Action Alliance for Children informs, educates, and inspires a statewide constituency of people who work with and on behalf of children by providing reliable information on current issues, trends, and public policies that affect children and families. The organization publishes Children’s Advocate/Defensor de Los Niňos, a bimonthly Web newsmagazine in English, Spanish and Chinese. www.4children.org. 

CA Parent Center, at UCSD is a training center for school staff (P - 12) and parent leaders providing statewide technical assistance and training center in the area of parent involvement.  The Center provides 16-hour trainings for school-based teams (parents, teachers, principal).  The Center also offers, in partnership with the San Diego State University College of Continuing Education, a Parent Involvement Liaison Certificate Program. The Certificate Program provides 15 hours of professional development training for professionals who serve as parent involvement liaisons or coordinators at schools. The Center also publishes a free monthly newsletter of parent involvement activities.  http://parent.sdsu.edu/  

California Alliance for School, Family and Community Partnerships is a newly formed coalition of family involvement organizations.  Its mission is to build a statewide infrastructure to support ongoing parent involvement for student success.  The Alliance is promoting national parent involvement day on November 15, 2007. 

California Association of Compensatory Education (CACE) educates parents and teachers on the NCLB Title I law that infuses money into schools located in socio-economically disadvantaged areas to "level up" the educational opportunities for children.  CACE does this through both local and statewide conferences offering workshops in English and in Spanish. www.caceinfo.com

California Association of Family Empowerment Centers provides information, resources, technical assistance, and systems change advocacy for a statewide network of local FECs. The local organizations provide family education, empowerment, and parent-professional collaborative activities for families of children with disabilities ages 3-22 years old. http://cafec.org

California Comprehensive Center (CA CC) at WestEd, in partnership with American Institutes for Research and School Services of California, is part of a federal network of 16 Regional Comprehensive Centers serving individual or clusters of states. The CA CC provides assistance to the Califoria Department of Education and statewide groups and organizations to help implement fully the Federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, improve student achievement, and close the achievement gap in California. www.cacompcenter.org/cs/cacc/    

State Parent Teacher Association is a million member parent organization. The mission of the California State PTA is to represent its members and to empower and support them with skills in advocacy, leadership, and communication to positively impact the lives of all children.  The State PTA publishes a Parent Empowering Parents guide in English and Spanish.  www.capta.org 

Community Parent Resource Centers (CPRCs) serve families of children and young adults (birth to age 22) who have physical, cognitive, emotional, and learning disabilities. The Centers help families obtain appropriate education and services for their disabled children; work to improve education results for all children; train and inform parents and professionals on a variety of topics; resolve problems between families and schools or with other agencies; and connect children with disabilities to community resources that address their needs. www.dredf.org  

DREDF, a Parent Training and Information Center (PTI) that serves Alameda, Contra Costa and Yolo Counties. DREDF is a resource center for foster youth with disabilities funded by the US Department of Education. 

Parent Training and Information Centers (PTIs) serve families of children and young adults from birth to age 22 who have physical, cognitive, emotional, and/or learning disabilities. They help families: obtain appropriate education and services for their disabled children; work to improve education results for all children; train and inform parents and professionals on a variety of topics; resolve problems between families and schools or other agencies; and connect children with disabilities to community resources that address their needs.  

DREDF is also a Community Parent Resource Center for foster youth with disabilities.  DREDF’s Foster Youth Resources for Education (FYRE) program trains and provides follow up technical assistance and advocacy support to foster caregivers, family members, older foster youth, child welfare workers, and dependency personnel in Alameda County, California. www.dredf.org 

Ed-Data reports every California public school’s yearly progress. www.ed-data.k12.ca.us 

Family Empowerment Centers provide services focusing on families whose children are from ages of 3 to 22; serve families of children with all disabilities; and prepare families to partner with professionals in obtaining an appropriate education for children with disabilities. www.cafec.org  

Families in Schools collaborates with parents, schools, districts, universities, foundations, and other community organizations to foster and promote the valuable role of parents in supporting their children’s learning. They do this through parent education programs (PreK-12), coaching districts, and a focus on low performing schools in Los Angeles.  http://familiesinschools.org 

Family Involvement Network of Educators (FINE) is a national network of over 8,000 people who are interested in promoting strong partnerships among educators, their families, and their communities. FINE's membership is composed of faculty in higher education, school professionals, directors and trainers of community-based and national organizations, parent leaders, and graduate students. www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/projects/fine.html  

GreatSchools helps parents choose the best school by providing comprehensive profiles for more than 120,000 schools nationwide. Other parent-friendly resources offered through Great Schools include exclusive ratings, parent reviews, powerful search and compare tools, and helpful advice.  www.GreatSchools.net  

Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) is a parent involvement, school readiness program that helps parents prepare their three, four, and five year old children for success in school and beyond. HIPPY helps parents empower themselves as their children’s first teacher by giving them the tools, skills and confidence they need to work with their children in the home. The program was designed to bring families, organizations and communities together and remove any barriers to participation that may include limited financial resources or lack of education. www.hippyusa.org/ 

MALDEF PSP (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund - Parent School Partnership) trains parents, school personnel, and community based organizations to lead in the educational attainment of children. Sixteen session program includes: procedures, forms, and best practices to successfully implement and sustain the program anywhere in the county. The curriculum offers sessions that highlight: parent rights and responsibilities; structure and function of schools; the parent/teacher conference; understanding group process; principles of leadership; and the road to the university. www.maldef.org/psp  

