Concluding Remarks

There is a continuing intergenerational pattern in low literacy. Family literacy programs have emerged as one of the most effective intervention approaches for developing literacy levels in either parents or children. Recent surveys (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1993, Statistics Canada, 1995) have indicated a positive relationship between parent education level and individual literacy.

In addition, data from the National Center for Children in Poverty (1992) indicate that parents who have not graduated high school are twice as likely to live in poverty as those whose parents graduate. At the same time, children from low income families are significantly likely to encounter school difficulties throughout their school careers, culminating in a drop out rate twice that of middle income families.

Family literacy intervention has become a compelling approach, because it is based on the view that literacy development occurs in a family context throughout the life span. Parents who have negative literacy experiences themselves and who encounter continued economic stresses will have difficulty in supporting their children's literacy beaming and communicating positive attitudes about literacy or schooling.

Recently, analysis of data from programs developed by the National Center for Family Literacy (Philliber, Spillman, and King, 1996) has noted that program retention rates of family literacy programs were higher than for other adult basic education programs. Thus while adults tended to have better attendance rates in family literacy programs, on average, adult reading achievement increased one grade level. This gain was twice that of reading gains achieved by a comparison group of adult basic education programs. At the same time, children in family literacy programs made greater gains across several dimensions of language, reasoning, and social relations than did children in comparable child focused programs which did not include family literacy.