PTA’s process for building successful partnerships is grounded in the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships and consists of three basic steps. The second step is taking action to cultivate involvement through specific programs, practices, and policies.

With a shared understanding of what it takes for students to be successful in school, you and your school and community peers are ready to take action. Work with your principal to create an action team that reflects the school community. Your team may include a teacher, librarian, parent, grandparent, student council president, neighbor from the community, representative from a youthserving organization, and others.

Evaluate the current state of family-school-community partnerships at your school. Identify your strengths and weaknesses, as well as incentives and barriers to involvement. Using the school improvement plan as a reference, discuss how the strengths and weaknesses are impacting student achievement.

Then, create a clear, compelling vision for how families, the school, and the community can work together for student success. Apply the National Standards to your community’s unique situation.

To make your vision a reality, develop an action plan to align policies, programs, and practices with the National Standards. Address the weakness and barriers you identified, and reinforce the strengths. As with any action plan, be sure to define measurable goals.

Periodically assess your progress to determine where improvements have been made and where further work must be done. Also, since a community’s composition and needs are continually changing, continually assess the relevance of your work and the buy-in from the community.

To get started, use the National Standards Assessment Guide below. This will become part of the comprehensive National Standards Implementation Guide currently under development.

Background

The Power of Partnerships: A Guide to PTA's Building Successful Partnerships Process
The three-step process to building successful family-school partnerships 

El Poder de las Asociaciones
Una guía al proceso de edificación de asociaciones exitosas de la PTA—en Español (The Power of Partnerships booklet in Spanish

Additional Resources

Three for Me
This program was designed to effectively involve parents and families in support of children and their education.

National Standards Assessment Guide: Full Version
Includes introduction and information on all six standards for family-school partnerships.

National Standards Assessment Guide: Introduction - Measuring Success
A guide to facilitate local schools' implementation of programs, practices, and policies that are grounded in the National Standards.

Standard 1: Welcoming All Families into the School Community 

Standard 2: Communicating Effectively 

Standard 3: Supporting Student Success

Standard 4: Speaking Up for Every Child

Standard 5: Sharing Power

Standard 6: Collaborating with Community

The Power of Partnerships Family Survey
An assessment tool for PTAs to measure the success of partnership programs.

The Power of Partnerships Family Survey (Word document)
An assessment tool for PTAs to measure the success of partnership programs.

Overcoming Obstacles to Parent Involvement
Ways to move through common "roadblocks" to getting involved in your children's education.