[Adult Education Development]
[Lessons Learned About the Even Start Program]
Over the past eight years there have been significant changes in the political and social contexts within which Even Start operates. Family literacy was a relatively novel concept in the late 1980s, and the notion of structuring educational services for families was unfamiliar. Coordination of educational services between provider agencies was more likely to be occasional than purposeful. The attention to literacy, both for children and adults, has increased substantially over the past decade, through such national efforts as Goals 2000, which articulated school readiness and literacy goals for children and their families, the recently passed Reading Excellence Act, which focuses on improving literacy skills in children, as well as the research syntheses on reading commissioned by the National Research Council. The importance of early learning as well as lifelong learning is also highlighted in the U.S. Department of Education Strategic Plan.
Further, recent research in cognitive and language development has emphasized the importance of early learning for children (Shore, 1997). Now, in the late 1990s, there is a family literacy community of practice, spurred by the Even Start program as well as the efforts of national advocacy groups (including, for example, the National Center for Family Literacy). There is also increasing attention to the field of family literacy from the educational research community.
How have these contextual changes affected the Even Start program during its second four years? What have we learned from the two national evaluations of Even Start over the past eight years? In the beginning of this report, we outlined the four main research questions that have guided this national evaluation:
Who is served and what services are received? Is the program serving those for whom it is intended?
How are federal resources used to implement Even Start services?
How well does the basic Even Start model work?and what happens to participants as a result of their participation in the program?
What are the elements that distinguish effective practices and programs?
The evaluation focuses both on general programmatic questions that address the extent to which the federal Even Start program has achieved its goals, as well as on the extent to which the effectiveness and impact of the program is associated with specific project or individual characteristics. First, let?s review what we have learned about the Even Start program.
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[Adult Education Development] | |
[Lessons Learned About the Even Start Program] |