Reframing family-school partnerships to disrupt disenfranchisement of Black families and promote reciprocity in collaboration

Abstract

Research has long demonstrated the benefits of family-school partnerships. However, these benefits often fail to generalize to all families, especially Black families. A present and historical pattern of discrimination and exclusion has contributed to the lack of benefits yielded from Black family-school partnerships. A major contributing factor is the narrow way in which schools define family engagement. Such narrow definitions often marginalize families from non-dominant backgrounds, particularly Black families, and reinforce harmful narratives that Black parents and families are uninvolved in their children's education. The combination of continued discrimination and exclusion as well as harmful narratives has impacted Black family-school partnering. However, schools can work to repair harm and rebuild partnerships with Black families. In this article, we advance a framework for such work. After grounding the need for this framework in a historical context, we emphasize three essential components to forming equitable Black family-school partnerships: (a) grounding relationship building in social justice, (b) integrating reciprocity in family-school relationships, and (c) usage of multiple and non-dominant methods and modalities to build relationships.