Searching for Equity-Centered Change Agents: An Investigation of Family and Community Engagement in Teacher Evaluation Frameworks

Federal legislation in the United States granted states freedom to alter formerly testbased teacher evaluation systems and situate family engagement as a key component in school improvement efforts. Concurrently, theorizing on family engagement has moved away from deficit characterizations and school-based involvement to an asset-based approach focused on equitable stakeholder collaborations committed to driving systemic change. Seeking to understand how states are characterizing exemplary teaching in terms of family and community engagement, the current study uses directed qualitative content analysis to examine 15 teacher evaluation rubrics or standards. The findings indicate that many evaluation systems were narrowly focused on the procedural aspects of teaching and teacher engagement with families was too often viewed merely as a mechanism to yield academic gains and meet legal Searching for Equity-Centered Change Agents 2 requirements. The rubrics that explicitly stated that teachers should be culturally responsive provided a semblance of hope for pushing evaluative practices through the engagement barrier and into a space of collaboration that departs from dominant school-based approaches. These results have implications for the design of teacher evaluation policy and the furthering of equitycentered partnerships with families and communities.

could be attributed, in part, to performance evaluation measures that (a) wholly focused on teacher quality inside the classroom, absent substantial regard for conditions external to that environment, and (b) woefully failed to recognize the influence of culture on teaching (Salazar & Lerner, 2019).
In somewhat of an attempt to mitigate these issues, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015) "eliminated much of the federal role in enforcing test-based accountability across states' teacher evaluation systems" (Close et al., 2020, p. 2) and shifted the parent involvement narrative to one centered around family engagement. The family engagement paradigm embraces a broader understanding of families and encourages educators to "move beyond a primarily one-way and disciplinary-focused communication outreach pattern with family members to a more reciprocal approach" (Leo et al., 2019, p. 256). Through seemingly two separate foci, ESSA granted states the freedom to both alter their teacher evaluation policies and situate family engagement as a critical component of those policies. This is important because classroom teachers have the potential to carry out FCE policy, but rarely are they called upon to do so as a result of performance evaluation systems that have long operated separately from other federal, state, and local FCE policies.
For obvious reasons, evaluation policies should prioritize teachers' pedagogical capabilities, as the results provide teachers with necessary instructional feedback that impacts their practice (Yoder, 2014). Some attention, however, should also be dedicated to how often and in what ways teachers are engaging students' families. Research has shown that school-family partnerships yield improvements in student achievement (Galindo & Sheldon, 2012;Jeynes, 2012;Park & Holloway, 2017), attendance and behavior (Sheldon & Jung, 2018;Smith et al., 2019), social-emotional skills (Roy & Giraldo-Garcia, 2018;Smith et al., 2020), and graduation rates (Wood & Bauman, 2017). Clear links between family engagement and student outcomes exemplify the critical nature of the family-teacher relationship. Yet, systemic FCE has not become integral to all schools (Pushor & Amendt, 2018). Jung and Sheldon (2020) indicated "teachers are best positioned to have consistent interactions and maintain the closest relationships with families" (Jung & Sheldon, 2020, p. 11), yet the literature is silent as to how evaluation frameworks address FCE.
Given the importance of professional teaching frameworks in defining exemplary teaching (Yoder, 2014), it is vital to explicitly link FCE and evaluation policies. Because ESSA allows each state to take the lead in developing and implementing their teacher evaluation systems (Clark-Louque et al., 2019), an opportunity presents itself to align conceptions of teacher effectiveness with FCE practices that promote equitable opportunity for students. The extent to which this is currently occurring remains unknown. This research sought to address this gap by exploring how state teacher evaluation rubrics characterized FCE.

