Scenario: ABC'S Inc., Inc. develops a
program to improve women's reading skills in the context of parenting
education.
In the Fall of 1991, the Director of ABC'S,
Inc. was reading the Fall/Winter 1991 issue of Women at Work, the
newsletter of the National Commission on Working Women and the Women's Work
Force Network (WWFN). A front page story reported a study by the Wider
Opportunities for Women (WOW) organization. The story reported that data had
been obtained from nine member programs of the WWFN (which ABC'S Inc. also
belonged to) showing that both the women in WWFN programs and their children
benefited from the mother's participation in WWFN programs. In fact, 65 percent
of the children of mothers in the WWFN adult education and job training
programs were reported by parents and/or teachers to have made educational
improvements as a result of their mother's participation in the WWFN
programs.
An important aspect of the WOW study was that
the mother's children showed educational improvements even though the WWFN
programs involved had not set out to do anything other than educate the
mothers. While some programs emphasized to mothers the importance of their
being involved with their children's education. there were no systematic
programs designed to have the mother's educational achievements transfer to
benefit their children's educational achievements.
When the Director of ABC'S Inc. brought the
WOW study to the attention of staff, there was enthusiasm for developing
programs that would increase the intergenerational transfer of literacy and
math skills from mothers to their children. One staff member recalled that the
Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy provided funding for programs that
improved both mother's and their children's literacy.
Another noted that the new Public Law 102-73,
which was signed by the President in July of 1991, increased funding for family
literacy in the Even Start program from $15 million to $100 million.
Furthermore, the Head Start program, with funding of some $4 billion was moving
more and more to incorporate the education of both parents and children.
With this growing interest in family
literacy, ABC'S Inc. staff decided that it was likely that ABC'S Inc. could get
some funding to develop a program that would build on the intergenerational
transfer of education from mothers to their children that presently occurs in
WWFN programs, and enhance such transfer. As a first step, the ABC'S Inc. staff
decided to use the methods of the WOW research project to develop a low-cost,
learner-centered, participatory approach to the intergenerational transfer of
literacy from mothers to children. With such a program in place, it could be
pointed to as a first commitment by ABC'S Inc. to family literacy. This would
be useful in writing proposals seeking funding.
ABC'S Inc. staff noticed that, in conducting
its research on the intergenerational transfer of literacy, WOW conducted a
review of research on the effects of parent's education on their children's
cognitive development and educational achievement. They found that the most
important factor that produced high levels of educational achievement was the
number of years of school the child completed. However, the next most important
factor in the child's pre- school cognitive growth and later success in school
was the parent's, and especially the mother's level of education (see chapter 1
for references to the research discussed here).