Parents have interacted with their children, and they know many of their learning styles as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Parents also know the community. Partnerships with families require all participants to share responsibility for educational outcomes. This perspective represents a major shift for schools from merely delivering services to students to taking active, integrated roles that validate the cultural and social experiences of families. To succeed in this partnership role, staff need to ask parents for their ideas, meet with parent and community representatives to define goals, and develop a plan for parent and community involvement.
Training can help faculty and family members take on new roles needed for effective partnerships.
Ongoing partnerships need evaluation and frequent checkpoints to see if their goals and objectives are being met and if those goals and objectives are still appropriate. Keeping programs flexible helps everyone adjust to changes within the student body, families, the school staff, and the community. There is a big difference between the rhetoric of partnerships and the activity of partnerships. Educators must truly believe and act on the belief that parents are their children's first teacher and the only teacher that remains with a child for a long period of time. Educators must discard the old deficit model of working with families and, instead, operate on an enrichment model founded on the belief that parents truly want the best for their children.