Family and Community Engagement
Many federal policy attempts to mitigate the educational inequality experienced by youth marginalized by race, ethnicity, and/or class have to some degree situated parents and families as "key levers for improving student outcomes and success" (Ishimaru, 2019, p. 351). Programs supporting cross-sector partnerships among schools, families, social services agencies, and the private sector (e.g., Promise Neighborhood Initiative, Full-Service Community Schools) capitalized on the idea that stakeholders working in tandem have far greater capacity to serve students and impact academic outcomes than school-centric approaches (Miller et al., 2013;Riehl & Lyon, 2017). Critical scholars have identified deficits associated with these initiatives, including educational leaders who employ democratic engagement strategies while leaving "existing privilege, oppression, and inequity unchecked" (Green, 2017, p. 376), resulting in the perpetuation of existing power relations and inequities in schools and community settings. As such, Ishimaru (2019) called attention to the need to understand how "parents and families interact with educators and policy makers in ways that depart from the traditional asymmetrical power dynamics, and cultural class, and language divides that have historically limited authentic participation in school reform" (p. 351).
Conceptualizations of FCE within the literature have evolved over the last several decades. Two of the primary aims of NCLB were to close achievement gaps and increase parental involvement (Nygreen, 2019), typically through parent-teacher meetings, volunteer opportunities, and attendance at school-directed events and activities (Jeynes, 2014). Policies designed with involvement as the end goal typically "did not allow for any variability or meaningful interactions" (Ishimaru, 2020, p. 19) other than mere presence in the school. Many post-NCLB family engagement efforts demonstrated how "urgent, short-term pressure to raise test scores, as mandated by neoliberal reform, can eclipse other priorities and aims of schooling," including relationships with caregivers that extends beyond "accountable talk" (Nygreen, 2019, p. 208). Ferlazzo and Hammond (2009) characterized family engagement as a partnership situated in parents' self-interests as opposed to institutional self-interests. Epstein's (1995) School-Family-Community Partnership Model, which situates students within three spheres of influence-home, school, and community-is one of the most well-known frameworks used by school districts designing FCE plans. Epstein (1995) planned the framework with the idea that overlapping spheres of influence operating interdependently with one another would better support students. Though the approach received praise for decades, particularly since there were few models to school FCE during this time (Ishimaru, 2020), it is not without criticism. de Carvalho (2001) claimed Epstein's model advanced parent involvement practices often found in white, upper-middle class communities that look markedly different from those found in underserved Communities of Color. Ishimaru (2020) added that although Epstein's framework evolved over time, "the use of this model in practice has reinforced (and continues to emphasize) white normativity in family-school relations in ways that have very real, very troubling implications for children" (p. 27). This is partly due to activities that often look like compliance metrics and consequently, when families do not conform to the dominant expectations, teachers and school officials often view them as problematic and deficient (Ishimaru, 2020). Thus, although family-school-community collaboration is touted as a competency that educators should put into action, rarely is this done so in a culturally responsive, family-centric way (Fenton et al., 2017;Kirmaci, 2019).
Rather than subscribing to normative understandings of how parents and families should be involved in school-centric activities, some schools are moving toward creating equity-centered partnerships to authentically partner with families and local stakeholders in justice-oriented, contextually-responsive ways (Ishimaru & Galloway, 2014;Ishimaru, 2019;Ishimaru, 2020). Equitycentered partnerships draw from the critical tradition and involve "reshaping unequal power relationships among school-community actors, contexts, and institutions" (Green, 2017, p. 378). This approach shifts family engagement from a school-directed and school-centered approach to one that stabilizes power asymmetries by merging the knowledge and expertise of educators with the "knowledge and brilliance of young people and their families and communities, especially those who have been marginalized by the conventional school-centric model" (Ishimaru, 2020, p. 34). These collaborations "begin with families and communities, transform power, build reciprocity and agency, and undertake change as collective inquiry" (Ishimaru, 2020, p. 55) If these justice-centered FCE efforts are to take hold, educators must do more than shift their mindsets to embrace an asset-based approach to families and communities. Equitable community-school collaborations are reliant upon collective stakeholder groups who are committed to driving institutional and system-wide changes so collaborative endeavors that center all families and communities can be realized (Ishimaru, 2020). From a policy standpoint, one potential avenue to such broad-sweeping change is the revamping of state-directed teacher evaluation policies. Given that ESSA drastically reduced the federal government's involvement in state teacher evaluation systems, state education departments were afforded a unique opportunity to overhaul their systems in ways that respect district-level decision-making and collaboration with stakeholders (Close et al., 2020). Thus, the prospect for creating teacher evaluation systems that reflect equitable collaborations and encourage teachers to adopt this shift exists. It is therefore important to understand the current reality of teacher evaluation in the US before determining which states are capitalizing on the flexibility afforded by ESSA.

Teacher Evaluation Systems
A thorough review of the literature revealed no studies that explicitly addressed FCE as an element of evaluating teacher effectiveness. As context, the following sections provide an overview of teacher evaluation in the US and research focused on teacher evaluation standards and rubrics. Hallinger et al. (2014) defined evaluation as the formal assessment of performance for the purpose of making employment decisions (e.g., tenure, dismissal, merit pay awards). The model of teacher performance evaluation now dominant in the US includes three main components: standards of teacher effectiveness, low-inference classroom observations, and measures of teacher effects on student achievement growth (Hallinger et al., 2014;Steinberg & Donaldson, 2016). Evaluators combine these elements, and sometimes others, into summative scores and/or ratings on a continuum with several levels of effectiveness. States vary in the elements they include in their systems and the extent they dictate local teacher evaluation processes (Steinberg & Donaldson, 2016).

