Family, school, community engagement, and partnerships: an imperative for k-12, and colleges of education in the development of twenty-first-century educators

The need for engaging families in their children’s education in schools and for schools and communities to also engage in supporting families can no longer be ignored. Teachers themselves cannot do it alone. For the most part, colleges of education and teacher preparation programs do not require a course in family, schoolcommunity engagement/partnerships as part of teacher training, yet, over the past decades, research conducted on parental involvement support the notion that when schools, families, and community groups work as partners to support learning, student academic achievement increases if they stay in school longer, and like school more (Dantas & Manyak, 2010; Epstein & Dauber, 1991; Quezada, 2003).