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SUMMARY
The Office of the Auditor General has completed the fourth
evaluation of Arizona’s Family Literacy Program. This evaluation was conducted
pursuant to the provisions of A.R.S. §41-1279.08. This evaluation provides
information about the program’s effectiveness and recommendations for the
program.
The program’s intent is to improve the basic academic and
literacy skills of economically and educationally disadvantaged parents and
their preschool children. It is based on the premise that the educational skills
of parents, and, in turn, their children, must increase in order to break the
intergenerational cycles of poverty and illiteracy. Arizona’s Family Literacy
Program uses a model that integrates the four main components advanced by the
National Center for Family Literacy. These components are adult literacy
instruction, parent and child together, parent education and discussion and
support groups, and early childhood education for children ages 3 to 4. Families
receive these services in a classroom setting, generally on a school-year basis.
The State Board of Education and the Arizona Department of
Education (ADE) are responsible for administering Family Literacy. To provide
services, ADE contracts with other organizations, including school districts,
community colleges, and community-based organizations. ADE currently has
contracts with 13 organizations to provide services at 23 sites. These sites are
located in five counties: Maricopa, Pima, Coconino, Yuma, and Cochise.
ADE Should Increase Program Oversight to
Improve Site Compliance with Program Criteria
(See pages 11 through 18)
ADE’s Adult Education Division should continue recent
efforts to increase program oversight to help ensure that participants are
receiving quality services. Although ADE administers the Family Literacy
Program, ADE has not used any of the state appropriation for administration. As
a result of this lack of funding, some
program sites are out of compliance with basic program standards, such as having
a minimum enrollment of 10 families, and integrating all 4 program components.
Additionally, program sites did not conduct all of the required tests of
participants. As a result, the amount and quality of available program
information for this evaluation is so limited that some program outcomes cannot
be assessed, and others are only partially assessed.
In July 1999, ADE committed additional resources to
overseeing the state-funded Family Literacy program and the Even Start program,
a similar federally funded family literacy program. Nevertheless, ADE needs to
take additional steps to strengthen oversight and monitoring to help ensure that
sites are in compliance with all program, statutory, and contractual
requirements.
Program’s Measurable Adult
Education
Outcomes Are Generally Positive
(See pages 19 through 24)
Although lack of program information precludes assessing some
of the program’s adult education outcomes, analysis of those outcomes that can
be assessed shows the program is having at least moderate positive results. In
several respects, these results are comparable to the results of a similar
family literacy program, the federally funded Even Start Program. Standard test
scores increased about the same for adults enrolled in English for Speakers of
Other Languages in the Family Literacy and Even Start programs. A similar
analysis of test results could not be performed on adult basic education and
General Educational Development (GED) instruction, because few participants took
the required pre- and posttests. However, available data on progress toward
completing the GED suggests that Family Literacy participants make slower
progress than Even Start participants do. Differences in participant demographic
factors and program duration could account for some of the differences in this
outcome. Even Start participants had more available time and resources than
Family Literacy participants had. Also, Even Start is a year-round program,
typically lasting three years, while Family Literacy is limited to the regular
school year and typically lasts only one year.
Employment outcomes are about the same for the two programs;
employment rates increased from 14 percent at the beginning of the 1998-99
school year to 34 percent at the end of the school year.
Adult Participants Show
Improvements
in Parenting Attitudes and Behaviors
(See pages 25 through 31)
Adults enrolled in the parenting skills component of the
Family Literacy Program made improvements in their behaviors. Their improvements
in parenting behaviors were greater than their improvements in parenting
attitudes. Most parents entered the program with favorable parenting attitudes
and did not make large improvements to their attitudes. However, parents who
entered the program with unfavorable parenting attitudes showed large
improvements in their parenting attitudes at the end of the program. A
comparison of gains made by participants in the Even Start Program showed that
both programs had essentially the same impacts on parenting behaviors. However,
the Even Start Program had a greater impact on parenting attitudes. Again,
differences in participant demographics and program duration could account for
some of the differences in this outcome.
Preschool Participants Make
Progress,
but Less Than Early Childhood
Block Grant Participants
(See pages 33 through 38)
In this evaluation, attempts were made to compare the school
readiness results of participants in the Family Literacy preschool component
with the results for participants in two similar preschool programs: the
preschool portion of the federally funded literacy program, Even Start; and the
state-funded Early Childhood Block Grant preschool program. The latter is a
stand-alone preschool program rather than a family literacy program. Attempts to
utilize scores from the Even Start comparison group were thwarted because of
inadequate data. Therefore, in this evaluation, preschool readiness results from
the Family Literacy Program were compared only to the results from the Early
Childhood Block Grant preschool program.
Three areas in school readiness were measured: motor, problem-solving, and
language skills. The results show that the Family Literacy Program’s preschool
component continues to have an impact on increasing children’s readiness to
succeed in kindergarten. However, the state-funded Early Childhood Block Grant
preschool program had a greater impact on motor and problem-solving skills.
Differences in these two areas may be explained partially by the age differences
in the two groups: children in the Early Childhood Block Grant were slightly
older. At the beginning of the 1998-99 school year, 28 percent of Family
Literacy children were under 4 years of age, as compared to only 3 percent of
Early Childhood Block Grant children. Although Family Literacy children were
younger than Early Childhood Block Grant children, they were able to make equal
gains in language skills.
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