Standards and Rubrics
Comprehensive teacher evaluation systems use professional standards to define exemplary practices and signal state and district priorities (Hallinger et al., 2014;Kraft & Gilmour, 2016). Experts originally developed teaching standards during the movement to professionalize teaching (Milanowski, 2011). Teaching standards typically describe general aspects of quality instruction and professional practice with associated indicators to provide specificity for each standard (Gilmour et al., 2019). When used for teacher evaluation, professional standards are often operationalized in rubrics that outline observable teacher or student behaviors within three to five levels of effectiveness (Milanowski, 2011).
Although multiple teaching standards and observation rubrics exist, Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching (FFT) is the most widely used teacher evaluation framework in the U.S. (Milanowski, 2011). Danielson's involvement in creating an observation assessment for new teacher licensure led to the development of the FFT in 1996 (Danielson, 2013). The FFT is widely recognized as an observation tool, but it was originally designed for broader purposes, to "be a definition of good teaching, in all its complexity" (The Danielson Group, 2021). The FFT includes four domains: (1) Planning and Preparation, (2) The Classroom Environment, (3) Instruction, and (4) Professional Responsibilities, which include FCE. Twenty-two components operationalize the four domains with greater detail. Supervisors typically use only Domains 2 and 3 for classroom observations. Lesson plans and other artifacts often provide data to support ratings within the planning and professional practice domains.
Most evaluation rubrics mirror the FFT by addressing both instructional behaviors and professional practices, but these areas have differential impact in assessing teacher performance. In the average state, classroom observations and the instructional portions of rubrics constitute about half of a teacher's summative evaluation score (Steinberg & Donaldson, 2016). By contrast, the professional conduct sections of the rubric, where FCE often resides, represent merely 2% of the average teacher's total evaluation score (Kraft & Gilmour, 2016).
The varying purposes of teacher evaluation influence how researchers approached the study of evaluation rubrics. Policymakers tend to view teacher evaluation as an accountability tool to prompt school improvement (Hallinger et al, 2014). Some studies, therefore, validated evaluation rubrics by determining whether they appropriately discriminated differing levels of instructional quality (Kelly et al., 2020) and documenting rubrics' statistical relationships with student standardized test scores (Ho & Kane 2013;Milanowski, 2011;Patrick et al., 2020). School principals, however, prefer to use teacher evaluation as a tool for professional development (Derrington & Campbell, 2018;Kraft & Gilmour, 2016;Neumerski et al., 2018;Paufler & Sloat, 2020). Studies focused on the implementation of evaluation systems determined that, under ideal conditions, principals can use classroom observations and rubrics to promote collaboration and professional growth among teachers (Derrington & Campbell, 2018;Kraft & Gilmour, 2016). In a study of 60 principals in six urban schools, principals believed rubrics facilitated objectivity and specificity in determining which teachers needed support (Neumerski et al., 2018).
Research on teacher evaluation is mixed as to whether rubric-based evaluations are associated with positive outcomes (Patrick et al., 2020). Although many teachers believe their evaluations have minimal impact on their professional practices (Paufler & Sloat, 2020), evidence suggests the rubrics associated with performance evaluation have normative influences on teachers. Lewis and Holloway (2018) and Malloy (2020), for example, found that teachers perceived their evaluations as a system for proving their worth. Holloway (2018) observed that middle school teachers' beliefs about professional effectiveness were restricted to the dispositions and strategies promoted by their evaluation systems, thus "participant comments about improving practice were usually couched as targeted strategies to boost observation rubric scores" (p. 12). Neumerski et al. (2018) similarly observed that rubrics shaped the feedback principals gave teachers and concluded, "Districts will need to ensure that these powerful tools do, in fact, standardize an understanding of effective instruction in ways that are appropriate" (p. 292).
Although no literature addressed how evaluation rubrics address FCE, several authors questioned how evaluation rubrics operationalized quality teaching. In essays on instructional improvement, Hazi (2020) asserted that rubrics prioritize generic, low-inference behaviors that are easily observed and applicable across very different types of teachers. The author cautioned that evaluation rubrics offer limited conceptions of teaching and can only judge the extent teachers follow a particular model. Other authors criticized observation rubrics as too general to support instructional improvement and advocated for subject-specific rubrics tailored to various content areas (Hill & Grossman, 2013). Recent studies investigated whether evaluation rubrics included instructional practices most effective for English learners (Coady et al., 2020) and students with disabilities (Morris-Mathews, 2021). Researchers raised concerns that rubrics mischaracterized some research-supported techniques for instructing young children and students with disabilities as typifying lower levels of teacher proficiency (Morris-Mathews, 2021; Patrick et al., 2020). A study focused on classroom management and found few rubrics addressed teacher responses to student misbehavior (Gilmour et al., 2019). Despite their differing foci, these studies share the conclusion that teacher evaluation rubrics overlook key aspects of effective teaching. The current study extends this line of inquiry to consider how rubrics characterize teachers' interactions with families and communities.

Theoretical Framework
This study's analysis categorized elements within teacher evaluation rubrics along a threelevel continuum of parent and community engagement. Ishimaru's (2020) theory of Equitable Collaborations , defined the highest level and provided the four main analytical categories. Ishimaru modeled part of her work on Heifetz et al.'s (2009) theory of adaptive change, which differentiates technical change where individuals apply expert knowledge within existing power structures and processes from adaptive change where empowered actors wrestle with values and creative experimentation.
In conceptualizing Equitable Collaborations , Ishimaru distinguished these types of schoolfamily-community partnerships from conventional FCE across four dimensions: goals, roles, strategies, and change processes. The goals or intended purposes of Equitable Collaborations are justice-oriented systems change and a culture of mutual accountability. Thus, Equitable Collaborations position families in roles where they are leaders who can help shape agendas. The strategies or general means for accomplishing equitable systems change include building capacity for collective action and collaborative inquiry among schools, families, and communities. Because Equitable Collaborations are interested in justice-oriented change, they rely on adaptive change processes that go beyond technical reforms to consider issues of "race, language, power, community voice, and politics" (Ishimaru, 2020, pp. 53 -54).
Although Ishimaru (2020) mentioned conventional FCE, her purpose was not to delineate differing levels within this category. Ferlazzo and Hammond (2009) provide a framework that clearly differentiates between involvement and engagement. Their work meshes well with Ishimaru's (2020) by explicitly addressing goals and roles and providing examples of strategies associated with the two categories. The school-family-community Involvement paradigm is focused on school-centered goals, and thus limits parents and community members to passive roles such as volunteer or client. Strategies in the Involvement paradigm include school officials telling parents what they should do with their children, asking parents to do things for the school, and soliciting community social services or businesses for assistance. The Involvement change process relies on technical solutions, where people situated within the school identify the problems, determine how to fix them, and choose the criteria to use in evaluating success.
According to Ferlazzo & Hammond (2009), school-family-community partnerships reflecting the Engagement paradigm are still situated within the school, but their broader goals include building relationships and being responsive to family and community needs. Families and community members assume more active roles, such as collaborators who help establish the school's vision and goals and contributors who assist in achieving those goals. Engagement strategies, therefore, include maintaining trusting relationships, involving stakeholders in decisions, and building partnerships with entities in the local community. The Engagement change process may involve technical solutions, but these ideas more often emerge from family and community needs and families may drive improvement efforts.

