sherri said, I founded Learning Heroes in 2014 to best support parents as their children’s most effective education advocate. And to do that, we do deep listening among parents and we take our research really seriously. This is actually my personal passion. And the most fun that I have in this job is getting to do all of this wonderful research and learning from all different kinds of parents.

Bibb Hubbard:

So you can see here, we’ve conducted an extensive national survey. We’ve done deep, deep qualitative work with families. In addition, we also survey principals, teachers, guidance, counselors, students themselves. Everything we do is in English and in Spanish. And we focus primarily on low-income families and families of color.

Bibb Hubbard:

And so with of these insights, this is what we do. We create year-round tools based on what we heard from families, what their needs are, and what doesn’t currently exist. So interactive tools, videos, and more. We create timely resources, actionable information that parents can use to support their children.

Bibb Hubbard:

And then we also, kind of back office, support schools, districts, and nonprofits in their communications with families and in building good family engagement strategies. And you’ll see some of our tools as we go through this to bring it to life a little bit more. And so that’s what we do.

Bibb Hubbard:

How we do it is through incredible partnerships like the one that we have with [NASFI 00:07:25]. So I love this slide. I’m humbled by this slide. I cannot believe that we have so many wonderful partners. And this is actually just a small snapshot. Last year in 2021 we reached over 30 million families through these incredible partnerships who take our content tools, resources, and directly put them in the hands of families. So we’re truly humbled and honored to have this opportunity to reach parents through these different channels.

Bibb Hubbard:

So with that, we can start with the research. So as Sherri said, you’re seeing data from our annual survey. We conduct annual surveys of parents, teachers, and, now this year for the first time, principals. This was one of the first questions we asked and we found it to be really interesting to get the responses from parents, teachers, and principals.

Bibb Hubbard:

So I want to take a moment and our colleague, Alice, is going to put out this poll question. I encourage everybody listening in to go ahead and give your response. What language, what words would you use to describe the goal for family engagement? How would you describe the connection between families and schools? And then at the end of the presentation, my good colleague, Dr. Bergman Eyal will come, he will give you the response from parents, teachers, and principals, but we want to hear from you first.

Bibb Hubbard:

So we’ll give you one moment to that, and then we can move on. Okay. So with that, we’ll keep going. Let me see if I can get my clicker to work. So as we dive into this, we just wanted to give you a little bit of a step back and some of our key takeaways from this data. And despite, as you heard from our title of this research, going beyond the headlines, for us we saw, despite the headlines that parents, teachers, and principals against each other right now, we saw incredible alignment. And we’re really inspired by that.

Bibb Hubbard:

Family engagement positively impact student development. We of course know that. I’m sure everyone on the phone knows that. But it was great to get that quantitative responses from parents, teachers, and principals that also firmly believe in the importance of family engagement. Yet, and again, I’m sure for those of you who are on the phone, your stories could bring words to this better than I can. The challenges still exist in creating those culturally-affirming family engage strategies and thinking holistically at a district bubble, a school level for how to implement. So hopefully our data can help inspire some of the work moving forward.

Bibb Hubbard:

So drilling down just a little bit further here, I wanted to give everybody the methodology. So what you’re looking at is a survey of parents nationally. And you can see it’s a pretty robust sample, more than 1400 parents and guardians responded across K12. So we have elementary, middle, and high school parents all represented. And really importantly, we do this with all of our research. We over sampled with Black and Hispanic parents.

Bibb Hubbard:

And what that means is we have enough of a sample of Black and Hispanic respondents so that we can pull out their responses and compare them across races. So it just gives us a little bit of a deeper look into how different kinds of parents are responding. We feel that you can see in mid-September, September 7th to the 27th, we’re not back to school frame. And as with all of our research and resources offered both in English and Spanish.

Bibb Hubbard:

Similarly, our educator surveys, we had 305 teachers, 304 principals, again, across all grade bands, fielded in a similar timeframe, and national surveys as well, online. And then important, when you see a blue number or red number, blue means it’s statistically significantly higher than the rest of the responses, the red means it’s statistically significantly lower than some of the other audiences, and a down red arrow means there’s a difference between pre-pandemic, a green arrow is higher than pre-pandemic. So you’ll see some of those throughout as well.

Bibb Hubbard:

So let’s dive in. So thinking about parent mindsets in particular, we I’ve asked this question actually since 2016 when we began our annual surveys. And the responses have always been pretty robust in terms of college aspirations. And we ask about a two to four-year college. That’s how we frame the question. But you can see in September, 80%, our biggest number yet of parents who think that it’s very important, absolutely essential for their children to get a college degree.

