Orientation Agenda Speaker Bios References Map Partners BLOG What's a blog? Home Summer Institute Overview Background Through Learner Centered Leadership and Metro Phoenix ENLACE, we have learned that family participation in educational endeavors is essential to academic achievement, educational attainment, and other preparatory milestones for socioeconomic success and civic engagement for families and their children. Also, what some may assume to be typical parent-educator relationships may no longer be possible because of changing realities, especially for lower socioeconomic class families who may also be ethnic minorities. By providing a platform for discussion from both research and practical perspectives, we intend to explore both the familiar and the unknown regarding the relationship between class, ethnicity, and family formation and maintenance, and consequent effects of their interplay on academic achievement, educational attainment, and other measures of success. Of special interest will be relationship patterns between families and educators in linguistically or culturally diverse urban schools and how particular relationship patterns—including those mediated by non-profit, community-based, or faith-based initiatives—serve to equip lower socioeconomic class and predominantly ethnic minority students to excel in school. Purpose We will explore culture, ethnicity, and family from a variety of perspectives in an effort to synthesize the latest thinking regarding: Culture and its implications for instruction. The influence of social class, especially poverty, on educational achievement and attainment. The indispensable role of engaged families in school success. We intend to integrate thinking about class, ethnicity and family into a new vision of schools that are responsive to these factors first, and not concentrating solely on testing and accountability measures absent consideration of these factors. Aims We aim for the following: Reassessment of our understanding of important relationships between: social foundations (class, ethnicity, and family background) and disparity in academic achievement and educational attainment, and families and the school in promoting academic achievement and educational attainment, for lower socioeconomic status students who are also ethnic minority and for other students. Learning about existing school-family partnership approaches. Reassessment of existing school-family partnership approaches in light of research. Exploration of promises and pitfalls of school-community partnerships designed to equip families and educators to work better with each other in support of children’s academic achievement and educational attainment. Exploration of how education policy supports or hinders development of productive school-family partnership approaches. Outcomes An important outcome of this two-day symposium will be to learn more about various approaches to developing partnership with families—especially as the concept relates to increasing educational attainment in linguistically and culturally diverse urban schools. We will reflect over related personal and professional experiences with respect to the research base on family-related disciplines, including family studies, immigrant education, language & culture studies, and sociology. Through this institute, we will gain insights into various expressions of school-family partnership, how they differ from each other, what they have in common with each other, and what characteristics appear to show the best educational outcome for ethnically diverse or lower socioeconomic status families. We will also begin to integrate pertinent insights into leadership action planning and professional development toward improving opportunities for all students to achieve.