"Hello, is this John's mother? This is his English teacher, Mr. Ferlazzo. John has had a rough day."

"I like teaching in this school because the parents don't bother us much."

"We need parent volunteers to bake cookies for the fund-raiser."

"I wish parents here cared enough to get their kids to do their homework."

These quotes (all of which I've heard—except the first one, which I've said) illustrate how educators often feel about parents: We should contact them when there is a problem, it's good when they don't "bother" us, we need them to raise money, and we can blame them for all kinds of things we're not happy about. Unfortunately, research and experience show that these attitudes do not lead to the kind of school-family connections that raise student achievement.

However, the right kinds of school-family connections—those built on relationships, listening, welcoming, and shared decision making—can produce multiple benefits for students, including higher grade point averages and test scores, better attendance, enrollment in more challenging courses, better social skills, and improved behavior at home and at school (Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 2002). Such school-family connections address important nonschool factors—such as health, safety, and affordable housing—that account for about two-thirds of the variance in student achievement (Rothstein, 2010). These connections can also improve parents' feelings of efficacy and increase community support for schools.

What's the Difference?

To create the kinds of school-family partnerships that raise student achievement, improve local communities, and increase public support, we need to understand the difference between familyinvolvement and family engagement. One of the dictionary definitions of involve is "to enfold or envelope," whereas one of the meanings of engage is "to come together and interlock." Thus, involvement impliesdoing to; in contrast, engagement implies doing with.

A school striving for family involvement often leads with its mouth—identifying projects, needs, and goals and then telling parents how they can contribute. A school striving for parent engagement, on the other hand, tends to lead with its ears—listening to what parents think, dream, and worry about. The goal of family engagement is not to serve clients but to gain partners.

It's not that family involvement is bad. Almost all the research says that any kind of increased parent interest and support of students can help. But almost all the research also says that family engagement can produce even better results—for students, for families, for schools, and for their communities (Ferlazzo & Hammond, 2009).

Empowering Families and Communities

Effective family engagement requires the school to develop a relationship-building process focused on listening. One way to begin this process is for teachers and other staff members to make prearranged visits to students' homes.

Unfortunately, in many urban neighborhoods, the only public entities that usually send representatives to visit are the police and child protective services. Schools can fill this void and send a different, more positive message.

At Luther Burbank High School, an urban school serving 2,000 students in Sacramento, California, scores of teachers, counselors, and classified staff make hundreds of home visits each summer. We visit the homes of all incoming freshmen, as well as all older students who have not yet passed the California High School Exit Exam. These visits are not just to tell students and their parents what to expect when they enter high school or to harangue them about the need to work harder to graduate. Our primary goal is to listen to the wisdom that parents have gained in more than 14 years of raising their children. We want to learn about their hopes and dreams for their children and discuss how the school can work with them to make those dreams a reality.

The school coordinates its home visits with the nationally recognized Parent Teacher Home Visit Project (www.pthvp.org), which works with school districts throughout the United States to set up similar programs. Independent evaluations of this project have shown that such visits result in numerous academic benefits for students (Cowan, Bobby, St. Roseman, & Echandia, 2002; Tuss, 2007).

The listening process can take many forms. The home visitors sometimes respond to the concerns that parents express by encouraging them to connect with one another and move toward broader action. For example, during one of our home visits with a Hmong immigrant family a few years ago, the father told us how impressed he was with the online literacy program the school was using to help his son. He added that he wished he could afford to have a computer and Internet connection at home so that he and the rest of the family could also use the program to learn English.

The teacher visitor suggested that if the father knew other parents who had a similar interest in getting access to the literacy program, he might want to bring them together in a meeting with school staff members to explore ways to address this need. The father did so, and out of that process, the parents and the school developed a family literacy project that provided computers and home Internet access to immigrant families, who used the school's website to increase their English skills.

Initially, we used discarded computers and obtained a private foundation grant to pay for Internet access. Later, the school district allocated federal grants so refugee students could purchase new computers and continue the program. Students whose families participated in the project had a fourfold increase in their English assessment scores, and the International Reading Association gave the project its 2007 Presidential Award for Reading and Technology.

Our school's successful Parent University began in much the same way. Some parents expressed an interest in learning more about how the schools operate. Parents then came together with school staff and representatives from a local university to develop ...

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Larry Ferlazzo teaches English at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California; MrFerlazzo@aol.com. He is the author (with Lorie Hammond) of Building Parent Engagement in Schools (Linworth, 2009) and Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers to Classroom Problems (Eye on Education, 2011).