Bibb Hubbard:

And interestingly, you can see for white families, I mean Black and Hispanic families. And for those of you who do research, this is no surprise. And for those of you who are in the field, no surprise. We always see really high, robust numbers from Black and Hispanic parents in terms of what’s most importance of college. But interestingly, we’ve seen white families now also sort of taking a significant jump since 2019. So just interesting to note.

Bibb Hubbard:

Okay. Let’s see here. Sorry. I am hitting the wrong button. Here we go. Let’s see if I can get my computer to pay attention. All right. So despite this super high aspiration among families, we still see a disconnect between what parents believe and what teachers know. So while only 44% of teachers reported that most of their students would show up prepared for grade level work this year, we saw 92% of parents, both in math and reading, respond to the question is your child at above or below grade level, believing that their child’s at or above grade level.

Bibb Hubbard:

And as you can, the trends over time at some of our highest numbers yet. So that was a bit of a surprise for us. But when we really dig into it, it’s because parents rely on report cards. So for parents report card, grades equal grade level. And many of you on the phone know that’s not the case. A fourth grader getting an A in reading does not mean that that fourth grader is reading at a fourth grade level. Yet most parents don’t know that.

Bibb Hubbard:

And we see here, consistently, 84% of parents, a huge percentage of parents report that their children are getting mostly Bs or better. And we’ve seen this data backed up by other studies conducted in the field. I don’t know if anyone remembers TNTP’s opportunity Myth. But their results found this to be the same. And interestingly, 24%, almost a quarter of parents reported that their children got higher grades last year than they had pre-pandemic. So, interesting that… We think this is what’s underneath that 92%.

Bibb Hubbard:

And when we asked this year in our survey, we said, how important are these various dimensions in terms of when it comes to communicating between schools and homes? And we were really… Again this speaks to the alignment that I talked about at the beginning. We’re excited to see that there’s a lot of conceptual alignment across parents, teachers, and principals, especially when it comes to making sure families have a clear picture of how their child is achieving academically.

Bibb Hubbard:

This was number one for parents. Number two was being direct and truthful about a child’s performance. And the whole response was even if the news isn’t so good. So parents really want to have that trusted relationship, get that truth from their teachers so that they can best support their children wherever they may be. Yet you saw from that disconnect slide that 92% of parents believe their child’s ever above grade level. So clearly, that clear picture is not happening.

Bibb Hubbard:

And so with that, to give you an example of how we take some of these insights and turn it action, I’m inviting Windy, my colleague here who created the readiness check, to give you a little bit of a background on how we develop this and what it does. So, Windy.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

Thank you Bibb. And certainly didn’t create it alone. We had really a great honor of working with leading math and content experts to create this tool. On the math side, Jason [Simba 00:16:16], and on the reading side, Dr. Freddie Ebert.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

And as Bibb said, at the beginning we really strive and work hard to make our research really actionable for ourselves as an organization, for our partners, for the fields, more broadly. We are a small team. And so we are not looking to reinvent the wheel. We really only create new products and new resources when we see a gap. And so when we really first surfaced this 90%, this startling disconnect in 2016, we continue to lean in and wanted to further understand it as we’ve been doing and as we’ve been tracking it over the past several years.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

And so what we saw is that there really is a gap as it relates to helping parents have a more concrete, a more accurate understanding of their child’s progress. And this latest research really, I think, further puts a pin in that. Parents not only need, not only deserve, but they really want this accurate picture so that they can best support their child at home and best support great folks like you on the ground working with them and educators.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

So how it works, it’s meant to be really user-friendly, you can use it on your mobile phone, on your laptop. The child answers three to five questions, highly predictive questions as identified by our content experts. And then the parent gets to see how did they learn? How are they progressing with those end-of-year skills that are critical for the following year?

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

What I think it makes it really innovative and I think practical for parents is that it really breaks down what are those key skills and what do they look like? That’s what parents tell us they want to see, they want to understand how to talk about it with their child. Particularly on the math side at the end. Jason Simba helps really break down what it looks like sort of at the kitchen table.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

And then in addition to that, we work to really curate a very select amount of resources that are tied to those specific three to five skills in a way that puts the burden off of parents. We know that teaching math can sometimes be stressful for parents. And so we identified both learn and practice resources that can be used sort of year-round, and especially during transitional moments like the summer.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

And we think, especially during this moment in time where there’s so much stress around the disruption to learning, what we’ve continue to see in the headlines and how we as a field really address that. We don’t see that much being covered around parents, right? And so this is a tool that, again, not meant to be a silver bullet, but meant to support the great work that you do in a sort of a low-stakes way for the parent, not to put the pressure on them or stress them out, but really give them yet enough other way to understand what these skills look like and how they can support at home.

