Whitepaper

ClassDojo Explains How School-Family Communication Benefits Learning

San Francisco, CA (USA), May 2026 — Research shows that family involvement has a positive influence on students' academic achievement, regardless of family income or background. A new white paper from ClassDojo, How Strong Family Engagement Builds District Trust, Reputation, and Academic Success, examines the different ways school-family communication benefits student learning and enrollment stability. The 12-page report explains how districts can overcome communication hurdles to create a culture of honesty, clarity, and trust that increases family engagement.

"When families feel genuinely connected to their school community, they stay, which leads to the enrollment stability that districts desperately need," said Jeff Buening, General Manager at ClassDojo. "This white paper shares over two decades of research on the ways that involved families improve students' academic, behavioral, and social outcomes."

The report also shares best practices that schools have adopted to engage families with ClassDojo, including the success stories of three districts that needed to address a high risk of families pulling students from schools:

McDowell County Schools in North Carolina needed to resolve ad hoc communication methods that were confusing parents and damaging the district's reputation.
Moline-Coal Valley School in Illinois needed to overcome language barriers so that educators could communicate with the increasingly diverse community.
Hamilton Elementary School in San Diego needed to heal the rifts that arose between parents and educators right after the pandemic.

According to Hamilton Elementary Principal Brittany Daley, ClassDojo was "the foundation for trust." Initially, the school used the platform to facilitate relationship-building activities and fun learning events such as monthly Family Fridays. Once a foundation of renewed positive relations was established, Daley involved families more in their children's academic lives. The result has been a drop in chronic absenteeism by more than 20 percentage points over the years and an approximately five-fold increase in the percentage of students reading on grade level.