Research Methods
This investigation centered on the research question: How do state teacher evaluation rubrics or standards characterize family and community engagement (FCE)? The authors used directed qualitative content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) to analyze text from teacher evaluation documents and determined how they addressed FCE. Qualitative content analysis classifies and categorizes text based on its content or meaning (explicit or inferred) in a given context to identify themes and patterns. The directed form of content analysis is a deductive strategy used to conceptually extend a theory and is, thus, appropriate for FCE, where the theory is welldeveloped but is being applied in a novel context.

Data Sources
The data for this study included publicly available state teacher performance evaluation rubrics or standards. Identification of rubrics for inclusion involved multiple steps. In January 2021, the authors compiled information from state departments of education websites regarding the performance rubrics or standards used in each of the 50 states to characterize and evaluate teachers' professional practice. The construction of a matrix to record the number of teachers in the state and the source of the state's professional practice expectations for teacher evaluation followed, as shown in Table 1. The authors used this information to select documents for in-depth analysis. The aim was a representative sample of rubrics that pertained to at least 75% of the U.S. teaching population and covered a diverse group of states (n = 15 rubrics). In similar analyses of rubrics for other purposes, Morris-Matthew (2012) Table 1, covered 29 states and roughly 80% of U.S. public school teachers. The states represented a wide demographic range, including small states with low populations of non-White and English learning students (Maine, Vermont) to large states with the greatest proportions of students from non-dominant cultures (California, Texas). The rubrics were downloaded from their publishers and state departments of education websites. The authors did not separately evaluate state-altered versions of commercial evaluation tools. When states provided both standards and rubrics, the rubrics that operationalized the standards for use in teacher evaluation were downloaded. Georgia, Illinois, and Virginia provided only standards without rubrics. To streamline terminology, the authors hereafter collectively referred to the documents reviewed as "rubrics."

Coding and Analysis
For the textual analysis, text that referred to families, parents, and communities was extracted from each rubric. Reflecting Ishimaru's (2020) focus on Equitable Collaboration and systems change, passages related to cultural responsiveness, systems, and school improvement were also located. In rubrics with multiple performance levels, proficient and exemplary skills and behaviors were the primary focus.
Directed content analysis begins with identifying key concepts or variables to serve as initial coding categories (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). As described in the previous section, the authors used Ferlazzo & Hammond's (2009) and Ishimaru's (2020) theories to define codes relevant to the research question and construct matrices to organize and analyze information. In accordance with Ishimaru's (2020) work, the extracted text was analyzed to determine the (a) goals for teacher interactions with families and community members, (b) roles ascribed to families and community members, (c) strategies for family and community interaction, and (d) approaches to educational change. Each rubric was initially coded separately by each author. The authors then met to compare codes, refine codes and descriptions, discuss whether ambiguous data required a new category or subcategory, and develop consensus on final coding. For goals, roles, and strategies, the authors coded the extracted text as depicting "Involvement," "Engagement," and "Equitable Collaboration." For approaches to change, the primary codes were "Technical" and "Adaptive" because Ishimaru (2020) based her theories of change through authentic partnerships on Heifetz et al.'s (2009) work. In accordance with Heifetz et al.'s theories, text coded as exhibiting the technical approach to change characterized actions as implementing and refining evidence-based strategies and working within existing structures and processes. Text characterizing the adaptive approach to change envisioned actors as wrestling with values, empowerment, and adaptation through creative experimentation.
In the second round of coding, in-vivo sub-codes that differentiated specific aspects of FCE within each of the categories were identified using the consensus method described previously. Specific sub-codes are depicted in the column headings in Tables 2 through 5. At the final step, patterns were identified by comparing the level and type of FCE evident in the goals, roles, strategies, and change theories to inform overarching themes about states' expectations for teachers' interactions with families and communities.

Limitations
This study provides an overview of teacher evaluation rubrics using original source documents. This design is limited by the documents made publicly available and by the primary research focus on FCE. The authors, therefore, do not claim to represent how teacher performance evaluation systems are implemented and can only draw conclusions about the design, structures, and content of the systems that were explored most deeply. Directed content analysis can predispose researchers to find evidence that is supportive of a theory, thus dependability derives from both alignment of the predetermined codes with extant theory and the researchers' openness to disconfirming evidence (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). Despite these limitations, this work makes a valuable contribution to the research literature and reveals important implications for furthering FCE and defining effective teacher performance.

