Family-school partnerships are increasingly touted as a means of improving both student and school improvement. This recognition has led to an increase in policies and initiatives that offer the following benefits: improved communication between parents and educators; home and school goals that are mutually supportive and shared; better understanding of the complexities impinging on children's development; and pooling of family and school resources to find and implement solutions to shared goals. This is the first comprehensive review of what is known about the effects of home-school partnerships on student and school achievement. It provides a brief history of home-school partnerships, presents evidence-based practices for working with families across developmental stages, and provides an agenda for future research and policy.

Key features include:

• provides comprehensive, cross-disciplinary coverage of theoretical issues and research concerning family-school partnerships.
• describes those aspects of school-family partnerships that have been adequately researched and promotes their implementation as evidence-based interventions.
• charts cutting-edge research agendas & methods for exploring school-family partnerships.
• charts the implications such research has for training, policy and practice especially regarding educational disparities.

This book is appropriate for researchers, instructors, and graduate students in the following areas: school counseling, school psychology, educational psychology, school leadership, special education, and school social work. It is also appropriate for the academic libraries serving these audiences.