School Improvement with Parent and Family Engagement

Announcements

Back-to-Basics: Family & Community Engagement
Learn the key concepts of family and community engagement and walk away with ideas to strengthen programs and strategies in your school or district.

Family and Community Engagement Certification
The Fostering, Advocating, Connecting, Empowering, Mentoring, Assisting and Training (FACEMAT) Team certification course.

Classroom Strategies

Teachers are the family-facing professionals who typically have more frequent contact with a student's family. This webpage has been designed to share resources and information designed to better support family engagement through classroom strategies.

Funds of Knowledge: Family Assets to Enrich Classrooms

Local Education Agency (LEA) Strategies

Family and Community Engagement Self-Reflection Tool
Use this optional self-reflection tool for your school improvement or family engagement planning.

Home Visits

Research on effective family engagement strategies has continued to find home visits as a high-impact strategy with correlations to higher school-day attendance, positive student academic outcomes, higher levels of teacher satisfaction, and lower rates of school discipline for disruptive classroom behaviors.

The Institute for Education Sciences conducted a study that reinforces these findings. Their study was conducted as a randomized, controlled model and showed that home visits had the following impacts on participating students:

• A 3% reduction in disciplinary incidents
• A 1% reduction in serious disciplinary incidents
• A 0.35% improvement in attendance rates
• A 0.03% improvement in English Language Arts performance
• A 0.12% improvement in Math performance, fewer students with any disciplinary incidents, and an approximate two-month gain in learning for students

This study was based in Washington, D.C., and the percentage points translated to 585 fewer students having any disciplinary incidents during the school year and an approximate two-month gain in learning.

This page will highlight evidence-based models and recommendations for Utah’s local education agencies to consider. You will also find information regarding Utah’s home visit programs, grant opportunities, and technical assistance documents to support your home visit programs.

Utah State Board of Education (USBE) Resources

ESSER Home Visit Project: Info by the Numbers

Engagement and Skill Development: Observation Guide for Continuous Improvement of Home Visitors

Indicator 8 Parent Involvement Survey

The Indicator 8 Parent Involvement survey measures the percentage of parents with students on Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) who report that schools facilitate meaningful parent engagement to improve services and outcomes for students with disabilities, as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The Indicator 8 parent involvement survey is completed anonymously by families and functions as one of the Annual Performance Report (APR) Indicators reported to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP).

The Parent Involvement survey is distributed via paper, electronic, and phone formats to a representative sample of parents across Utah’s Local Education Agencies (LEAs). The USBE has sought to improve access and participation of all families and ensure that survey data accurately reflects all of the families served. In 2025, the survey achieved its goal of 1,615 responses out of 7,595 distributed, reaching a 21% response rate within two months of launch. The USBE surpassed its goal. State reports can be found below. LEAs can find their LEA level report via the Utah Program Improvement Planning System (UPIPS).

Strategies for increasing parent engagement include collaboration with the Utah Parent Center, accessible resources, home visits, and transparent communication. The Indicator 8 survey is closely linked to other key indicators, such as graduation rates, assessment participation, and post-school outcomes, reinforcing that family engagement is essential to continuous school improvement.

USBE encourages all educators and families to utilize resources like the Indicator 8 Toolkit, which is updated annually during the Spring, and to maintain open, accessible communication to support student success.

USBE Resources

2023-2024 Indicator 8: Special Education Parent Involvement Survey Brief

Terms to Know

• Involvement: Parental involvement and engagement refer to the two-way partnerships between schools and families, where families are involved and meaningfully engaged in their child's education. For students with disabilities, parent engagement includes parents’ capacity to meaningfully participate in the special education process.
• Parent: means:
  • a biological or adoptive parent;
  • guardian, but not the State, if the student is a ward of the State;
  • a person acting in the place of a parent of a student (such as a grandparent, stepparent, or other relative) with whom the student lives;
  • a person who is legally responsible for the student’s welfare;
  • an adult with power of attorney or other legal authority to make educational decisions, or a surrogate parent who has been appointed in accordance with the Utah State Board of Education Special Education Rules.” (SpEd Rules) I.E.36)

• School facilitated: School facilitated refers to the specific responsibilities schools have in facilitating family engagement and ensuring families are supported through equitable practices, policies, and programs. 

Welcoming Families

Setting high and clear expectations can help families more quickly participate in the school community and collaborate to facilitate student achievement. Resources on this page provide examples of evidence-based models that help to onboard and welcome families into a school community so that they may be active and engaged participants.

Family Engagement Guide: Mentoring Models, Welcoming Committee and Language Services