Bibb Hubbard:

Great. Thank you, Windy. So just wanted to give everybody a concrete example of how we turn some of this data into actionable content for families. But turning back to the research, we also asked, kind of pulling back, what’s the most important this school year? And again, some incredible alignment and not super surprising safety and security of students and staff, making progress academically, and addressing students mental health and emotional wellbeing. Obviously this is top of mind for everyone. But again, despite what we keep hearing that there is this consistency in terms of what’s most important for parents, teachers, and principals.

Bibb Hubbard:

And then we asked parents what keeps you up at night? And again, this is in September. And so not super surprising but important. And this is, your child’s happiness and emotional wellbeing, someone in your family only getting COVID, and that stress or anxiety rose to the top. And that happiness and emotional wellbeing is very consistently and typically the number one item.

Bibb Hubbard:

But we asked a couple of different items this September given the context that we’re in right now in the political backdrop that continues to be happening. We asked these two questions, having politicians who are not educators making decisions about what students are in the classroom and having parents who are not educators. And you can see the word politicians clearly set off a nerve for families. I think overall, especially through the pandemic, politicians have lost their luster even more than typically.

Bibb Hubbard:

So we saw that result here in this worry item that rose to very, very tippy top across the board. But you see having parents who are not educators, not as much of a concern. But still, more than a majority of parents overall for a top-two box are worrying about that. So just a little bit of context is this conversation continues to bubble on in the headlines yet we don’t want to get too distracted by it because we want to stay focused on what’s consistently most important for families, and that is their children’s happiness and emotional wellbeing.

Bibb Hubbard:

Also, super interesting and really cool, I think, is we ask parents, are you going to be more or less involved in your child’s education this year? And we saw 93% of parents, despite just the agonizing year of the 2020-2021 school year. 93% of parents said in September they were going to be as, or more involved in their children’s education. And you can see here from the slide too, for teachers and principals, 85% say they’re going to be as, or more engaged with their families. So again, this just hunger this appetite to come together, to be together in concert to help support students is what we’re seeing come through the data.

Bibb Hubbard:

And along those lines, this was super cool as well. We asked these questions, coming out of COVID in May of 2020, what actions are you going to take in the next school year? So that would’ve been school year 2020-2021. And we thought that, oh my gosh, parents are going to take these crazy actions much more than we had imagined. And yet you can see this year, these numbers are even higher.

Bibb Hubbard:

So the green is the percentage points higher from their responses in 2020. So this year it was 54% or very likely, which is the top box. It’s a huge numbers and more than a majority, find time to talk to my children about everyday assignments, get a better on understanding of what child is expected to learn. So going back to Windy’s point, parents are hungry to know what is expected of their child. And how do they know it? How do they know that they’re achieving? What the heck is happening?

Bibb Hubbard:

And then again, seek a better understanding of where my child is academically. And you saw that reflected in their top desire for communications, which is getting a clear picture. So it all sort of reinforces itself. But you can see across the board, parents are going to be much more actively involved in their children’s education, which we obviously are biased and think that’s a great thing.

Bibb Hubbard:

So with that, I think it’s time to turn back to Sherri for some questions and reflections. And I’m going to stop sharing my screen for a moment.

Sherri Wilson:

Thank you, Bibb. So one question that has actually come up a couple of times is if you have a breakdown by percentage of the respondents rate. People are really interested in what percent was African-American, or Hispanic, or Caucasian.

Bibb Hubbard:

So yes, we have that data for every question. So that’s exactly why we do the over sample, is to make sure that we can pull out that data. So where there are differences, we will show that. Although sometimes the slides become sort of overwhelming. But if anyone has a particular wondering for one of the questions or the items that we asked or showed, we’re happy to share the race breakdowns, because we have that for everything.

Bibb Hubbard:

And we also have income breakdowns. So we tell you where low-income parents answer differently than middle and high-income parents. We can tell you how urban… So urban and suburban parents and rural parents, they answer differently. Men and women answer differently. There are lots of differences. So we can dig into those for anybody who’s interested. We absolutely have that. And it absolutely informs us as we do our work.

Sherri Wilson:

And everyone should know that your contact information for everyone here today will be at the end of the presentation. So you can email them if you have a specific question, for sure.

Sherri Wilson:

One more question before we move on. It’s really interesting to see how the priorities for parents, teachers, and principals align, especially given the headlines that we see in the news every day lately. What does that alignment say to you?

Bibb Hubbard:

Yeah. So for us, we just see it as an important moment, an opportunity to respond to what parents and teachers and principals are telling us and to find ways, structures, systems to bring parents and teachers and principals together in true partnership and collaboration and teamwork. And so we just think this an important moment in time to lean in and help build those bridges and make those connections and have it be consistent and also culturally affirming and address some of those barriers that we continue to see.

