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College of Education

  • A group of three people working in a crowded room

    When parents are engaged, students succeed

    CFEC helps strengthen family-school-community partnerships that lead to increased student achievement and school success through its high-quality capacity-building training and technical assistance to districts, schools, parents, and other stakeholders.

Carolina Family Engagement Center

Our mission is to help all families actively engage in their children's learning and development in partnership with their schools and communities in ways that support student success and promote equity and excellence in education across South Carolina. We do this providing high-quality information and materials, professional development, and on-going support to all participants in the family-school-community partnerships from Early Childhood to High School. Our work is especially focused on meeting the capacity-building needs of underserved communities.

We're working to transform how South Carolina's families engage in education. We do this primarily through our School Partner Program, working directly with schools, teachers, and families to improve family-school-community partnerships and outcomes for students. Our work is informed by evidence-based frameworks, including the South Carolina Family Engagement K-12 Framework, Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships, and Epstein's Action Team for Partnerships Model. 

 

School Partner Program

Participating schools and their teachers and families will receive high quality professional development and technical assistance in family engagement from CFEC over a two-year period.

Parent Leadership Partner Program

CFEC’s Parent Leadership Partner (PLP) Program is a uniquely designed engagement-focused curriculum that aims to strengthen parent capacity to advocate for their children and their school and to connect with local resources.

Family Engagement Resources

Family Engagement Information and Resources for Districts and Schools, Teachers, Parents, and Community Organizations.

 

For 50 years, research has found that effective family-school partnerships are associated with benefits for students, such as higher grades and test scores, better attendance and engagement in class, and more positive attitude and behavior, but also benefits educators, families, schools, and communities.

-Mapp, K., Henderson, A., et al. (2022). Everyone Wins! The Evidence for Family School Partnerships and Implications for Practice. (Scholastic)

CFEC has been the Statewide Family Engagement Center (SFEC) for South Carolina under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) since October 2018, when it received its first 5-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE). We received a second 5-year grant from USDE to continue our family engagement work in October 2023. CFEC is located in the offices of the SC School Improvement Council in the College of Education at the University of South Carolina.

 

Stay Connected

Find out more about our latest projects, learn about new ways to engage, and see how we are making an impact:

 

CFEC is housed in the SC School Improvement Council (SC-SIC) at the College of Education at the University of South Carolina and is funded by federal grants #U310A180058 and #S320A230032. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not represent views of the U.S. Department of Education.

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