ABSTRACT
The Ackerman Institute's Center for Family-School Collaboration, founded in 1981 as the Family-School Collaboration Project, aimed to change the nature of family-school relationships from those characterized by alienated and adversarial interactions to ones that were collaborative and mutually supportive. The link between parental involvement and classroom instruction is at best a vague truism to most parents and educators. The Center for Family-School Collaboration at the Ackerman Institute for the Family is a vital resource for confronting and overcoming current barriers to successful collaboration. Few schools have been designed to collaborate with families. Establishing a climate of collaboration between families and schools requires overcoming the legacies of past adversarial and alienated relationships. If educators want to create collaborative relationships with the families of the children they teach as a critical component of school reform programmes.
