The Road Map Project Academic Parent Teacher Teams (APTT) Readiness Initiative (2022–2025) is a partnership between the Community Center for Education Results (CCER), WestEd, Highline Public Schools, and Auburn School District. Education Northwest is the evaluation partner. The initiative is funded by the Stolte Family Foundation and the Ballmer Group. This report summarizes progress across the entire Initiative during the 2023–24 school year (SY2023–24), year two of implementation.
Overview of the APTT Readiness Initiative
The Road Map Project piloted APTT in Highline and Seattle Public Schools from 2019 to 2022. Building on lessons learned from the pilot of the APTT program in six schools, CCER launched the Readiness Initiative in 2022 to expand the scope and scale of this work with efforts to bolster the broader family engagement system in each district. As outlined in the theory of action (see appendix A) the Readiness Initiative intends to strengthen partnerships with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) families by building capacity at both the district and school level to adopt, implement, and sustain equitable family engagement practices such as APTT.
As part of the Readiness Initiative, WestEd facilitated new readiness sessions—organized around the APTT Readiness Road Map—with school and district leaders. The readiness sessions are intended to help leaders to cultivate supportive conditions for effective implementation of APTT and other family engagement strategies.
Given the limited focus on family engagement in educator preparation programs, APTT training and coaching is expected to provide a common foundation for educators to develop the mindsets, skills, and behaviors for two-way partnership with families. While the region chose to focus on scaling the APTT model, with the addition of the readiness sessions, the goal for the Readiness Initiative is for districts to use APTT as a lever to support systems change related to equitable family engagement more broadly (see appendix A).
About this report
This cross-district summary report outlines the overall progress during the second year of the Readiness Initiative, which corresponds with school year 2023–24 (SY2023–24). The evaluation is organized around the theory of action (see appendix A) which is informed by the expertise of the core partners as well as research on implementation science[1] and equitable collaboration for family engagement.[2] The current report presents data from across the two districts on the evaluation questions outlined in table 1. See the district-level memos for Auburn (attachment A) and Highline (attachment B) for more detail on each district’s progress during SY2023–24.
Download the full report here, or using the button to the right.
[1] Bertram, R. M., Blase, K. A., & Fixsen, D. L. (2015). Improving programs and outcomes: Implementation frameworks and organization change. Research on Social Work Practice, 25(4), 477–487.
[2] Ishimaru, A. M. (2017). From family engagement to equitable collaboration. Educational Policy, 33(2), 350-385; Mapp, K. L., & Kuttner, P. J. (2013). Partners in education: A dual capacity-building framework for family-school partnerships. Southwest Educational Development Lab.
Posted in: Family Engagement