Results
To provide context for the analysis the follows, Table 2 summarizes basic information about the 15 focal rubrics published from 2012 to 2020. The documents ranged from 2 to 72 pages with a median length of 11 pages, indicating the documents exhibited varying levels of comprehensiveness and specificity. The location of FCE within the rubrics offered insight into how their authors conceptualized FCE and its centrality in teachers' work. Two rubrics included no information specific to families or community members beyond the school but were retained in the study because the exclusion of FCE is an important finding. Specifically, The 5 Dimensions of Teaching and Learning Instructional Framework focused solely on teachers' instructional behaviors.
Tennessee's Professionalism rubric (2018b) included a section labeled "School and Community Involvement," but the related indicators involved events, policies, and peer collaboration without mentioning families or the wider community. Among the remaining 13 rubrics, 10 provided a discrete section or indicator dedicated to teachers' interactions with families or community members and three combined families and communities into material that included other constituents. Rubrics most often located family and community sections in the professional practice domain. Families were also commonly addressed in sections related to reporting assessment results and collaboratively planning for students with disabilities. The theoretical framework prompted an analysis of whether teachers, families, and communities were engaged in collaborative efforts to enact systemic change. In this regard, the rubrics varied in how they characterized the scope of teachers' work. The 5 Dimensions Framework, for example, narrowly focused on the teacher's technical craft within the classroom (University of Washington, 2020). At the wider end of the spectrum, Ohio characterized "accomplished" teachers as effecting change at the school, district, and state levels, as well as influencing the teaching profession. Only McREL's (n.d.) framework mentioned teachers enacting "systems change in support of learners" (p. 15). When the other rubrics referred to systems, they mentioned logistical tools within the classroom (e.g., Texas, Georgia) or school-wide systems for supporting students (e.g., Missouri). In a similar manner, the rubrics varied by whom teachers were working with to improve their classrooms and organizations. All but one rubric portrayed teachers as collaborating with their colleagues. A plurality of rubrics included students as persons who shared responsibility for the classroom community or the school. Nine rubrics involved families in collaborative improvement, but only five mentioned members of the wider community. Only two of the rubrics (Illinois, Texas) explicitly mentioned families and communities as involved in school-wide efforts.
As expected, each rubric envisioned classroom and school improvement as involving technical problems to be solved by applying expert knowledge and working within existing structures. Eleven rubrics solely characterized school improvement efforts as apolitical and involving activities defined by others (e.g., committees, district goals). Georgia's rubric (2014), for example, said a teacher working toward school improvement "demonstrates flexibility in adapting to school change" (p. 2). According to Massachusetts (2018), parents help create strategies to support student learning and Exemplary teachers enact leadership through collaborative curriculum planning, analyzing student work, and contributing "relevant ideas and expertise." By contrast, Illinois' (2013) standards used language with political overtones, describing teachers as agents of change who are "combatting" school district practices that affect students. Missouri (2013), Ohio (2020), and McREL similarly portrayed teachers as shaping policy.
Seven rubrics included elements suggesting adaptive change involving values, empowerment, or adaptation through creative experimentation, but no rubrics explicitly involved families or communities in such efforts. Rubrics with adaptive components typically described teacher inquiry practices that went beyond applying received knowledge, responding to supervisor feedback, or engaging in professional development activities. California's rubric and Danielson's FFT, for example, mentioned teacher action research. Virginia, Missouri, and Illinois envisioned exemplary teaching as involving collaborative problem solving. McREL depicted teachers as engaged in adaptation within the classroom and schoolwide innovation.

Goals
The goals for teachers' interactions with families and communities are depicted in Table 3. As seen, the rubrics universally viewed FCE as a means for enhancing student learning and a majority (n = 8) portrayed FCE as also contributing to students' greater wellbeing. Four rubrics characterized FCE as benefitting the "curriculum" or the school overall. Only California and Marzano (2017) went beyond school-centered concerns to explicitly state that families could gain from their associations with the school. According to California's (2012) rubric, a teacher in the highest Innovating category "utilizes a broad range of neighborhood and community resources to support the instructional program, students, families" (p. 44). Thus, families benefitted from the teacher connecting them to local sources of support, which was firmly embedded in traditional paradigms (Ishimaru, 2020). No rubrics characterized family involvement as an avenue for any form of equity or systems change.

