Home, School, and Community Collaboration: Culturally Responsive Family Engagement

Kathy B. Grant, EdD, is an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction at SUNY Plattsburgh’s School of Education. She taught undergraduate courses in family involvement, as well as graduate courses in educational psychology and child development. She also worked as a home-school coordinator through Title 1 in the Missoula School District in Missoula, Montana. During her six years in this position, she oversaw the development of family resource centers at the elementary and middle school levels, worked with family outreach specialists and social workers, established parent libraries, and conducted home visits. As home-school coordinator, she helped develop an Even Start program serving children and parents. Having taught second, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, as well as high school, she has worked collaboratively with families for more than 30 years. In 2014 in collaboration with two rural upstate New York school districts, she consulted on establishment of two elementary family resource centers. These two centers will be part of a larger SUNY clinical field experience effort to prepare teacher candidates to authentically work with families.

Julie A. Ray (Ph.D., University of Missouri, Columbia) is a professor emeritus of Early Childhood Education at Southeast Missouri State University. With 42 years’ experience in teaching both young children and undergraduate / graduate early childhood assessment courses, she has seen major changes in the best practices of assessing children’s development and learning. As a supervisor of clinical field experiences in the preschool and primary grades, she also observed many real life examples of the complexities in early childhood assessment. Ray is a longtime member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and served as a higher education peer reviewer and auditor for programs seeking NAEYC accreditation.   This is her second early childhood textbook, as she is the co-author of Home, School, and Community Collaboration with Kathy Grant, now in its 5th edition.  These experiences and education have shaped and informed this textbook to be a comprehensive, yet practical guide to the subject of assessment of young children.