The Region 6 Comprehensive Center (RC6) provides state-level support to the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE), as well as to some of the 79 Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) throughout the state. SCDE’s vision is for all students to graduate prepared for success in college, careers, and citizenship. A goal within this vision is that by 2022, districts will have available a system of personalized and digital learning that supports students in a safe learning environment to meet the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate.
RC6 supports the SCDE as it gathers and synthesizes data around its statewide MTSS initiative and equitable opportunities for students to meet the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate. The driving forces behind much of RC6’s technical assistance and consultative services are to provide positive school climates through student supports and family engagement and supporting low-performing schools.
Supporting Collaborative Structures for Family Engagement
The RC6 project assists the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) in providing integrated and focused family engagement support to districts and schools, particularly rural districts and low-performing schools that may not have strong family-engagement initiatives. Supports are designed to enhance the organizational capacity of districts (particularly rural districts and low-performing schools that may or may not have strong family-engagement initiatives).
The short-term goals are to: (a) enhance SCDE, district, and school awareness about the extent of statewide resources and coordination; (b) increase SCDE knowledge of innovative solutions to challenges experienced by families arising from district- and school-level remote learning; and (c) contribute to the SCDE’s understanding of how its schools are currently using the self-assessment tools recommended by SCDE as part of their Family Engagement K-12 Framework.
Support for South Carolina’s Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) Scale-Up Initiative
The RC6 supports the South Carolina Department of Education in understanding the successes, challenges, and informational or other needs of districts and schools in implementing a Multi-Tiered System of Support to improve student achievement, social-emotional development, and student behavior. The Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) aims to address a lack of systematic processes at the district and school level for identifying and supporting students in need of additional supports in and beyond the classroom.
State law, ACT 213, directed South Carolina LEAs to begin implementing Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) for the 2019-20 school year. The state’s MTSS is a systematic, continuous-improvement framework in which data-based problem solving and decision-making is practiced across all levels of the educational system. The effort targets improving student achievement, social-emotional development and student behavior.
Throughout the 2020-21 school year, the RC6 worked closely with the SCDE and 15 districts across the state to identify barriers to district and school level MTSS implementation. A few of the barriers that were identified included a lack of resources for school-based implementers and a need for focused professional development on key areas of implementation. The goal of this project is to build capacity statewide through continued analysis of implementation progress and a review of existing and needed resources to aid implementation efforts.
Aligned Services: Re-imagining the South Carolina Office of School Transformation Supports
The South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) has a state-level framework that connects agency work to statewide student learning and the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate. The is providing technical assistance to the SCDE Office of School Transformation (OST) to enhance its capacity to use an integrated, comprehensive model of tier systems of support by improving lines of collaboration across program offices and improving key support systems (e.g., deployment of Transformation Coaches) to districts and schools.
The long-term goal is improvement of support from SCDE to districts and schools to meet the needs of underserved and underperforming students. This RC6 project will help build capacity for the SCDE in terms of: (1) streamlining program planning, (2) improving connections between the SCDE and LEAs, (3) supporting school improvement efforts, and (4) increasing the capacity of Transformation Coaches to work effectively with low-performing schools. As part of its current planning efforts, the SCDE is working to develop and deploy a system of comprehensive support, which relies on the collaboration and coordination of services across the agency.
Supporting Collaborative Structures for Family Engagement
The RC6 project assists the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) in providing integrated and focused family engagement support to districts and schools, particularly rural districts and low-performing schools that may not have strong family-engagement initiatives. Supports are designed to enhance the organizational capacity of districts (particularly rural districts and low-performing schools that may or may not have strong family-engagement initiatives).
The short-term goals are to: (a) enhance SCDE, district, and school awareness about the extent of statewide resources and coordination; (b) increase SCDE knowledge of innovative solutions to challenges experienced by families arising from district- and school-level remote learning; and (c) contribute to the SCDE’s understanding of how its schools are currently using the self-assessment tools recommended by SCDE as part of their Family Engagement K-12 Framework.
The long-term goal is to support the SCDE efforts to provide sustainable, integrated, and focused family engagement support to LEAs leading to improved school improvement planning in this area. Ultimately, this support could lead to changes in how well families engage with schools.
Read highlights of RC6 projects in South Carolina.
In 2021 the Region 6 Center supported the South Carolina Department of Education in hosting its annual Family Engagement Summit: Moving Beyond Family Night. The summit was a virtual event with more than 20 sessions across strands to help educators and community organizations to strengthen relationships, develop stronger communication practices with families, engage in collaborative practices, and assist families who are helping their students learn at home.
Visit our Family and Community Engagement page to access FACE Summit on-demand recordings of the sessions.
Family Engagement Supports and Resources: South Carolina
Research suggests that no matter the socio-economic status or background of a student, if their parents and families are engaged in their education, they are more likely to do better in school and stay in school longer (Epstein and Associates, 2018). As a result, many educational leaders are deeply committed to supporting districts, schools, and communities to engage parents and families more actively in the overall development of their students.
The information in this document is intended as a resource for those in South Carolina doing the important work of supporting family engagement. That is, as State Education Agency (SEA) staff and others provide technical assistance to districts and schools, share research and best practices, and continuously reflect on and improve parental involvement policies/practices across the state, the RC6 at SERVE offers this document as a roadmap of who is doing what work.
