Academic outcomes of an elementary school-based family support programme

Abstract

School-based family support programmes (FSPs) work within schools to build partnerships with families, promote family engagement, address family needs, provide mentorship to students and increase access to community resources. Very few programme evaluation studies of FSPs have been conducted. We report on findings from a participatory evaluation of an FSP operating in 28 elementary schools, with emphasis on whether the programme had an impact on student-level and school-level academic outcomes. Analyses approaching, but not reaching, statistical significance indicated that the FSP may have been related to the increased availability of external community resources in schools and reductions in mobility. However, in the absence of a randomly assigned control group, there were no indications that the programme was related to improvements in student attendance, disciplinary actions or standardized test scores. Implications for practice and research are described.

Keywords:

• family support programme
• academic outcomes
• standardized test scores
• elementary school
• poverty

Acknowledgements

Funding for this evaluation was provided through a contract with the City of Seattle's Office for Education. We would like to acknowledge the support of the staff of the Office of Education and the Seattle Public School's family support programme, as well as the many participants in our focus groups. In particular, we would like to thank Thelma Payne, Janet Preston, Isabel Munoz-Colon, Sid Sidorowicz, Holly Miller, Linn Luu-Hibbert, Pegi McEvoy, Mark Bolan Consulting and the Seattle Alliance for Education for the time and resources they donated to this work.