Help Shape Family Engagement in California Schools

July 2026

A Survey for Parents/Caregivers on School Communication & Learning Support

The California Family Engagement Network's (CA-FEN) goal is to build an education system that helps teachers and families work together so every child belongs, learns, and thrives.

In 2025, we surveyed teachers. We are currently surveying Teacher Preparation Programs, and now we need direct input from parents to complete the picture and determine how best to support teachers and families in working together.

An issue we've identified from this research is that teachers need more support in sharing data with parents and parents are routinely unaware their children are not performing at grade level, despite existing notification mechanisms — letters sent home, parent portals, and report cards. To change this, we need to increase transparency in student learning and go beyond notification. But first, we want to hear directly from parents about their experiences and the solutions that make the most sense to them.

“True family engagement requires honest, timely information and real dialogue between parents and teachers about student learning. California families: lead the way in showing us how educators can best partner with you to support your children’s learning.”

— Araceli Simeón, CA-FEN Executive Director

“California State PTA values strong family-school partnerships and supports efforts to better understand how families across California prefer to communicate with their schools, stay informed about their children's learning, and support that learning at home. We are glad to help CA-FEN gather these family perspectives, and we encourage our members to share their voices through this survey.”

— Heather Ippolito, California State PTA President

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to the following people and organizations that provided feedback to this survey:

CA-FEN's Planning Team, Dr. Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, Dr. Eyal Bergman, California State PTA, and Bellwether. We also appreciate parents from each language community in providing feedback on the translation of the instrument.

Participate in Our Family Survey

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

Your involvement in your child's education makes a real difference — and your voice matters. To better inform decisions about family engagement in schools, we want to understand your preferences and needs when it comes to school communication, stay informed about your child's progress, and support learning at home.

Your responses will help us strengthen family-school partnerships so that every child has the support they need to succeed.

Help us reach our goal by completing the survey and sharing it with other parents in your community.

To take the survey, click on your preferred language:

English	Spanish / Español	Mandarin / 普通话
Cantonese / 廣東話	Vietnamese / Tiếng Việt	Filipino (Tagalog)
Korean / 한국어	Arabic / العربية	Farsi / فارسی

Do you work with families? Help us promote the survey using this flyer, it has QR codes for each language. Invite us to your workshop or event and we can promote the survey. For more information contact Araceli Simeón at asimeon@ca-fen.org or Toni Hernández at toniherg@gmail.com.

Flyer - English

Flyer- Spanish

For more information, please visit our website at www.ca-fen.org

CA-FEN is a project of Charitable Ventures