Roles
The rubrics cast families and community members in a variety of roles, as illustrated in Table  4. Each rubric involved families as stakeholders who were entitled to receive various types of information. All but the FFT went, at least nominally, beyond passive involvement. Most rubrics (n = 9) viewed families as constituents entitled to having the teacher address their concerns. Illinois' (2013) rubric implied the constituent role in saying the teacher, "proactively serves all students and their families with equity and honor and advocates on their behalf" (p. 8). Eleven rubrics characterized families and community members as supporters whose help was beneficial to the school. Thoughtful Classroom suggested the family should support the teacher's disciplinary practices when it described the teacher as "Developing an effective plan for managing student behavior that includes …. an appropriate level of home involvement" (Silver Strong & Associates, 2013, p. 50).
Most rubrics (n = 11) portrayed families in roles that reached a basic level of Engagement by using the verb "collaborate" in association with families and community members. For instance, Massachusetts (2018) said the teacher "collaborates with families to create and implement strategies for supporting student learning and development" (p. 10). The five rubrics that depicted families and community members as contributors described them as sources of tangible resources. Marshall (2014) illustrated this when saying the Highly Effective teacher "successfully enlists classroom volunteers and extra resources from homes and the community to enrich the curriculum" (p. 6). Only California (2012) viewed parents as potential leaders, envisioning the Innovating teacher as supporting an environment in which "families take leadership to improve student learning" (p. 43).

Strategies
Rubrics varied in the specificity of the strategies and tactics for teachers' interactions with families and community members. At the ambiguous end of the continuum, Texas' (2016) streamlined rubric offered only three strategies for distinguished teachers in the area of School Community Involvement: Systematically contacts parents/ guardians regarding students' academic and social/emotional growth through various methods. Initiates collaborative efforts that enhance student learning and growth. Leads students, colleagues, families and community members toward reaching the mission, vision and goals of the school. (p. 16) Teachers and their supervisors may interpret terms such as "various methods" and "collaborative efforts" in different ways, but the centrality of the school's agenda was clear in each indicator. As seen in Table 5, the behaviors listed in the rubrics often fell into the Involvement category, suggesting the collaboration role ascribed to parents was relatively shallow. The rubrics universally described exemplary teachers as treating families respectfully by communicating with them regularly, remaining open to their concerns, respecting their differences, and welcoming them into the school. All but one rubric centered the school in some way, whether through facilitating school-based events and volunteerism or by involving parents and community members in student learning activities or curriculum enhancement. Five rubrics expected effective teachers to facilitate parent support for learning at home. Under Professionalism, Virginia's (2012) standards said teachers "encourage parent participation in learning in and out of the classroom" and "offer strategies for parents to assist in their children's education" (p. 67). McREL and Marshall were the only rubrics to specifically mention parent involvement with homework. Class.
Collab. = Collaboration. Account. = Accountability. Thought. Class. = Thoughtful Classroom The seven rubrics that reached the Engagement level were explicit that teachers should be culturally responsive in their interactions with families. Massachusetts (2018), for example, tasked teachers with "culturally proficient communication with families," which was operationalized as "understanding of and appreciation for different families' home language, culture, and values" (p. 11). Only four rubrics reached the level of engagement where collaboration included some reciprocity. Illinois (2013) expected the teacher to demonstrate mutual understanding by making an effort to understand "schools as organizations within the larger community context" and "the benefits, barriers, and techniques involved in parent and family collaborations" (p. 7). California, Marzano, and Missouri envisioned highly rated teachers as involved in community service or community activities. No strategies aligned with Ishimaru's (2020) description of Equitable Collaboration.

Holistic Review
Looking at the rubrics holistically, many fit clearly into the Involvement and Engagement categories, but none resembled Equitable Collaboration. The few rubrics that straddled categories and the two rubrics where FCE was missing (i.e., 5 Dimensions and Tennessee) defied clean categorization. Three of the commercial rubrics-Marshall, McREL, and Thoughtful Classroom were mostly embedded in the Involvement paradigm. Even though Thoughtful Classroom and Marshall characterized families as contributors, their goals and strategies for FCE were schoolcentered and somewhat limited in scope. In a similar manner, the rubrics from Texas, Virginia, and Ohio viewed families and community members as collaborators or contributors, yet their specific strategies did not go beyond respectful interaction. Thus, these states edged toward Engagement but did not quite make it there. Danielson's FFT and the Georgia and Massachusetts rubrics similarly moved into Engagement by including cultural responsiveness, but they did not aspire to reciprocal collaboration and their roles and goals clustered at the border between engagement and involvement. Only Marzano, Illinois, Missouri, and California were firmly embedded in the Engagement level for goals, roles, and strategies. California also approached Equitable Collaboration by characterizing family members as potential leaders.

Discussion
Analysis of how state teacher evaluation frameworks characterized FCE following the enactment of ESSA makes an important contribution to the literature by highlighting how states missed policy opportunities to reconceptualize how schools, families, and communities engage with one another to advance justice-oriented schools. All but one state's evaluation policies refrained from including any language or activities typifying the mutual accountability and systems change efforts that Ishimaru (2020) defined as Equitable Collaboration. When present, FCE was too often viewed merely as a mechanism to yield academic gains and meet legal requirements. Further, state evaluation systems remained narrowly focused on the procedural aspects of teaching, which begs the question, where do teachers see themselves in terms of equitable engagement and collaboration with families if these efforts are not valued by the very systems that evaluate them? In a time where researchers are conceptualizing social justice as the work of educational change (Datnow, 2020), it remains true that "approaches and assumptions of family engagement still largely default to a deficiency paradigm on the ground" (Ishimaru, 2020, p. 15). This study has implications for how we think about equitable teacher practices and evaluation policies that center families and communities as key contributors to systemic, lasting educational transformations.

