The literature is very clear. When families get involved in their children's' education, the students achieve more, stay in school longer, and engage school more completely. At the same time we also know that many schools struggle to get parents to come to meetings and events and are often dissatisfied with "parent involvement". For their part, many family members are reluctant to come to school-even intimidated by the school's expectations of them. School personnel for their part are often not welcoming of families, responsive to their lives and ideas, and sometimes even negative and blaming of families. This paper reports on an action research effort with 15 schools over a three year period that is focused on improving the relationships between school personnel and families of their students. Inquiry teams of both teachers and family members have broadened their understanding of "family involvement" and are assisting their schools to explore new strategies to improve family/school linkages. A particular emphasis of this school improvement research effort is to enable school personnel to be inclusive of all families - including those with different language and culture, family structures, economic experiences, and those who are receiving specialized services. Proposal We know from a decade or more of research that family members play significant roles in the education of children and youth (e.g., Henderson, A.T. & Mapp, K.L., 2002). A growing number of studies show that when family members talk to their children about schooling, participate with school personnel, and support their children's efforts, those students achieve more, attend more regularly, and are more motivated and engaged as learners. At the same time we also know that many schools struggle to get parents to come to meetings and events or engage school initiated activities of other kinds. One reason is that for many family members schools may be unwelcoming and/or intimidating, especially to those whose primary language is other than English, are working hard to raise their income level out of poverty, or who may feel shy about developing relationships with teachers for some reason (Gutman & McLoyd, 2000; Lewis & Forman, 2002; Rao, 2000). Yet these reasons may not be very obvious to school personnel. Definitions of family "involvement" or engagement in their children's education seems to vary between school personnel and family members, especially some groups of family members, like those who have less cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984), are culturally and linguistically different from the teachers in the school or who operate at a quite different economic level (e.g., lareau & Horvat, 1999; Lopez, Scribner, & Mahitivanichcha, 2001). For example, teachers often focus on ways family members can support teachers' efforts through such things as helping with homework, or doing special learning activities at home along with attending parent/teacher conferences and other school meetings and events focused on helping families teach their sons and daughters more effectively at home. Family members, on the other hand, might have other notions of what "being involved" in their children's education might entail that never involves going to school at all, and might not involve doing school activities at home, including homework (Lopez, et al., 2001). Of course, these interpretations vary from family to family. Some families do share teachers' most common interpretations and definitions of involvement. But many more do not. Schools that make their decisions about family linkages based on the perspectives shared with only some families, might well leave out large populations of families. A growing number of family support specialists and urban educators are moving away from the terminology of "parent involvement" because they feel it symbolizes the limitations of unsuccessful past attempts to bolster relationships between home and school (Banks, C. A. Mc., 2001; Barton, A.C., Drake, C., Perez, J.G., St. Louis, K, and George, M., 2004; Dunst, 1998; Ferguson & Asch, 1989; Ferguson & Ferguson, 1987; Harry, Kalyanpur, & Day, 1999; Lopez, G.R., Scribmer, J.D., & Mahitivanichcha, K., 2001; Rao, 2000; Turnbull & Summers, 1987). Instead, there must be a mutuality of interaction and collaboration that commits both home and school to each other. Parents must not only be involved with schools, but schools must be involved with families. Especially in our cities, the linkage between families and schools must be strong enough to hold in these most challenging settings. Finally, even this move from involvement to linkage is not enough. The reciprocity required by the notion of linkages must also be played out in a process of cultural awareness and critical reflection (Abrams & Gibbs, 2002; Harry, Kalyanpur & Day, 1999; Kalyanpur, Harry & Skrtic, 2000). As often happens in social science research, once a finding is pronounced, it becomes strikingly obvious: families have a structure and history of their own, in addition to that of each family member. Researchers are recognizing the importance of identifying families' shape and location in their "life course". Particularly important today is to understand how a particular family may depart from what used to seen as the normative family model (e.g., grandparents as primary caregivers, blended families, gay and lesbian couples as parents, and, of course, single parents). Researchers are only beginning to explore how the variation in these critical elements of family structure can affect patterns of response to disability. (Banks, 2001; Ferguson, 1998; Fewell & Vadasy, 1986; Turnbull, Summers, & Brotherson, 1986). A main purpose of the Family/School Linkages Model Project is to assist schools to discover what these reconceptualizations - from involvement to linkages; from parents to all forms of families - actually means. However, problems with traditional models of home-school