Bibb Hubbard:

And actually it’s a great segue for some of the slides that Eyal is going to get into. And just a last note, we do have all of our researchers on our website. So you’ll also get a link to that at the end and all of this is publicly available. So I’ll pop off and turn it over to you, Sherri.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. One more thing before we turn it over to Eyal is that, on their website, there’s also links to past research. And I would encourage everyone to go back and look at all of it because, taken together, it tells a really compelling story. So I will turn it over to you, Eyal. Take it away.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

Well, thank you, Sherri. And thank you Bibb for that first chapter of our data presentation. I’m going to share what we’re calling our second chapter, which is this question of what do teachers and principals in our surveys have to say about what the work looks like on a day-to-day basis? And what are the motivating factors? And just what are the conditions that teachers and principles are reporting in their schools that enable or hinder really good deep family engagement work?

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

So the first item that we want to bring up is this question of who has the primary responsibility for family engagement at your school. We ask teachers and principals this question just point-blank. And what you see with the principles, I’ll start with the principles, is that 29% of principals say that teachers have the primary responsibility. 34% of principals say they, as the principal, have the primary responsibility.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

So that’s a fairly even split amongst principles as far as who has the primary responsibility, but that even split just does not occur with teachers. There is a very big difference. So, overwhelmingly, teachers are saying that they have the primary responsibility for family engagement in their school. And far fewer, only 13% of teachers are saying that the principal has the primary responsibility.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And, because I know there’s a lot of us in the crowd and because this is also my background, and my work being family liaison and parent liaison, only 7% of teachers and principals say that family liaisons or parent liaisons have the primary responsibility for family engagement at their school. And that might not be so bad necessarily, because at the end of the day, it’s the teachers in the classrooms that are spending the most time with children. And so those are folks that we really want to be engaging with families in a way that actually builds trust and works on student learning and development.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

We also asked teachers and principal, what is influencing your approach to family engagement? So I’ll draw your attention to a couple of different findings in this question. First is that you see that there’s not a ton of variance in the green bars. There’s a lot more variance in what teachers are saying that has influenced them. So by and large, by far, the top vote getter is other teachers that they have worked with. It’s in informal sources, things like your own approach or your relationships with student families.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

Very few are reporting, or a lot fewer, I should say, only about a third are reporting any professional development work. And only a fifth of teachers are reporting work from their pre-service. So there’s a big variance. And we don’t necessarily agree on who’s the primary responsibility and we’re not really doing a systematic job of training on family engagement work. And I will just note what is the bottom for both teachers and principals is their district leaders. So we should just take note of that.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

We asked principals, is family engagement formally included in your teacher evaluation criteria? It was a very simple question. 84% of principals said, yes, that’s overwhelming majority. Only about half of teachers reported that the family engagement is in their teacher evaluation criteria. Again, another big difference we see between principals and teachers.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And so when we ask principals, specifically, what do they expect… So we had a whole list, you see here there’s a long list of different family engagement activities that a teacher could be doing. Okay. So we asked principals, which of these do you expect your teachers to be doing regularly? All right. And they could select all that they wanted. On average, the principal selected four of these.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And I just want to raise that there’s only about a third that get any of the… Top vote getters are only a third. So there’s only a couple of things that are even coming close to a right. Only a third are getting wide expectations from principles. And what we see is that, actually the top vote getter is reaching out to parents about a problem.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

Now, I will say that if you go, the third one is reaching out to parents about success. So it’s not all just communicating problems. But in general, what we see is that face-to-face interactions tend to come lower in this list that reaching out in more formal ways.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

We also asked about what’s important regarding family engagement at your school? And Bibb spoke to this a little bit earlier. And what we see is that for principles, the top vote-getters are things like making sure that for families have a clear picture of how their child is doing academically and seeking feedback from families. Although teachers report that quite a bit less. Teachers are much more likely to report building trust with families and being authentic in communication. So there’s a little bit of a difference, but there isn’t that sort of wide disparity that we see in other questions that we asked

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

This slide, I think is actually very important. Well, they’re all important. But this slide, I think it says a lot about what we do in schools and the supports and the structures that we offer our staff and teachers, particularly about what they need in order to do good family engagement work. So you’ll see that these are all a different series of systems and structures that teachers could report as either helpful or even whether they have them in place.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

So, for instance, the top two vote… So the percentage in the bar is the percentage of teachers that say that this support is extremely helpful. And the line says the percentage of teachers that said, yes, this support is in place in my school. So the top points on the line, so 79% and 73% of teachers saying that they have this support in place, are virtual items. So 79% say that they have apps, or online portals or platforms to communicate with families. 73% are saying that they have virtual or Zoom options for school events. Those are the top vote getters as far as what’s in place.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

