School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action

Joyce L. Epstein is director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships and the National Network of Partnership Schools, principal research scientist in the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR), and professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University. She has over 100 pub­lications on the organization and effects of school, classroom, family, and peer environments, with many focused on school, family, and community connec­tions. In 1995, she established the National Network of Partnership Schools to demonstrate the important intersections of research, policy, and practice for school improvement. She serves on numerous editorial boards and advisory panels on family involvement and school reform and is a recipient of the Academy for Educational Development’s 1991 Alvin C. Eurich Education Award and the 1997 Working Mother’s Magazine Parent Involvement in Education Award for her work on school, family, and community partnerships. Her most recent book, School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools (Westview Press, 2001), aims to add the topic of family and community involvement to courses for future teachers and admin­istrators. She earned a PhD in sociology from Johns Hopkins University.

Mavis G. Sanders is assistant professor of education in the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education, research scientist at the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR), and senior advisor to the National Network of Partnership Schools at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of many articles on the effects of school, fam­ily, and community support on African American adolescents’ school suc­cess, the impact of partnership programs on the quality of family and community involvement, and international research on partnerships. She is interested in how schools involve families that are traditionally hard to reach, how schools meet challenges for implementing excellent programs and practices, and how schools define “community” and develop mean­ingful school-family-community connections. Her most recent book is Schooling Students Placed at Risk: Research, Policy, and Practice in the Education of Poor and Minority Adolescents (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000). She earned her PhD in education from Stanford University.

Steven B. Sheldon is a research scientist with the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships and director of research of NNPS at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of many publications on the implementation and effects of programs for family and community involvement. His work explores how the quality and outreach of school programs of partnerships affect parents’ responses and student outcomes, such as student attendance, math achievement, student behavior, reading, and state achievement test scores. His most recent book guides principals in their leadership and work on school, family, and community partnerships (with Mavis Sanders, Corwin Press, 2009). In his current research, Sheldon is studying the influences of parents’ social networks, beliefs, and school outreach on patterns of parental involvement at school and at home and results for students. He earned his PhD in educational psychology from Michigan State University.

Beth S. Simon is a social science research analyst at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She conducts quantitative and qualitative research to improve the quality of services and communica­tions for health care beneficiaries. Previously, she was an associate research scientist at the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR) at Johns Hopkins University, where her research focused on family and community involvement in high schools and the effects of partnerships on high school student success. She also served as dissemination director of the National Network of Partnership Schools and as developer of the Network′s Web site. She earned her PhD in sociology from Johns Hopkins University.

Karen Clark Salinas is a senior research assistant at the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University. As communications director of the National Network of Partnership Schools, she is editor of Type 2, the Network’s newsletter, and coeditor of the annual collection Promising Partnership Practices. She also coordinates work­shops and provides technical assistance to members by phone, email, and Web site. She is coauthor of the inventory Starting Points that helps schools identify their present practices of partnership; the Measure of School, Family, and Community Partnerships; and materials for the Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork (TIPS) process. She is also coproducer of the video National Network of Partnership Schools: Working Together for Student Success. She earned her MSW in social work from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.