Background
The Even Start Family Literacy Program provides grants to local projects to provide family literacy services to low-income families. Family literacy services are defined as the integration of the four instructional services mentioned above with sufficient intensity in terms of hours and duration to make sustainable changes in a family. An important premise underlying the Even Start program is that the combination of early childhood education, parenting education, parent-child literacy activities, and adult education adds value to participant outcomes. That is, language and literacy outcomes for children in Even Start should be improved directly, through the effects of participation in preschool, and indirectly, through enhancements in both parenting skills and parent literacy. Parenting skills are expected to be enhanced through participation in parenting and parent-child activities, and parent literacy through participation in adult education literacy training.
Since the inception of Even Start in 1989, the U.S. Department of Education has sponsored three national evaluations of the program that focused on performance and effectiveness. Two of the three national evaluations included experimental studies that randomly assigned eligible and interested families to participate in Even Start or a control group of families who would delay participation in Even Start for at least 1 year (St.Pierre et al. 2003; St.Pierre et al. 1995). The results of these studies showed that Even Start projects were not effective at improving the literacy skills of participating preschool-age children and their parents. That is, literacy gains made by Even Start parents and children were no different from literacy gains made by control parents and children. The control group for these randomized studies was composed of parents who wanted to enroll their children in Even Start but who were randomly assigned to participate in Even Start in the year following the evaluation. About two-thirds of these control parents were unable to arrange any other formal early childhood education (ECE) services during the period of the evaluation, so the control condition mostly corresponded to at-home care by parents or extended family members (St.Pierre et al. 2003, p. 162).
The absence of significant effects of Even Start on literacy skills, along with new requirements in the reauthorized Even Start legislation to base instruction on scientifically based reading research (Sec. 1231(2)(D)), prompted an examination of the Even Start model to determine how it could be improved. The lead investigators of the most recent national Even Start evaluation (St.Pierre, Ricciuti, and Rimdzius 2005) addressed several questions about Even Start’s apparent ineffectiveness: (1) whether the Even Start model was fully implemented, (2) whether Even Start’s instructional services were sufficiently intensive, (3) whether Even Start families participated sufficiently, and (4) whether the quality of Even Start’s instruction and curriculum content was sufficient to lead to positive effects.
The CLIO study was, therefore, designed to test the extent to which researchbased, literacy-focused curricula strengthen Even Start services and lead to significant impacts on parents and children.2 Specifically, the CLIO study was designed to address two primary research questions:
- Is the combination of research-based, literacy-focused preschool, parenting, and parent-child curricula (the CLIO combined curricula) more effective than the existing combination of services in Even Start?
- Do research-based parenting and parent-child curricula (the CLIO parenting curricula) that focus on child literacy add value to the CLIO preschool curricula?
Thus, the study was an evaluation of the incremental effectiveness of providing the CLIO curricula to Even Start projects.
2 This is consistent with Even Start’s second legislative evaluation requirement (Sec. 1239 (2)), which is to identify effective programs that can be duplicated and used in providing technical assistance. CLIO is also consistent with the requirement for research (Sec. 1241) that examines successful family literacy services.