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Introduction
Our educational landscape looks much different than it did decades ago. In nearly all of today's classrooms students come from culturally and linguistically diverse families. These students differ in socioeconomic capital, race, language, culture, and the academic preparation needed to be highly successful in today's technological society.
We also know that over the past decades educational and social research conducted on school, family, and community partnerships' support the proposition that when schools, families, and community organizations work as partners to enhance and support learning, our culturally and linguistically diverse students will do much better academically in school. They will attend and stay in school longer, and they will enjoy school more (Epstein et al., 2009; Quezada, 2003).
Further, research also indicates that when families, schools, and communities develop partnerships in which greater participation by parents is evident then student academic achievement increases (Dantas & Maynack, 2010; Olivos, 2007). Research also confirms a need to prepare educators, particularly for hard to reach families in poor and urban communities, who will seek to increase family and community involvement, and as a result enhance student success (Hands & Hubbard, 2011; Henderson et al., 2007; Henderson & Mapp, 2002; Quezada, Alexandrowicz, & Molina, 2013).
Research conducted by Hutchins, Greenfield, Epstein, Sanders, and Galindo (2012) disproves the stereotype that parents who are low income, who are non- English speaking, and who come from marginalized groups do not care about their children's education. In my years teaching multicultural foundations courses at various institutions of higher education, as well as from faculty colleagues, I commonly hear comments made by pre-service teachers in teacher education classrooms-as well as by teachers in professional certification programs-who are not familiar with the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students and families, to the effect "that those parents, they just don't care."
It is for these reasons that this themed issue of Multicultural Education focuses on the role educators can play in order to engage in mutual partnerships with culturally and linguistic diverse families to assure children from these families are academically successful. The manuscripts included here provide insights about how connections and partnerships are developed with various communities, including migrant farmworker families, African- American families, Latino Families, Chinese immigrants, Sudanese and Somali refugee families, and...