But if I draw your attention to the far-left, the top vote-getter, as far as what is extremely helpful, is time regularly set aside for teachers to communicate with families. That’s what teachers are saying is actually the most helpful. Second is translation of school communications into families native languages.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

But you see that when it comes to time, 51% is actually one of the lowest, it’s the second lowest as far as what’s in place. So that distance between the top of the bar, as far as what’s extremely helpful, and what’s in place that small distance, is really telling.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

We asked teachers on a range of different constructs, like how easy or hard is it to communicate or to do a range of different family engagement activities? Activities by and large, teachers are not reporting that this is very easy or easy work. They’re overwhelmingly saying this work is not necessarily easy.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And what I’ll draw your attention to is the very first bar that says, how easy or difficult is it to establish strong relationships with families? And here, we see 16%, that’s one in six teachers in our survey are saying that it is very easy to build strong relationships with families.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

So if we take some stock, if we take a step back about what we’ve seen so far, we see, we don’t necessarily agree on who owns the primary responsibility for family engagement, most teachers don’t receive formal training on family engagement, we don’t all agree that there’s even an evaluation criteria for family engagement, we don’t have the time to spend on family engagement. And so that the things that we do spend our time on are the less personable things. And those are the things that principals are expecting.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And by and large teachers are saying that this work is hard. I’m going to end on an optimistic note, I promise, but I want to highlight that these are very potent headwinds. And it might be worth looking at how we come to this situation. When we don’t spend a lot of time in community with each other, it’s easier to see how biases can become a barrier for this type of work.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

So we asked around a range of potential benefits and barriers and limitations around what makes this work difficult or what makes this work possible. And so we see that 52% of teachers strongly agree that all families can be allies in making sure their child gets a good education. That doesn’t mean that 48% disagree. This is just the strongly-agree-with this statement. But we also see at the bottom that around a third of both teachers and principals are saying that some families are just not interested in supporting their child’s education.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And I’m here to say that if we don’t believe the inherent capacity or the inherent interest of every family to support their children’s learning, that’s an indication of some really serious blind spots that we have. And I have to say this comes from somebody who I have made my fair share of calls to child protective services, but it may hint at why we haven’t, as a sector, prioritize this work. So that all the data that I shared before this slide is actually the symptom of a much deeper rooted challenge for which schools are not immune from our broader societal challenges.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And it’s not like school folk don’t see this for themselves. So we asked, to what extent do you agree that more support is needed to help staff members identify and work through biases they may have when trying to communicate with parents. And you’ll see that for principles, this is the top vote-getter. 42% strongly agree. And when we look at strongly agree and agree, it gets closer to 80% to 85%.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And I think it’s also worth noting that there’s a big difference between what principals say and what teachers say in this last yellow box, as far as whether family engagement contributes to burnout, and whether it’s unrealistic to ask teachers to connect with all the families of their students. So principals were far more likely than teachers to strongly agree with these statements.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

Okay. Look, I come from immigrant stock. We are an optimistic people. I’m an immigrant to this country. My parents were immigrants as well. My grandparents we’re immigrants. Everybody going to different places. So I cannot end on just talking about the headwinds. Like I said, I come from optimistic stock. So just because we have these powerful headwinds doesn’t mean that there isn’t a very powerful antidote sitting right in front of us.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

Because we ask teachers and principles, to what extent do you agree that family engagement gives students more support for their social emotional needs? We ask them about a range of supports, but we’re highlighting two here. To what extent do you agree that family engagement improves how students perform academically? 96% of teachers agree. 88% of principals agree.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

So it’s very clear that despite these challenges and especially that… Despite these challenges, we have genuine interest and genuine awareness that this work actually makes a big difference for what we’re all here for, which is to support children. So I think that offers us a real window and a real opening to focus on.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And another place to focus on with our opening and window, and I’m going to ask Alice now, if you can release the results from the survey. Okay. I believe folks can see this. So 12% of you said that a strong relationship is the word that you would use. 34% said partnership. 20% said collaboration. 6% said school as an extended family. 14% said teamwork. And 14% said trust.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

Okay. Again, I’m going to say 14% said teamwork, and 14% said trust. We ask teachers, parents, and principals this question. And here’s what they say. For teachers, for parents, the top vote-getter is trust. And for principles, too. So you see here… One important takeaway from this slide is you all understand just as well as we do that we’re never going to get everybody to agree on anything.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

