Education is essential for everyone because it is the foundation of prosperity. It enables people to develop critical thinking, which boosts creativity and improves time management. Therefore, various stakeholders should engage in educational activities to achieve educational objectives (Epstein, 2018, Chapter 8). Due to this, Epstein and his colleagues authored the book “School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Handbook for Action,” which deals with various crucial education system issues.
The two chapters in the book provide background information and directions for two research-based approaches to improve family involvement in the education of students. These initiatives aim to increase families’ time on their children’s education (Sanders et al., 2018). Epstein et al. (2018) give the tools and criteria needed to evaluate the quality and progress of the partnership between different stakeholders in a useful way for different states, organizations, and schools (Chapter 9). Despite the authors’ efforts in elaborating the roles of various stakeholders in the education sector, they fail to attend to three crucial issues affecting the sector.
The authors fall short in discussing the role of school personnel in supporting school work activities concerning the fulfillment of societal needs. As the authors seek to illustrate various methods of involving parents in schoolwork, they leave out the program’s effectiveness across all learning stages. It is important to note that different learners at different stages have different needs and learning outcomes, necessitating a clear curriculum that focuses on the needs of all learners (Manyukhina & Wyse, 2019). Epstein et al. fall short in addressing the government’s willingness to formulate policies that reduce the gap between state-initiated and community-initiated programs. As a result of these concerns, the reader is left with the following questions regarding the concerns not fully tackled by the authors.
- How would the school personnel effectively support parental schoolwork activities while taking care of the different needs of the society that cut across social, economic status, ethnicity, and geographical groupings?
- How effective would the involvement of teachers by parents in school be at different grade levels within the school system and the changing curriculum concerning the maturity and development of the child?
- How willing is the government to formulate policies advocating parents’ involvement in schoolwork to bridge gaps between government initiatives and community desires to enhance corroboration among all stakeholders to improve the education sector?
References
Epstein, J. L., Sanders, M. G., Sheldon, S. B., Simon, B. S., Salinas, K. C., Jansorn, N. R., & Williams, K. J. (2018). School, family, and community partnerships: Handbook for action. Corwin Press.
Manyukhina, Y., & Wyse, D. (2019). Learner Agency and the curriculum: A critical realist perspective. The Curriculum Journal, 30(3), 223–243.
Sanders, M., Galindo, C., & Allen, K. M. I. (2018). Professional Capital and responses to student diversity: A qualitative exploration of the role of teachers in full-service community schools. Urban Education, 56(10), 1782–1814.