Beyond a Myopic View of Teacher Evaluation
Federal accountability requirements post-NCLB spurred an era of teacher evaluation reform in the US that was keenly focused on linking school improvement efforts to individual teachers by way of performance evaluations (Rodriguez et al., 2020). In the end, federal requirements to tie scores from high-stakes testing to individual teachers inspired a backlash that led to their repeal (Close & Amrein-Beardsley, 2018). Yet, despite the reduced federal oversight over teacher evaluation processes, most state teacher evaluation systems remain invested in the school improvement and accountability paradigm (Ross & Walsh, 2019) even though these comprehensive teacher evaluation reforms have failed to yield substantive improvements in teaching and learning (Firestone & Donaldson, 2019;Lavigne & Good, 2018). As the scholarly discourse moves beyond test-based teacher evaluation, researchers are beginning to critique the various standards-based descriptions of effective teaching (Coady et al., 2020;Morris-Mathews, 2021;Patrick et al., 2020) and document the normative influences of rubric-based evaluations on the nations' educators (Holloway, 2018;Malloy, 2020;Neumerski et al., 2018). Until now, critiques have not mentioned the current system's inability to intertwine teachers' evaluation processes with a meaningful engagement of families and communities beyond a school-centric lens.
The purpose of this research was not to make claims about whether rubrics should be used to evaluate teachers in the first place. Authors reasoning, instead, was that if districts are going to use rubrics to evaluate teachers' performance, their definitions of exemplary practices should be interrogated. To this end, directed content analysis and Ishimaru's (2020) Equitable Collaborations framework were useful for determining not only how the various rubrics defined stakeholder goals, roles, and strategies in terms of FCE, but Ishimaru's (2020) focus on systemic change also revealed key information about how rubrics conceptualized teaching as a profession. This research is important because it demonstrates that comprehensive teacher evaluation policies under ESSA should account for the work that teachers do beyond classroom instruction that stand to positively influence student learning, but they often come up short.
Too many evaluation rubrics narrowly characterized teaching as individualistic and involving practices and knowledge defined by others. Fewer than half of the rubrics recognized teaching as a complex social activity that requires teachers to actively engage in problem solving, adaptation, and innovation (Shirley & Macdonald, 2012). Rarely did rubrics recognize how teachers function within systems external to the classroom and that teachers could contribute significantly to school change (Wenner & Campbell, 2017). These omissions are important because Ishimaru (2020) envisioned Equitable Collaborations as transforming systems and power dynamics by combining the knowledge and expertise of educators, young people, families, and communities. How can we expect schools to recognize that knowledge and transformational potential reside in students and families when the documents that define exemplary teaching fail to acknowledge the expertise and power of teachers, themselves, as agents of change in their schools, districts, and communities? Our first recommendation for policymakers, therefore, is that any characterization of exemplary teaching must reflect how a teacher's work extends beyond the classroom and involves more than the application of received knowledge and technical skills.
The format of standards and rubrics that outline exemplary teacher practices also merits consideration. As evaluation tools, these documents serve both practical and symbolic purposes (Holloway, 2018). On a practical level, our review of 15 rubrics covering 80% of U.S. public school teachers mirrored others in finding many rubrics overly general, and thus open to wide interpretation (e.g., Hazi, 2020;Hill & Grossman, 2013). We also examined rubrics that included ample detail, but were so long, wordy, and redundant it was difficult to find what we were looking for in them (e.g., California). Most evaluation rubrics analyzed for this research dedicated separate sections or indicators to FCE, but many also marginalized families and communities by segregating them in a professional practices domain that typically accounts for a miniscule percentage of teachers' summative evaluation scores (Kraft & Gilmour, 2016). Symbolically, separating FCE from teachers' core work with students and placing it at the end of lengthy documents tells teachers and principals that these activities lack importance. Thus, we offer as our second recommendation that rubric creators strike a better balance between conciseness and specificity while appropriately connecting families and communities to the core of teachers' work. For an example of such a rubric, we point to the Massachusetts Classroom Teacher Rubric (2018), which listed FCE as the third of four domains and provided succinct descriptions of each exemplar that included the intended results of the described behaviors, thus allowing for flexibility of process toward specified outcomes. This approach, however, moves away from the lists of low-inference, observable behaviors that characterize current evaluation systems. As the next generation of teacher evaluation policies appears to be moving toward a growth-oriented approach that focuses less on rating and more on self-reflection and professional dialogue (e.g., Ford & Hewitt, 2020;Malloy, 2020), this evolution may be more amenable to shorter, user-friendly rubrics that center purpose over excessive detail. The type of evaluation tools that best facilitate teacher reflection and growth is an emerging area for further research (e.g., Amrein-Beardsley et al., 2015).