So the point here isn’t to get to one thing that we all agree on, or to get one word that we all agree on. The idea here was to test what language is best represents the language you want to use when describing your goal for family engagement. And for parents and principles, number one is trust. And for teachers, number one is teamwork. And for parents, that’s number two.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

So when we look at this together, what we see is a focus on trust and teamwork. That has really influenced how we are thinking about the work and how we are approaching our work in supporting schools and systems working with leaders, working on strategy, working to support professional development in schools that the focus for us is on trust and teamwork, and also helping schools convey a more accurate picture of how their students are doing in an effort to be honest and collaborative. But really, again, the focus on trust and teamwork, to start.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And we know from all of our examples that we know of in research and in practice and all of you that are practicing day-to-day, that this work starts with trust, that that has to be the starting point by which any strong relationship can actually lead to deeper teamwork focused on student learning and development.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

So I’m going to pause now. And I’m going to turn it over to my colleague, Windy, who is going to talk about one tool specifically, again, we offer tools and we offer services, but one tool specifically that translates this concept of trust and teamwork into something actionable. And that’s pretty. Windy.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

Thank you, Eyal. I’m really enjoying the comments in the chat. Just to put a pin in several of them. We couldn’t agree more, right? That this is for us, this is very much not about blaming teachers or great inflation, right? Teachers have not been historically supported to really team up with parents in a way that is two-way, that is actionable, that is culturally affirming.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

And so I wanted to just highlight another resource that was built really from the ground up as part of our research hearing from educators, hearing from parents, hearing from experts, partner organizations who are doing similar work. Again, we are not about duplicating, but really strengthening existing moments and existing work.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

So our Parent-Teacher Planning Tool is really about adding value to those existing moments and in a way that you can customize to meet your communication and your relationship building with parents. And what I mean by that is one data point that we didn’t have a slide for, but that we’ve been tracking is that parent-teacher conferences, for example, continue to be the number one way that parents and teachers communicate. And yet for both, it falls at really low value.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

And for us, that just speaks to… Eyal, and like you, I’m an immigrant family, an optimist that speaks to opportunity. And so this is meant to be customized to whatever that infrastructure is to support that. It’s a very simple three-step tool that really intentionally begins with leaning into parents as experts. We wholeheartedly believe that we are the experts of our children. We have valuable observations insights into what makes them motivated to learn, especially in moments like the past two years where we’ve had this front-row view.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

And so it really guides teachers in the kinds of questions. Again, meant to be customized, not necessarily turnkey, but meant to guide that teacher and really intentionally eliciting from the parent. And also not just focusing on academics. I know we’ve mostly focused on that 90% today, but for us, we come at this a very much a whole-child lens. So it does start with engaging parents in that conversation, hearing from them about how their child is, what they’re experiencing on the academic side and also on those critical life skills.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

After that first intentional step, the second is moving into supporting the educator in sharing data around math and reading progress in a way that is visual, that is not overwhelming, that is parent-friendly. I saw note around, I think in the chatbox around sometimes we don’t know what parents mean by wanting to know more about their child’s progress. What we have found is that sometimes less is more. Parents just, they want to know how their child is progressing. They want to know what it looks like and how they can support at home. Right?

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

So that then leads into third step, which is really about where that two way, those first two steps come together based on the parents leaning in and giving the real moment to share their insights based on the teachers sharing their data and their insights. They then come together to truly co-create a plan best suited for their child that is focused and that really hones in on what are those one to three life skills? What are those one to three academic skills? What are some strategies? Again, hearing from the parents too, because we know how they have so much to add. And what are those resources that parents can lean into?

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

And this is really meant to be, again, not a silver bullet, but a little bit of a foundation for that regular communication. And that’s another data point that for me is always top of mind where teachers really say that the number one way parents can know how their child is progressing is through regular communication with the teacher. And yet we know, for all of the barriers that Eyal spoke to, that’s not happening. So this is just another example.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

Lastly, I just want to really say that this was very much built to be customized. So we’re going to be sharing our contact information at the end. We have customized it for a couple of examples for the State of Texas to meet their HB45. Legislation in California, they shared out the end-of-year version of this last year. We’ve customized it for organizations. So feel free to reach out if this seems like something you’d be interested in supporting your work.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

And I’m going to hand it back over to you, Eyal.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

[inaudible 00:48:12], Windy. So, what’s coming next? Well, we’ll be back. Well, let me not jump ahead. So we are releasing a new report that takes a series… So we’re releasing a new report on March 31st. This report builds off of our data as well as material that I’ve written with Dr. Karen Mapp in our report that was released last summer by the Carnegie Corporation called Embracing a New Normal: Toward a More Liberatory Approach to Family Engagement. There’s a series of high level recommendations there. And I think many folks are familiar with the Dual Capacity-Building Framework.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