National Center for Family and Community Connections at SEDL provides research on connections among schools, families, and communities. The organization describes what family and community involvement in schools looks like and offers research findings and recommendations to help schools, families and communities focus their efforts to impact student success. www.sedl.org/connections/focus.html

National Center for Family Literacy. NCFL’s mission is to create a literate nation by leveraging the power of the family. Family literacy builds on the motivation parents have for their own children’s success and puts families at the forefront of educational reform. Since its inception in 1989, NCFL has trained more than 150,000 teachers and thousands of volunteers to break down barriers to success—poverty, unemployment, poor health and inadequate housing. Research points out that when parents struggle with literacy and life skills, their children have fewer chances for success. Family literacy reverses that cycle by teaching the families of today in order to impact the generations of tomorrow. www.famlit.org/site

National Coalition for Parental Involvement in Education (NCPIE) is a coalition of education, community, public service, and advocacy organizations working to create meaningful family-school partnerships in every school in America. NCPIE’s mission is to advocate the involvement of parents and families in their children's education, and to foster relationships among home, school, and community to enhance the education of all our nation's young people. www.ncpie.org  

National Network of Partnership Schools invites schools, districts, states, and organizations to join together and use research-based approaches to organize and sustain excellent programs of family and community involvement that will increase student success in school. A one-time membership fee and ongoing annual submission of the school’s parent involvement plan entitles members to ongoing access to promising practices. This is the center for most of the seminal research on parent involvement in education, under the leadership of Dr. Joyce Epstein. http://www.csos.jhu.edu/P2000/index.htm 

National Even Start Association, www.evenstart.org - supports sites across the nation in their efforts to provide high quality literacy services for parents and children through: a.    an annual national conference that brings current researchers and practitioners together; b.    academies that focus on the application of current research to Even Start practice; c.    professional development that is focused on the needs of Even Start practitioners; d.    publication of Family Literacy Forum to provide information and resources for Even Start and other family literacy practitioners; e.    support for the development of State Chapters of the National Even Start Association; f.     legislative updates; g.    networking and advocacy.  

Parents as Teachers   provides the information, support and encouragement for parents to help their children develop optimally during the crucial early years of life. www.parentsasteachers.org  

Parents for Public Schools is a national organization of community-based chapters working to strengthen public schools through broad-based enrollment. Invigorated by a diverse membership, they help public schools attract all families in a community by making sure all schools effectively serve all children.  www.parents4publicschools.com  

Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE) works to create communities where parents and teachers collaborate to transform each child's educational environment, both at home and at school, so that all children can achieve their greatest academic potential. During the past 19 years, PIQE has graduated more than 375,000 parents from the basic nine-week parent involvement program and impacted more than 1,000,000 students. The program encourages low-income, ethnically-diverse parents of elementary, middle and high school children to take a participatory role in assisting their children to study at home, navigate the school system, collaborate with teachers, counselors and principals, plan for college, and support their child’s emotional and social development. www.piqe.org

Parent Leadership Action Network (PLAN) is a regional network of parent leaders and organizations in the San Francisco Bay area, working to build a social justice movement for families. PLAN unites and strengthens diverse parents and organizations fighting for education equity, economic justice, quality child care, and parent representation through alliance building, leadership development, and action. www.parentactionnet.org

Parent Teacher Home Visit Project  is an inexpensive and easily replicated model of parent engagement that has been proven to end the cycle of blame between parents and school staff by building trust and respect, instilling cultural competency and increasing personal and professional capacity for all involved. The increased communication, trust and support between parents and teachers via home visits result in: increased student attendance rates; increased student test scores; decreased suspension and expulsion rates and decreased vandalism at school site. Home visits also provide a positive opportunity to meet federal and state mandates that parents be meaningfully informed of their child’s academic standing. www.pthvp.org  

Parent Training & Information Centers serve families of children and young adults from birth to age 22 with all physical, cognitive, emotional, and learning disabilities. The Centers help families obtain appropriate education and services for their disabled children; work to improve education results for all children; train and inform parents and professionals on a variety of topics; resolve problems between families and schools or other agencies; and connect children with disabilities to community resources that address their needs. www.taalliance.org  

Parent - U - Turn is a parent organization in Lynwood, California and surrounding communities that has worked with researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to procure and gather information about quality schooling. In a summer program at UCLA, members of Parent-U-Turn studied the history of education and the workings of the social reproduction cycle. They also learned research and information gathering techniques that they subsequently applied in focus groups in their communities and in data collection which included interviews with teachers in their children's schools.  http://tcla.gseis.ucla.edu/equalterms/features/askput/about.html  

Project Appleseed The mission of Project Appleseed, the National Campaign for Public School Improvement, is to Leave No Parent Behind. The project’s goal is to organize America's 50 million public school parents to volunteer a minimum of ten hours each year to improve the nation's 15,000 public school districts and 90,000 public schools.  Project Appleseed does this through the parent pledge and parent involvement day.  www.projectappleseed.org  

United Advocates for Children and Families. UACC is a nonprofit advocacy organization which works on behalf of children and youth with serious emotional disturbances and their families. UACC is a family organization where parents of youth who have received services for mental health comprise a majority of board and staff members. www.uacc4families.org