Growing Recognition of Family Engagement’s Role in Student Success… and of TalkingPoints

Photo by Ryan Lash, TED, 2022.

The movement to strengthen family-school connections is rapidly gaining momentum across the country. Don’t take our word for it. In a major address delivered in January, US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona outlined a series of priorities. The very first one he mentioned?  “Engaging families as core partners to educators.”  

We are proud to be part of this movement, and we are grateful that our efforts to remove barriers to family engagement are attracting important support and recognition. In the last few weeks alone:

• Local news outlets told the story of how TalkingPoints is helping to strengthen family-school connections in their communities. Check out this article about New Brunswick, New Jersey and this TV segment about schools in Pickerington, Ohio.  

• Our CEO Heejae Lim spoke at the TED conference and SXSW, providing us a platform to share our mission with large and influential audiences. 

• Together, TalkingPoints and The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) called for specific support of AAPI families in an OpEd published in the Chicago Tribune: “Across the U.S., there are more than 100 languages spoken at home in the AAPI student community. And one-fifth of Asian American families are considered to be ‘linguistically isolated’ with no adults at home speaking English proficiently. This means hundreds of thousands of AAPI families are unable to communicate with educators, and students suffer as a result.”

• Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott made a $10 million contribution, the single largest gift in TalkingPoints’ history!  

• TAAF made a two-year $1 million gift to support our growth and reach among Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) families.

TalkingPoints has already helped nearly 4 million teachers, families and students communicate in 145 languages in all 50 states. With the additional resources, exposure, and recognition, we will be able to reach our goal of changing the trajectory of tens of millions of students by unleashing the potential of family engagement in driving positive outcomes.