Start, Head Start, and the early childhood focus of
the Education of Children With Disabilities Act provide opportunities to reach
urban, poor young parents early. Moreover, these programs are becoming more
family centered. For example, Head Start programs are phasing in literacy
training for parents, and the Even Start program helps families in their homes
with ways to prepare their children for school. In addition, the growing family
literacy movement emphasizes parents and young children learning together. In
particular, elementary schools are becoming sites for multi-services for
families. The New Beginnings project in San Diego, for example, registers
families for appropriate community services at the same time as the children
register for school, and collaborative arrangements among a number of service
agencies bring many of the services to the school site.
Sometimes, however, the best results of such interventions require very
intensive support. Two pioneer programs demonstrated the benefits of reaching
young children early who might otherwise not receive good cognitive stimulation
at home, setting the policy and practice frameworks for Federal programs, but
they required a major investment in time and personnel. The Milwaukee Project of
the mid-1960s and the Abecedarian Project of the early 1970s illustrated that
intensive stimulation of very young poor children can lead to higher IQ scores
and that it is possible to have good success from such interventions. Ramey and
Ramey (1992) noted that among a number of income, social, and educational
factors, the mother's level of intelligence is the single strongest predictor of
a child's intellectual development. In both of the above projects, the mothers
were mentally retarded.
With early intervention through full-week, full-year programs in the
Abecedarian Project, all of the children of low-income mothers with IQs below 70
points tested in the normal range of intelligence by the age of three. These
early interventions resulted in a 50 percent reduction in the rate of grade
retention during the elementary grades. The researchers concluded that in order
to promote cognitive development and good attitudes toward learning, young
children need adults around them who model good habits of learning. In the
Milwaukee Project, the participants were enrolled in an enrichment program for
seven hours a day, five days a week, beginning when they were just a few months
old and lasting until they reached first grade. They maintained close to normal
IQ scores through age 14. However, the children performed lower than their IQ
scores might have assumed, but the researchers attributed this to the fact that
they were assigned to the lowest academic groups in their classrooms.
OTHER INNOVATIVE STRATEGIES
Because of working or poor
parents, and communities which have become fractured or decayed, schools must
re-create the "social capital in the community," says Coleman (1991). This means
bringing the parents together to agree upon and to enforce norms that support
the goals of the school. He warns, however, that a strong body of parents may
not always act how the school wants it to act, but will become advocates for the
children of the community.
Davies, Burch, and Johnson (1992) say urban elementary schools participating
in the League of Schools Reaching Out are redefining themselves as community
institutions, responding to the needs of their troubled environments. They use a
number of traditional strategies--open houses, fund-raising fairs, parent
conferences, volunteers, intergenerational literacy programs, and advisory and
policy councils. They also have developed three new strategies--parent centers;
family support programs, such as home visits and parenting workshops; and school
and community organization partnerships, with universities, businesses, civic
groups, and such.
Goodson, Swartz, and Millsap (1991) say successful family education programs
focus on empowering parents. This means they address those factors that alienate
parents from the schools, such as low levels of literac