Other Policy Resources
Other Policy Resources
Although the federally funded Even Start Family Literacy Program is no longer funded, state evaluations and program overviews continue to provide evidence of positive and significant outcomes for the families that participated in these family literacy programs. Several examples include: Texas (2009-2010), Pennsylvania (2008-2009), Illinois (FY 10), Nebraska (2009-2010), Michigan (3 year review from 2008/09 to 2010/11).
A report from Texas also provides data that supports the efficacy of the Even Start Family Literacy model -- The Value of Texas Even Start Programs (2008-2009). Further, at the 2008 National Even Start Association Conference, a session called Even Start Works! explored three research studies that demonstrated the impact of Even Start Family Literacy programs.
Follow-up data on older children who have been in family literacy programs are provided in Is Family Literacy Achieving Its Intended Outcome? (2004) to demonstrate their success in school.
The Rand Corporation shows that the educational attainment of mothers, as well as neighborhood poverty, is more important than ethnicity or immigration status in determining children's school achievement, in the article A matter of class: Educational achievement reflects family background more than ethnicity or immigration (2004).
The Brookings Institute demonstrates in the article, "School readiness: Closing racial and ethnic gaps" (2005), the importance of parental and preschool child interventions in eliminating racial and ethnic gaps in school achievement.
The Anne E. Casey Foundation released a KIDS COUNT special report, Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters (2010), to emphasize the critical importance of having all children achieve grade-level proficiency by the third grade. Learning to read is paramount to children's success in school.
The National Center for Family Literacy developed a report, The Effect of Family Literacy Interventions on Children's Acquisition of Reading from Kindergarten to Grade 3 (2006), that reviewed the scientific literature on parent involvement and the acquisition of children's reading from kindergarten to grade 3. The results from the meta-analytic review were clear: Parent involvement has a positive impact on children's reading acquisition.
