Grade-Level Essentials

Authentic family engagement for districts

Grade-Level Essentials provides a proven way to build strong school-to-home connections, engage families from all backgrounds, and support student success.

Get started

How Grade-Level Essentials works

Grade-Level Essentials is a bilingual, year-round program that delivers just-in-time academic and social-emotional guidance to the whole school community. The program follows the school year, from the first day of PreK through high school graduation. It is aligned to ESSER and Title I funding.

Learn more

Our evidence

For the past five years, thousands of parents who have received our grade-based information have reported that the information has helped them improve their child’s educational experience in numerous ways.¹

• 96% Report they better understand how to support their child’s learning.
• 85% Report feeling more confident about communicating with their child’s teacher.
• 63% Report that their child’s and/or social-emotional outcomes have improved.

The program maintains consistently high rates of impact for parents from low-income communities.

¹ From 2021-2022 Grade-Level Essentials survey.

Learn more

“GreatSchools’ grade-based parenting newsletters deliver essential academic and social-emotional resources for K-12 parents. The content draws from the best of parenting science and research on education, then translates it into actionable digital media that’s accessible to all parents, regardless of their background. This incredible resource not only helps individual parents, but offers a crucial tool for anyone who cares about engaging families to support educational equity.”

— Claudia Medina, Family Engagement Coordinator, Alameda Unified School District and National Equity Project Fellow

Who we are

As the nation’s leading education nonprofit for families, GreatSchools.org has a 25-year history of delivering evidence-based content and data to parents to support their most critical educational decisions. We create our content in consultation with the country’s top experts and educators, including University of Chicago’s Center for Early Childhood Research, Student Achievement Partners, and Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.