At an elementary school in one of Washington, D.C.’s most challenged neighborhoods, a new model of family engagement is helping transform education. Teachers make home visits and phone calls to establish a connection with every family. Parents don’t just read to children, they test their reading fluency and share the results with teachers.

The result has been extraordinary test scores gains for DC Scholars Stanton Elementary School, as well as a much calmer, more supportive climate for learning. It’s an approach that U.S. Department of Education officials say could be a model for schools nationwide. “We’re trying to move from feel-good parental engagement to results-driven parental engagement,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said at a Dec. 5 event at Stanton.

Karen Mapp, a Harvard Graduate School of Education lecturer who is a consultant to the Ed Department, shared her draft framework at the event for a national approach to family engagement. It includes emphasizing four Cs among staff and families: capabilities, connections, cognition and confidence. It also calls for creating systems and processes that link engagement efforts to schools’ academic goals.

Parents and teachers at the Stanton event praised the new approach, which is supported through a partnership with the Flamboyan Foundation and Scholar Academies. As one father, Michael Hudson said, “Parenting starts at home, and teaching starts at home.” Here’s video footage from the event.

Stanton teachers, accompanied by City Year workers, visit students’ homes to make a connection with parents and caregivers. They then invite these adults in for meetings where they share what’s going on in the classroom and how families can support this. In a video of one of these Academic Parent Teacher Team meetings, a fourth grade teacher shows parents an assessment of their children’s reading fluency, then passes out Dibels testing  for families to use at home.