interactions are already clear (Banks, 2001; Lopez, Scribner & Mahitivanichcha, 2001; Shumow & Harris, 2000). As we already argued, there is an increasing awareness of the systemic cultural bias embedded within some core assumptions in both the rhetoric and regulations of general and special education. The dominant research on parent involvement then, first limits consideration to parents (Villenas & Deyhle, 1999) and then creates understandings of involvement that limit roles to participation in formal school-initiated activities. (e.g., Epstein et al., 1997; Shurnow & Harris, 2000). However, such a focus overlooks the involvement of parents in out-of-school contexts such as church-sponsored activities (Baquedano-Lopez, 2000). As Barton, et al., (2004) point out most parent involvement literature focuses on what parents do and how that fits with school defined needs, what they term a deficit mode of understanding, especially for families in high poverty urban communities (e.g. Gutman & McLoyd, 2000; Moll & Greenberg, 1990). The Family/School Linkages Project One way to effect change in the relationships and cooperation between family members and school personnel is to try to enlist both in learning more about each other's perspectives and trying to develop school practices with regard to families that are well informed by such data. This paper reports on the results to date of The Family School Linkages (FSL) Project - a funded research effort of the National Institute for Urban School Improvement. The FSL Project recruited 13 schools in one of the National Institute's synergy sites (Denver) and one of the linking sites (Louisiana State Improvement Project) that had already defined a need to improve linkages with families as part of their school improvement plan. The overall purpose of the FSL project is to: ü Help school personnel to better understand the families of their students. ü Assist school personnel to seek feedback from families about the school, and find out what families want to contribute to the school's mission and operations. ü Develop responses to the information from and about families that make a difference for schools and student learning. ü Assess the impact of developing new and novel school/family linkages. Specific questions include: 1) How are schools engaging special and general education parents and other family members in the mission and ongoing operations of the school? 2) What approaches and strategies do both school personnel and family members deem successful for all families, and why? 3) How do successful efforts to support families and assist them to participate in schools and/or their sons and daughter's education address issues of culture, language, and class to improve genuine linkages with families? 4) How do teachers and families report the results for student learning and achievement that accrue from family participation in schools and in the design and development of curricula and teaching, including IEPs? 5) What other strategies do school personnel and family members identify for further improvement? 6) Are there are approaches that are inclusive of all families in both general and special education? Each school formed an inquiry team that includes 2-3 teachers or other school personnel and 3-4 parents. These teams have been working together since January 2003 in Denver and since October 2003 in Louisiana. These teams are supported by Project staff to (1) complete an assets map of the school, and later, the community, (2) develop an inquiry focus in collaboration with the school's leadership team, (3) collect, compile, analyze, and interpret data to respond to the inquiry focus, (4) share what the teams learn with other program improvement and governance structures in the school for action planning, and (5) chronicle results of efforts by the school to make changes in family/school linkages though case accounts. Data include not only meeting notes, case accounts from each inquiry team, and project staff fieldnotes, but also transcripts of team and team leader meetings and interviews with each team leader and some of the full teams. The paper will report results of the efforts underway in the 13 participating schools. A focus of the paper will be the results of the Project's efforts to support school personnel to first focus on family/school relationships and linkages, and then broaden their understanding of what these linkages might be. The paper will provide examples of how Project staff have supported and guided the work of inquiry teams through written products, protocols, and professional development experiences. Both school personnel and family members lead busy and complex lives. Creating time and space to engage in the learning needed to better understand and change the school's relations with families has been challenging. The paper will also explore some of the challenges encountered to date with the teams and schools. The session will explore the tension between creating a developmental learning experience for the inquiry teams that enables and empowers them to take on the work of developing the data needed to make effective decisions about how to improve home/school relations and the preference for direction and prescription that many school personnel prefer. Finally, the session will solicit suggestions from participants on how the Project might advance its agenda of building the capacity of schools to better link with families. Exploring the challenges and outcomes possible when working with schools on action inquiry projects will benefit both the presenter and participants. References Abrams, L.S. & Gibbs, J.T. (2002). Disrupting the logic of home-school relations: Parent involvement strategies and practices of inclusion and exclusion. Urban Education, 37(3), 384-407 Banks, J. A.. & McGee, C.A. (2001). Families and teachers working together for school improvement. In J.A. Banks & C.A. 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