The Family Literacy Model

Even Start, like most family literacy programs, offers instructional services that include early childhood education, adult literacy education, parenting education, and structured literacy interaction between parents and their children. According to Sharon Darling, President of the National Center for Family Literacy, the four-component family literacy model is intended to:

...promote intergenerational learning as an effective means to break the cycle of poverty and undereducation. Family literacy provides self-sufficiency for multiple generations simultaneously. When parents and children work together, the parents have the opportunities to gain the skills to fulfill their roles as parents, workers and citizens. Children gain academic readiness and reading skills to be successful learners in our schools (Darling, 2000).

Recent legislation provided a definition of family literacy that is used in all federal programs that offer family literacy services. While Even Start is the premier federal family literacy program, family literacy services are allowable in programs such as Head Start, Title I, Adult Education and Reading First. Federal family literacy services are defined as follows:

Services provided to participants on a voluntary basis that are of sufficient intensity, in terms of hours, and of sufficient duration to make sustainable changes in a family, and that integrate all of the following activities: interactive literacy activities between parents and their children; training for parents regarding how to be the primary teacher for their children and full partners in the education of their children; parent literacy training that leads to economic self-sufficiency; and age-appropriate education to prepare children for success in school and life experiences. (Public Law 105-277).

One of the assumptions underlying the family literacy model is that a child will benefit more from being in a family that participates in each family literacy service (early childhood education, adult education, parenting education and parent-child literacy activities), than from simply participating in an early childhood program. A model of family literacy theory described by St.Pierre, Ricciuti, Tao, et al (2003) predicts that family literacy programs such as Even Start will produce short-term positive effects on the literacy skills of children and parents who participate intensively in early childhood education and adult education services, as well as short-term positive effects on parenting skills and the home literacy environment due both to participation in parenting education and parent-child literacy activities (Figure 2.1). Early effects on child literacy skills and on parenting skills and household literacy resources, as well as enhanced parent literacy skills and enhanced economic outcomes for the family (e.g., improved parent education, better employment, increased household income) all are hypothesized to lead to longer term positive effects on the literacy skills of children in the family and continued enhancement of economic outcomes.

What research about the instructional components of family literacy programs supports these hypotheses? A large body of research attests to the effectiveness of high-quality, intensive early childhood education programs at producing significant short-term children's cognitive benefits for children from low-income families (e.g., Barnett, 1995; Karoly, Greenwood, Everingham, et al, 1998). Model early childhood programs such as the Abecedarian project (Ramey & Campbell, 1988) and the Perry Preschool Program (Schweinhart, Barnes & Weikart, 1993) have produced short-term IQ gains of between 0.5 and 1.0 standard deviation units.

Research evidence on the effectiveness of parenting education and adult education is much less compelling. There is little doubt that parents play a critical role in the cognitive development of their children. A large descriptive research literature links levels of parent education to levels of child achievement (National Research Council, 1998, 2000, 2001), and a number of studies have shown a positive relationship between language-rich parent-child interactions and language development of young children (Hart & Risley, 1995; National Research Council, 1998, 2000, 2001; Powell & D'Angelo, 2000). However, no experimental evidence has been found to support the hypothesis that parenting programs can make large enhancements in parent literacy and parenting skills, and most studies and reviews of research in this area have concluded that parenting education, by itself, is not able to affect child outcomes (Barnett, 1995; St.Pierre & Layzer, 1998; Wagner & Clayton, 1995; Clarke-Stewart, 1988).

Adult basic and secondary education programs have high dropout rates and low levels of intensity, making it difficult to see how they can be expected to lead to positive effects on literacy outcomes (Moore & Stavrianos, 1994), and most reviews of adult basic education programs have concluded that while education and training programs have modest positive effects on GED attainment, they have not been able to increase adults' literacy skills (Bos, Scrivener, Snipes & Hamilton, 2002; Datta, 1992; Duffy, 1992; Mikulecky, 1992). A comprehensive review of job training and search programs shows that these programs have small, but real effects on employment, AFDC receipt, and income (Fischer & Cordray, 1995). Still, welfare-to-work programs have not lifted substantial numbers of adults out of poverty, and a well-respected review of the impact of welfare-to-work programs concluded that, while almost of the programs studied led to small gains in earnings, many participants remained in poverty and on welfare (Gueron & Pauly, 1991). In addition, the authors voiced concern that even mothers who obtain jobs frequently leave or lose them, for reasons such as a lack of transportation or child care and loss of health benefits for children.

Thus, previous research about family literacy instructional components shows that high-quality, intensive early childhood education programs can indeed produce short-term cognitive benefits for low-income children. However, expectations about the effectiveness of parenting education and adult education programs for parents should be modest at best, with subsequent effects on their children being even more unlikely, leading Ramey, Ramey, Gaines & Blair (1995) to question the premise that adult-focused programs can ever have benefits for children. Even assuming that it might be possible to significantly alter parent literacy and parenting skills, research has not shown that these changes will translate into improved literacy performance among children in a timely manner (Ramey & Ramey, 1992).

In spite of the questions raised by this research evidence, the family literacy model hypothesizes that the instructional services described above will be more effective when integrated into a unified program, that some synergy is expected from receiving the combination of services, and that the integration of instructional services will lead to enhanced outcomes both for children and their parents.

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