A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

National Evaluation of The Even Start Family Literacy Program, 1998

Chapter 6

What Percentage of Families Participated in All Three Core Components?

Families who enroll in Even Start are expected to participate in adult education, parenting education, and early childhood education services. Ninety-three percent of families in 1996-97 participated in all three core components.⁸⁴

A multiple regression analysis yielded two factors that were highly related to participation in all core services: the number of support services families received and project age (see Exhibit 5.16 for a list of services). Virtually all (99 percent) of the families who received five or more types of support services participated in all core services, compared to 79 percent of families who received little or no support services (Exhibit 6.9).

Third-year projects as a group had the highest rate of participation in all core services—higher than in younger or more mature projects (Exhibit 6.9). The rising rates up to the third year may portray progressive enhancements in service implementation, while a slight drop among fourth-year projects may suggest that some families are completing some, but not all, of their educational goals. The somewhat higher rate of full participation in projects with five or more years of Even Start experience seems to validate their expertise which afforded them the continued funding.

Seven percent of all 1996-97 families participated in some, but not all, core services. No specific family characteristics (e.g., teen parents, older parents, parents with various levels of prior education, very needy families, less needy families, families with young versus older children, etc.) were related to partial participation. Available data did not allow us to examine closely the possible reasons for partial participation which may include: children continuing to participate after their parents completed their program goals, or vice versa; new projects offering partial services in the beginning months of implementation; and some families being more interested in adult education than child education, or vice versa.

Footnotes:

⁸⁴ The rates of families participating in all core services reported in the annual evaluation reports have increased over the last three years. However, these increases were due, at least in part, to refinements in data reporting procedures. All family records with missing participation data in one or more service areas were excluded from the computation of the 1996-97 rate based on the rationale that we did not know whether these families participated in all three service areas. This resulted in excluding approximately 16 percent of all families from this computation. In the past, these families were coded as "not participating in all three service areas." Excluding these families from the computation had the effect of raising the rate of participation in all core services. Most likely the true rate was somewhere in between 93 percent (which is backed by available data) and 78 percent (i.e., the rate if all families with missing data actually did NOT participate in all core areas, similar to the 1995-96 rate of 75 percent).

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[ What Was the Extent of Participation in Early Childhood Education? ]

[ What Aspects of Even Start Services Are Related to Participation Rates? ]