[Part 1: Introduction]
[Part 3: Program Growth: First Eight Years]
Chapter 1
The Even Start Program was first authorized in 1988 as Part B of Chapter 1 of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). The Even Start legislation was amended in July 1991, when Congress passed the National Literacy Act (P.L. 102-73). In 1994, the Even Start program was reauthorized as Part B of Title I of the ESEA as amended by the Improving America?s Schools Act.9 According to the 1994 legislation, the Even Start program is intended to:
"...help break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy by improving the educational opportunities of the Nation?s low-income families by integrating early childhood education, adult literacy or adult basic education, and parenting education into a unified family literacy program ....The program shall (1) be implemented through cooperative projects that build on existing community resources to create a new range of services, (2) promote achievement of the National Education Goals, and (3) assist children and adults from low-income families to achieve to challenging State content standards and challenging State student performance standards." (P.L. 103-382, Sec. 1201)10
To be eligible for Even Start, a family must have: (a) a parent who is eligible for adult education services under the Adult Education Act and (b) a child under 8 years of age. Beginning in 1995-96, more teen parents became eligible for Even Start. Since the 1994 reauthorization removed restrictions on services to teen parents who are within a state's compulsory school attendance age range, teen parents in this category may now participate as long as a local education agency provides the basic educational services.11
Even Start began as a federally-administered program in School Year 1989-90, with grants totaling $14.5 million awarded to seventy-six projects. According to the Even Start statute, when program funding reached $50 million, the program was to be administered primarily at the state level. In 1992, with the federal appropriation for 340 projects exceeding $70 million, the program administration was assumed for the most part by the states.
Except for projects under Even Start set asides, all projects now are state administered with all fifty states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia participating. Each state receives funding based on the relative proportion of funds it receives under the Title I local education agency (LEA) grants allocation formula. States hold subgrant competitions and make subgrant awards. The statute specifies that each Even Start subgrantee receive a minimum of $75,000 per year in federal Even Start funds, except that one subgrantee per state may receive less.12
Family literacy programs specifically for migrant agricultural families,13 Indian tribes and tribal organizations, and outlying areas are supported by a 5-percent set-aside of funds from the total Even Start appropriation. The Department makes grants directly to eligible applicants to support the implementation of the Even Start family literacy approach. Since 1993-94, seventeen Migrant Education Even Start (MEES) projects and more than a dozen tribal Even Start projects have been funded. Together, the state-administered and the set-aside projects provide services designed to meet the diverse needs of families across all areas of the nation.
MEES projects serve a highly mobile population including many families moving across states each year. MEES projects are located in urban (25 percent), rural (38 percent) and a combination of urban and rural (37 percent) areas. Some MEES projects coordinate Even Start services provided in multiple states. In addition to economic and educational limitations common to all Even Start families, many migratory parents and children are recent immigrants and are limited in English language proficiency. The MEES educational services need to account for a great diversity in language and cultural backgrounds of participants. One of the major challenges for MEES projects is to design and deliver meaningful educational services to families who may be in their programs for only a few months before moving. Some MEES projects are designed to follow the same families across states over time; others focus their efforts on families only while they are in their communities.
Eligible grantees for the tribal projects are federally-recognized Indian tribes and tribal organizations. Tribal Even Start projects also address special challenges. Their families tend to live in remote, rural areas, located far from the Even Start program sites. (In 1996-97, 70 percent of tribal projects were in rural communities; 30 percent served both urban and rural areas.) In these areas, families' access to educational and support services provided by other community organizations may be limited. For these reasons, some tribal projects rely chiefly on home-based educational services, taking on the challenges of serving families across large distances. While these circumstances may also be encountered by non-tribal, rural projects, incorporating materials and activities that are consistent with and promote the Native American heritage, so as to encourage participation and retention, is an important objective of many tribal Even Start projects.
In addition to the MEES and tribal projects, the law authorizes discretionary grants for: (1) statewide family literacy initiatives designed to coordinate existing federal, state, and local literacy resources in support of family literacy services and (2) a family literacy project in a prison that houses women and their preschool-aged children. These projects also are administered directly by the U.S. Department of Education.
Footnotes:
9 Even Start projects were required to implement in program year 1995-96 the changes made by the 1994 reauthorization law.
10 A full text of the Even Start legislation appears in Appendix A.
11 Prior to this change regarding eligibility of teen parents, Even Start could serve families headed by teen parents at least 16 years old or beyond the age of compulsory school attendance and only if the parents were not attending school.
12 Because of the required "local contribution," the annual total project cost is more than $75,000.
13 To receive migrant education services (under Title I, Part C), migrant agricultural families must have crossed school district lines within the last thirty-six months in pursuit of qualifying work in farm, dairy, fishing, timber, and related processing industries.
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[Part 1: Introduction] | |
[Part 3: Program Growth: First Eight Years] |