Teachers as Equity-Centered Change Agents
Despite the favorable structure of Massachusetts' rubric, its content was toward the middle of the FCE continuum. Like most of the teacher evaluation rubrics examined in this research, its vision of exemplary teaching fell short of representing the goals, roles, strategies, and change processes that Ishimaru (2020) used to differentiate traditional FCE from Equitable Collaborations. To be sure, no rubrics evaluated for this study situated family involvement as a pathway for attaining broader goals associated with educational equity. Rather, rubrics' examples of engagement strategies very narrowly moved beyond what Ferlazzo and Hammond (2009) identified as Involvement (e.g., teachers communicating with parents) to include basic levels of Engagement (e.g., teachers collaborating with families). Teacher evaluation rubrics post-ESSA often acknowledged the importance of FCE as a mechanism for supporting learning, but many sidelined families and community members by characterizing them as entities who merely voice concerns to teachers, volunteer in the classroom, or participate in school-related functions. Only California recognized families as leaders, highlighting Ishimaru's (2020) point that "families-especially those marginalized in our systems-are often completely absent from the research and practice of organizational decision-making and improvement" (p. 97). By continuing to prioritize traditional approaches to FCE in evaluation rubrics, state education policies risk exacerbating the deficit-oriented notion that families who do not participate in school-centered activities are uncaring, incompetent, or disinterested in their children's education (Arce, 2019) Interestingly, despite the absence of Equitable Collaborations in teacher evaluation rubrics, seven rubrics explicitly stated that teachers should be culturally responsive in their interactions with families. These rubrics provide a semblance of hope for pushing evaluative practices through the Engagement barrier and into a space of collaboration that departs from the dominant school-based approach. By contrast, the rubrics that failed to incorporate cultural responsiveness in FCE are instructive as to how these documents viewed teachers' responsibilities in terms of families and students from non-dominant cultures. The 5 Dimensions rubric expected teachers to engage in culturally responsive teaching without including families or communities anywhere in the document. Marshall, McREL, and Ohio ascribed to a limited multiculturalism paradigm focused on appreciating diversity and recognizing the contributions of various cultures in the curriculum. Virginia only mentioned students' cultures in its rubric for teachers of English learners. Like Texas and Thoughtful Classroom, Virginia's general teacher rubric made no mention of students' cultures at all. Somewhat appallingly, Tennessee's (2018a) rubric states that teachers performing "At Expectations" have interactions with students that are "generally friendly" but may reflect occasional "disregard for students' cultures" (p. 8). That so many rubrics reflected incomplete or no understanding of culturally responsive teaching is concerning.
Howard's (2019) explanation of culturally responsive pedagogy reveals why rubrics are deficient when they focus on technical teaching practices while disregarding students' cultures and families: [Culturally Responsive Pedagogy] embodies a professional, political, cultural, ethical, and ideological disposition that supersedes mundane teaching acts; it is centered in fundamental beliefs about teaching, learning, students, their families, and their communities, and an underlying commitment to see student success become less rhetoric and more of a reality. (p. 65) When students' cultures and families are missing from teacher evaluation rubrics, these documents send implicit messages that teachers need not make the effort to meet students where they are and erroneously suggest that in-school learning can be separated from students' out-of-school lives (Gay, 2013). Narrow characterizations of teaching also leave little space for teachers to adopt culturally sustaining pedagogies that engage students in critical evaluations of policies and practices with impact on students, their families, and their communities (Ladson-Billings, 2014). It is vital that teacher evaluation policies do not discourage teachers from engaging in this work. According to Wang (2018), "Teachers are important assets not only in students' learning but also in enacting social justice and advancing equity and fairness in various dimensions of students' lives" (p. 492). Moving in this direction would require evaluation rubrics designed to facilitate school-family-community partnerships that share in the same end goals, to fight against injustice (Green, 2017) and to create systemic change experienced at both the school and community levels (Ishimaru, 2020). Our final recommendation, therefore, is that teacher evaluation rubrics should, at a minimum, expect proficient teachers to adopt culturally relevant pedagogies and demonstrate culturally responsive engagement with students, families, and community members. However, we would be remiss if we failed to point out that if state departments of education are revamping rubrics to include language stipulating teachers possess cultural competence, there have to be systems, structures, and policies in place that support meaningful and authentic engagement with students' families. Said policies have potential to aid teachers in their work as equity change agents by requiring they develop an understanding of culture (Gay, 2013;Ladson-Billings, 2014) and the requisite pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986) that together can foster "a deep seated commitment to the holistic development and well-being of students, their families, and their communities" (Howard, 2019, pp. 86-87).

Conclusion
Referring to evaluation tools, Fullan et al. (2015) noted, "These frameworks are useful as guideposts, but are not sufficient to cause improvement" (p. 12). Professional standards and rubrics may be helpful in defining exemplary practice for employment and professional development purposes, but the attitude and philosophies that govern how they are used are far more important than the tools themselves. It is not enough to include FCE "on a rubric for reductive quantification; rather, it means shifting paradigms to recognize that relational, community-building, and emotional labor is the core of teaching/learning and family engagement" (Nygreen, 2019, pp. 218-219).
In practice, teachers must be rewarded and encouraged to collaborate with families and local neighborhood stakeholders in ways that Ishimaru (2020) characterized as Equitable Collaborations. From this perspective, teachers would be celebrated for conceptualizing families as educational leaders who share in the responsibility for changing inequitable conditions at the macro-and microsystems levels. Teachers would have support to develop relationships with stakeholders external to the school so they can use their collective voice and power to break down injustices both within and outside the schoolhouse gate. These types of collaborations dismantle preconceived, deficit-laden notions about parents and families and are designed to provide students with access to learning experiences that draw from the strengths and assets of the communities in which they reside.