Academic outcomes of an elementary school-based family support programme

School-based family support programmes (FSPs) work within schools to build partnerships with families, promote family engagement, address family needs, provide mentorship to students and increase access to community resources. Very few programme evaluation studies of FSPs have been conducted. We report on findings from a participatory evaluation of an FSP operating in 28 elementary schools, with emphasis on whether the programme had an impact on student-level and school-level academic outcomes. Analyses approaching, but not reaching, statistical significance indicated that the FSP may have been related to the increased availability of external community resources in schools and reductions in mobility. However, in the absence of a randomly assigned control group, there were no indications that the programme was related to improvements in student attendance, disciplinary actions or standardized test scores. Implications for practice and research are described.