Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I introduce the Family Engagement in Education Act with my colleagues Senator COONS and Senator WHITEHOUSE. I thank Representatives THOMPSON and DESAULNIER for introducing the House companion of this bipartisan bill.

Research demonstrates that family engagement in a child's education increases student achievement, improves attendance, and reduces dropout rates. A study by Anne Seitsinger and Steven Brand at the University of Rhode Island's Center for School Improvement and Educational Policy found that students whose parents support their education through learning activities at home and discuss the importance of education perform better in school. The importance of family engagement begins even before a child enters school. For example, Scholastic's recent Kids and Family Reading Report found that among children ages 6-11, 60 percent of frequent readers, those who read 5-7 days per week for fun, were read to aloud by a parent 5-7 times per week before they entered kindergarten.

Too often, however, family engagement is not built into our school improvement efforts in a systematic way. The Family Engagement in Education Act will promote and strengthen meaningful family engagement policies and programs at the national, State, and local levels to ensure that all students are on track to be career and college-ready.

Our legislation will empower parents by increasing school district resources dedicated to family engagement activities from one percent to 2 percent of the district's Title I allocation. It will also improve the quality of family engagement practices at the school level by requiring school districts to develop and implement standards-based policies and practices for family-school partnerships. It will build State and local capacity for effective family engagement in education by setting aside at least 0.3 percent of the State Title I allocation for statewide family engagement in education activities, such as establishing statewide family engagement centers to continue and enhance the work that had been supported through the Parent Information Resource Centers. For States with Title I-A allocations above $60 million, grants will be provided to at least one local family engagement in education center to provide innovative programming and services, such as leadership training and family literacy, to local families and to remove barriers to family engagement, and to support activities in the highest need areas of the State. Finally, at the national level, our legislation will require the Secretary of Education to convene practitioners, researchers, and other experts in the field of family engagement in education to develop recommended metrics for measuring the quality and outcomes of family engagement in a child's education.

This legislation builds on my successful efforts in the last reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA, the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, to incorporate provisions throughout the law to strengthen and boost parental involvement. Developed with the National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group, which includes organizations such as National PTA, United Way Worldwide, Harvard Family Research Project, and National Council of La Raza, and endorsed by hundreds of local, State, and national organizations, this legislation represents the broad consensus that we must do a better job of engaging families in all aspects of their children's education.

I urge my colleagues to cosponsor the Family Engagement in Education Act, and to work for its inclusion in forthcoming legislation to reauthorize and renew the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source