So this report takes lessons from those publications and our data and what we know in the field of family engagement and offers some very tangible, concrete recommendations for school districts that want to design family engagement strategies that make a real difference for student learning and wellbeing. And it is rooted in three key pillars around trust and teamwork, focusing on student learning and wellbeing, and around how to build an infrastructure for this work.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And we have a ton of case examples from schools and districts that are really excelling and that have taught us a lot about how to go about doing this work successfully. So be on the lookout for that. Report is going to be released on March 31st. We’re going to be speaking about it in depth at the second of the series of these webinars with NAFSCE on April 6th. So you have the QR code there. And you can go ahead and register for that webinar.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

And we are in the midst of designing our Parents 2022 Research. So our research this year where we’re going to be asking parents and hopefully teachers and principals a new round of the data. Again, we’ve been doing this data longitudinally for six years now. And so this is the new round of research we’re going to be fielding it here, coming up in spring and summer for release later.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

I think that is where we land. And we’re going to go now to a question and answer session with Sherri. So I’ll stop sharing my screen.

Sherri Wilson:

Thank you, Eyal and Windy. That was phenomenal. And I hope Bibb is coming back to join us as well. There she is. Hi, Bibb.

Bibb Hubbard:

Sorry. I’m just trying to get in the… The Q&A is so awesome. So I’m trying to get the data and organize it. I’m here.

Sherri Wilson:

As we’ve been going, Bibb has been heroically responding to some of the questions in the Q&A because we had a lot that pour it in.

Bibb Hubbard:

They’re awesome.

Sherri Wilson:

We’ll make sure you guys get copies of all of that when we send out the recording and the slides as well. But let’s take a few from the audience now and see what you guys have to say. Here’s a good one from Cindy. She says, since the parent survey is voluntary, wouldn’t the results possibly skew towards students who may be higher performing?

Bibb Hubbard:

I can take that one. So it’s a naturally representative survey. And so this reflects parents from all different races, all different incomes, all different education backgrounds, working parents, non-working parents. It’s truly representative. So I don’t think that it’s just… And we get the sample of parents through these panels. So these are panels that are statistically waited to ensure that we are not just getting one type of parent responding.

Bibb Hubbard:

So this isn’t sort of a survey that we’re sending out on our website saying, hey, on if you want to respond. This is a much more scientific approach so that we’re ensuring that we’re reaching all different kinds of families and not just the families who typically show up and are more motivated to respond. And these families are getting paid for their participation. So we’re honoring their time. They take it seriously. We take it seriously. So I’m pretty confident in the data.

Sherri Wilson:

Great.

Bibb Hubbard:

It’s a great question.

Sherri Wilson:

I am, too. I think it’s incredible data and I’ve been citing it since you guys first started.

Bibb Hubbard:

[crosstalk 00:52:41].

Sherri Wilson:

Okay. Here’s a question from Sarah. Are there resources for families who don’t have access to a phone or internet? This one’s maybe for you, Windy?

Bibb Hubbard:

Yeah, I think that’s a Windy one.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

Yeah. A really great question and super important, right? Especially the digital divide really surfaced itself during the pandemic. So I would say some of them, like the Readiness Check right now is primarily online though we do have printed packets available that we are looking. And we piloted and we refined. And so if you’re interested, definitely, please reach out because that’s certainly a really great resource.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

And then I would say that while… Again, we’re not direct service providers. So in the spirit of making this widely accessible, a lot of it is on the website online. But really, they’re meant to be used in the context of local implementation, right? So the Parent-Teacher Planning Tool, what’s important is the give and take and sort of the intentionality around it, the research base behind it, because we have iterated, we’ve piloted, we’ve refined it.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

So that can happen offline. In fact, in a pilot school that we’re been using it in DC, sometimes the teachers have used it on screen and sometimes they’ve used it more for a guide if they know that parent was just would be more comfortable with a conversation and then showing the data for those cup of slides. So it’s really meant to, a lot of the resources are meant to really support that in-person communication or that in-person relationship building.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

Another example of that is, or two really quick ones. Last year, we customized and created a parent coordinator toolkit for New York. I think I saw a couple of New York folks on the chat, actually. It’s an end of year, sort of leaning into summer to ensure that we end the year strong, that as family coordinator such an important trusted messenger are setting up parents with the resources and really that motivation to use best maximize summer for learning.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

So we created a toolkit for them. And so that parent coordinator workshop can happen offline. Right? We also have a similar… We have a facilitator’s guide around our developing life skills. We didn’t go that much into some of our social-emotional research, but out of that came out of that research as well. And that’s all about supporting that relationship building on the ground for direct service providers.

