Classroom Invitations for Families Reduced Absenteeism and boosted Reading Scores
In San Diego's Hamilton Elementary School, a remarkable transformation has taken place, enhancing both parental engagement and school outcomes. The school's innovative strategies, centred around building trust and meaningful relationships, regular inclusive family events, and linking academic goals with family participation, have proven to be highly effective.
Dr. Brittany Daley, the principal of Hamilton Elementary, emphasizes the importance of deeply embedding family engagement into the school system. The school's approach has challenged the misconception that parents were unable or lacked time to support their children's learning.
Initially, the focus was on attendance and getting families to visit the school as much as possible. Simple efforts to enhance transparency and trust, such as providing a dedicated chair for visiting parents and using app-based communication tools like ClassDojo, contributed to rebuilding confidence in public education at the school. ClassDojo, a mobile app, established open communication with parents, allowing automatic translation into parents' native languages and sharing stories about school activities.
The school's strategy has demonstrated how involvement platforms combined with personal relationship-building and accessible communication can significantly improve parental engagement. Today, Hamilton Elementary has approximately 200 caregivers at every meet-up, with families running community-based initiatives such as a boutique, food distribution center, book club, English classes, and a monthly social meet-up.
Academically, the school integrated family engagement by sending home targeted phonics activities tied to students' individual assessments for families to complete with their children. These activities were taught by students and teachers during conferences. Research shows that parent involvement with reading activities has a positive impact on reading achievement, language comprehension, expressive language skills, and level of attention in the classroom.
Two years ago, the speaker bought each teacher at Hamilton Elementary a blue chair for a dedicated family visitation space. The goal of these meet-ups was to build trust and create meaningful relationships with students and their families, not learning. However, as trust and engagement grew, a focus on academics was added, with a schoolwide focus on phonics and sending activities home for families to complete with their children.
Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, Hamilton Elementary has continued to thrive. The school's strategy has proven resilient, with approximately half of the students now reading at grade-level, and chronic absenteeism down to 10% in their own tracking, with a goal of pushing it down to 8% in 2025-26.
When parents and caregivers are involved in their children's education, student achievement, motivation, and social-emotional well-being increase. Daley views family engagement as the ultimate strategy for academic achievement and a key to creating a joyful school community. Our organization, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education.
[1] Data from Hamilton Elementary School's records. [2] Interview with Dr. Brittany Daley, Principal of Hamilton Elementary School, San Diego, California.
- Dr. Brittany Daley, the principal of Hamilton Elementary School, recognizes the role of family engagement in academic achievement, emphasizing that it not only fosters student success but also nurtures a joyful school community.
- The integrated approach of Hamilton Elementary School, which builds trust and meaningful relationships, utilizes innovation in education-and-self-development like ClassDojo, and encourages family participation in learning, has drastically reduced chronic absenteeism, with an aim to further decrease it to 8% in 2025-26, as demonstrated by school records.