Sherri Wilson:

Thanks, Windy. I see a few people are still writing questions in the chatbox. Make sure you put those in the Q&A box so I don’t lose track of them. We’ll try and get to them If we have time. Here’s a question from my friend, Kate, [Kale Krasley 00:55:27]. We go way back. And she would like some examples of the predictive question.

Bibb Hubbard:

From the Readiness Check. So we-

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

Oh yeah. Yeah. Basically, what Jason Simba did was map the key standards that he identified five and then he backed at that. So we have that all in Excel sheets. It’s on there. And what you’ll see is he sort of breaks down the standard in parent terms. So arming parents with that information. But he really carefully did his due diligence in identifying what those key skills are.

Sherri Wilson:

Awesome. Thank you. Here’s a question from Lauren. Were those same family engagement ratings for principal and educator ratings for items given to families? We often survey families and they say they want more communication or more information about how their child is doing, but sometimes we don’t know exactly what that means. I would love to know what families value and what they consider family engagement. Anyone want to take a stab at that one?

Bibb Hubbard:

Well, I want to make sure I’m understanding the question. So, unpacking what it means from a parent’s point of view to engage with schools? Is that the crux of that, I think?

Sherri Wilson:

I think so. Yeah. I think she’s saying that families want more communication about how their child is doing, but they don’t always know exactly what families are asking for. They don’t understand that.

Bibb Hubbard:

Yeah. So I think parents, they are looking for… It starts with what is my child expected to know and to learn. So that’s why this Parent-Teacher Planning Tool is one of many tools, but we found to be powerful because that you get to co-create, you get to establish the learning goals for your child, which by the way go well beyond academics. So I want my child to make friends. I want my child to have high self-esteem. I want my child to feel comfortable raising their hand. And I also want my child to be reading a grade level.

Bibb Hubbard:

All of those things are really important. So at the beginning, it’s that co-creation of the plan and having parents feel like they’re heard in that and that they’re invited to hear that. And then also as those expectations are being put down, what are the milestones along the way the parents should be looking for so that they can stay in that constant communication with teachers. And constant doesn’t mean burdensome. It just means ongoing.

Bibb Hubbard:

So in predictable ways, how can parents and teachers stay connected so that the parents’ observations are getting captured for the teacher. And similarly, that teachers giving their observations to the parents. Often time we hear from parent say the only time they’re hearing from teachers is when something goes wrong, like really, really egregiously wrong. And so parents are like, I would like to know just in a more steady cadence, again, not to add to the teacher’s burden, but to build that relationship and to have a better understanding of what is happening for that child wherever that child is learning.

Bibb Hubbard:

And we’re also very interested in connecting with out-of-school-time providers, and extracurricular providers. Because, again, wherever that child is learning, those dots should be connected so that parent has a full picture of what happened in that child’s day so they can best support what’s happening at home. So I think it’s just sort of unpacking those expectations, What are the milestones, and then what are the ways that they can sort of be helping.

Windy Lopez-Aflitto:

I could just add an example of that. And I alluded to this earlier. It’s like what it looks like. So really, concretely, when we did some user testing for the Readiness Check, the print packet that I mentioned, this was surprising to me. What parents mostly gravitated to was the explanations around the math on how to talk about the skill in sort of at the kitchen table. And they said they often they don’t know how to approach it, right? How to talk about it. And some of those explanations go in-depth, right? They’re sort of off a page. And so that was great insight that they do find that kind of information helpful.

Sherri Wilson:

I am sad that we are out of time. There’s some really, really good questions in the Q&A box. And we will try and take a stab at some of those and send those out with responses when we send out the slide deck and the recording. I want to say a huge thank you to Bibb, Eyal, Windy, Alice, everyone who joined us today. I’m such a fan of the work that Learning Heroes does. I find it so useful. And it’s been really rewarding for me to be able to share that with all of our members, because I hope they’re able to use that resource as often as I do.

Sherri Wilson:

And be sure to follow them on Twitter and like them on Facebook. And this is a QR code with a link to our survey, because we are generously sponsored by the Statewide Family Engagement Center, which is funded by the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium. Here’s another QR code to that survey if you want to do that.

Sherri Wilson:

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Thank you Bib. Thank you, Eyal. Thank you, Windy. I hope everybody stays safe and healthy out there. And we will see you at the next webinar.

Bibb Hubbard:

Thank you so much. This was wonderful. Thank you, Sherri. Thank you, Alice. Everybody.

Dr. Eyal Bergman:

Thank you, Sherri.

Bibb Hubbard:

We really appreciate it. Thank you, [Tenasfi 01:01:07].